In 1991, Mike Palumbo, Tony Spoletini and Tony’s cousin Tom Spoletini were all playing football for the CFL’s Calgary Stampeders until training camp that year, when two of them — Tom and Mike — were told, “Your services aren’t needed anymore.” Palumbo says that matter-of-factly now. Most professional athletes understand the end comes sooner than they’d like. Palumbo had just gotten married, and he and his old friend had arrived together at career crossroads. They could have explored other available CFL options — but Palumbo wasn’t interested in leaving Calgary.
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Life after football began on a construction site, the two of them dabbling at setting tiles. One day, while at work, they had stopped for lunch and a plate of sausage was delivered to the table. Palumbo looked at Spoletini and it got the two of them thinking. Growing up in an Italian household, they’d both helped their parents make their own homemade sausage.
“Sausage-making is an Italian tradition,” said Palumbo. “So right then and there, we thought we’d get into sausage. That’s where the idea for Spolumbo’s was born.”
Tony Spoletini, meanwhile, ended up playing another season. His final game was the 1991 Grey Cup in Winnipeg when the Stampeders lost a heartbreaker to the Toronto Argonauts and Rocket Ismail (who broke open a tight game by returning a kickoff for a touchdown). Three months later, Spoletini got married and on his honeymoon, decided he didn’t want to play anymore. Instead, he joined his two former teammates on their sausage making venture, which at the time was literally a mom-and-pop operation.
The turning point came in July of 1992, when a tiny nondescript deli in the community of Inglewood, the 9th Avenue Deli, came up for sale.
“An old friend of ours, his uncle, had had it and he wanted to get out,” said Tony Spoletini. “They had a really neat old German hydraulic sausage stuffer in the back – but it was a big improvement over what we had, which was a 20-pound hand crank. This one was 100 pounds. For us, this was a huge step, a huge innovation. So it had the equipment in the back and the deli in the front, and we decided, OK, we’ll need cash flow, so let’s keep the deli and some of the favourites, but we’ll add a few of our own, with a little Italian flair – and then we’ll have some money coming in while we try to find sausage customers.”
And just like that, Spolumbo’s Fine Foods and Deli was created.
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The name is an amalgam of the three founders – the Spoletini cousins and Palumbo. (Tom Spoletini retired from the business last year to pursue other interests.)
Tony Spoletini, left, with the Stampeders in 1989. (Photo courtesy of the Calgary Stampeders)The story of Spolumbo’s is ultimately a story of family – but it’s not limited to just blood relations. The football family – and the larger Calgary sports community – also figures prominently in their unlikely success story, three local boys who made good.
Today, almost 30 years after opening up shop at their tiny original location, they now have an expansive building in the heart of Inglewood.
On a normal weekday, before the coronavirus pandemic changed everything, their parking lot would fill up before noon. Customers would be lined up, 10 deep, behind two deli counters, where the specialties of the house – meatballs, cutlet Parmigiana and a deli sandwich stuffed with Italian cold cuts – are dispensed. That’s the retail side of the operation.
The larger part of business is wholesaling sausages to hotels, restaurants and especially to supermarkets all over Calgary. Walk into a local Co-op grocery store and sometimes, a quarter of the product on offer in the meat case are sausages made by Spolumbo’s.
In addition to retail and wholesale, there is also a catering side of the operation. Many times, when a visiting NHL team arrives in Calgary for an afternoon practice at the Saddledome and they want some food for their players immediately upon its completion, a box of sandwiches from Spolumbo’s will appear in the dressing room, ordered up by the training staff.
Only a few hundred meters separate that tiny 9th Avenue deli where Spolumbo’s started to their current home now.
But the two operations are worlds apart.
As with any startup, there were some challenging moments in the early going — and more recently, new complications arising from the coronavirus pandemic.
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But back in 1997, when the partners realized they’d outgrown their first home, they faced a familiar business challenge. They knew they needed to expand. But where would they find the financing?
According to Spoletini, when the land where they ended up building on came available, they had just enough money to purchase the property, but they needed a bank loan to finance the actual construction. Fate, that year, intervened. Spolumbo’s had been nominated by the Calgary Chamber of Commerce for a small business award.
“Wouldn’t you know it, we kept making the cut every time they narrowed the field,” said Spoletini, “and then we made it to the final three and at the banquet, we ended up winning. Ironically, as soon as we won the award, everyone wanted to give us money. Before that, no one did. It’s why I always like to give a thumbs-up to the Chamber of Commerce – because that award opened the doors for where we are now.”
Dining in at the first Spolumbo’s location could be an adventure, beginning with parking, which was limited to only three spots in front of the deli. If you were lucky, someone was pulling out just as you were pulling in. Otherwise, you had to seek out street parking in the neighbourhood. Even so, customers flocked to the location, the line-up often spilling out the door.
“We were licensed for 10,” said Palumbo. “Inside, they were shoulder-to-shoulder.”
“It’s a good thing the fire marshal didn’t come by often,” added Spoletini with a laugh. “If you were lucky, we’d give you that private table at the back, where we’d flip over a Tupperware basket and throw a table cloth across it, and you sat between the kitchen and the bathroom.
“That’s why we knew we needed a new location. We used to squeeze in 40 people sometimes during the lunch hour.”
The walls of Spolumbo’s are lined with sports memorabilia — with many items donated by local athletes (Eric Duhatschek for The Athletic)The walls in Spolumbo’s current location are covered with framed jerseys from around the sports world, which gives the restaurant a sports bar sort of feel. But it wasn’t just the jerseys that helped to create its identity. The people who wore those jerseys – on the ice, on the field, even on the bobsled track at nearby Canada Olympic Park – were patrons as well. It gave locals a place to rub shoulders with local and visiting athletes. You never knew who would be sitting at the next table – members of the Stamps, members of the Flames, members of the amateur sports community; local broadcasters; even the occasional ink-stained wretch from the newspaper industry were welcomed.
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“It became an Italian deli with a sports flavour,” said Spoletini. “You guys would come over from the Dome after practice. The Flames would come. CFL teams would be staying at the Westin and the night before a game, they’d phone up, and say, ‘Hey, can we get the back room?’ We’re so pleased we were able to keep that sports connection alive.
“But that’s the loyalty of the athletic culture. There’s just so much loyalty.”
According to Palumbo, the idea of displaying jerseys started small – with just their own, plus a few from their Stampeder teammates. Just to break it up, they asked a few of their teammates for their college, rather than their pro, jerseys. Former Flames captain Dion Phaneuf donated his All-Star Game sweater. Caleb Toth, the lacrosse star, gave them a Roughnecks sweater. After skeleton racer Jon Montgomery donated his, it was on display when bobsledder Pierre Lueders dropped by – and eventually contributed one of his own.
Others came through two highly visible local fundraisers — the annual Italian Sportsman Dinner and the Dino dinner — where they would bid on jerseys during the silent auction. It’s why you’ll see a Joe Montana San Francisco 49ers jersey. The collection is now so expansive that they cannot display everything all at once. Accordingly, some are displayed downstairs and soon they’ll have to figure out a way of rotating them in and out, said Palumbo.
“We had to rotate them,” said Palumbo. “We’ve got some downstairs. We have to figure it out.”
“Half of them have stories attached to them – and half of them were ones we picked up,” said Spoletini. “Joe Montana spoke here at the Italian dinner, so we got a chance to speak to him. We also have stuff from the high schools. Mike was at St. Mary’s, I went to St. Francis, my brother-in-law’s the principal at Notre Dame, so we’ve got connections to the schools. We have all the high school helmets by the coffee machine. We like to stay connected to the amateur sports as well.”
Palumbo and Spoletini see a similarity between their lives as professional athletes and their lives as businessmen — because both rely on teamwork; and without a good team, they say they wouldn’t have been nearly as successful.
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“The important thing to any successful business is, you need your customer to come back,” said Palumbo. “If they come once and don’t come back, then that’s not going to be successful. So that’s why we treat everybody with the same respect and give them the same attention. We get customers on the sausage side that take five kilos a week and we treat them the same as we do the big guys. Everybody’s important to us – which is the key.”
“And you’ve got to be who you are,” added Spoletini. “Are most of our sandwiches low-cal? No. We have, ‘quote-unquote’ a few healthy choices, but if you look at some of the legendary sandwich shops in Canada – like Schwartz’s in Montreal – they just do what they do best. You’re going to get that three-quarter pounds of smoked meat brisket on rye bread – and that’s what you’re going to get. That’s what you go there for.
“So, we have salads and things, but when you do the numbers at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if it’s a Monday or a Saturday, the No. 1 sandwiches are: Cutlet Parmigiana, Spolumbo’s Special and Sausage Meatballs. That’s what we do. So why change? Sometimes, you wonder because times are changing – but we’re finding each generation still seems to want the Italian comfort food. Just like when we go out to our favourite restaurants in the city, we’re not going to have tuna – no disrespect to tuna – but we’re going to have a loaded pizza, hot peppers, all that good stuff we love.
“My excuse is always: Who’s going to buy food from a skinny guy?”
Spoletini laughs.
“The other thing that happens almost weekly is, someone will come in and say, ‘My dad used to take me here when I was a kid,’” said Palumbo. “Or someone will say, I’m working in Toronto or Vancouver now, but I’m back in town and I had to come eat here. I just landed – and I came straight here. Which just makes us feel great.”
Even though they’ve been at it a long time, Palumbo and Spoletini both continue to put in long hours, every day, at the main location. Palumbo arrives at 3:30 a.m. most mornings to oversee the sausage-making operation. Spoletini gets in around 7 a.m. They are hands-on, visible presences of the operation. If you drop by, chances are good they’ll be around.
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“When we moved here, because I was in charge of production, I still like to come in early and get the production team going,” said Palumbo, “but I leave a little earlier. Tony comes a little later and leaves a little later – so someone is always here. It actually works out pretty well.”
“We have a good veteran team, so it’s not like it was in the old days,” said Spoletini. “In the old days, I think it was about 10 years in before we started going on family holidays. Before the pandemic hit, we could comfortably go out for a lunch together, or go on a trip. We could even leave at the same time because we have such good people in place. That’s been a big plus.
“Because of the pandemic, we’ve had to do some things differently, so this last little while has been a bit more like the old days, when we were grinding.”
The pandemic changed life for many businesses, but food service was particularly hard hit. According to Spoletini, before the pandemic, the whole sausage business produced 70 percent of their revenue and deli and catering made up the other 30 percent.
“Of that 30 percent, more than half — about 60 percent — was catering,” said Spolettini. “What happened was, the catering’s disappeared. Nobody’s downtown – and that was a big chunk of our catering business. So, we had to reinvent ourselves. We had to reduce staff. We had to focus on the walk-up and on the home delivery. We’re confident that we’re keeping our heads above water. You can see it now in Phase 2, things are slowly starting to pick up again.”
“It’s good to see people again,” added Palumbo.
The new realities associated with the coronavirus have obliged them to do business differently, however.
“Before, there might be a press conference over at the Flames, so you’d send over a tray of sandwiches and a tray of vegetables and they put it out and everybody would just help themselves,” said Spoletini. “Now, it’s a totally different world. If somebody is ordering sandwiches, they’re individually wrapped in halves. Salads are individually packaged. It’s just a different way of doing business. It’s like you get your own individual bag lunch.”
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Palumbo says the changes were less acute on his side of the operation.
“With the plant being federally inspected, we’re one of the essential services that got to stay open,” he said. “The retail kept going strong. It really helped us getting through this. But another part of our business – where we distribute sausage to hotels and restaurants – that just disappeared. They’re starting to dribble back a little now, but it’s nothing like it was.
“Right now, we should just be roaring with the restaurants – and getting geared up to go a little crazy for the Stampede. But that’s not going to happen this year, unfortunately.”
Most of the advertising over the years has been through word of mouth – and the goodwill created when the staff from Spolumbo’s would show up for a charity golf tournament, parked behind a barbecue and dispensing sausages on a bun to golfers moving on to the next tee. Eventually, when the local charity golf circuit exploded during the oil boom, they almost became victims of their own successes.
“It was around when we moved to the new location in 1998 that those tournaments really started to catch on,” said Spoletini. “In the mid-to late-nineties, there were probably only 20 or so golf tournaments every year in Calgary. Now, before the pandemic, it had gotten to be over 200. Over time, those were so well-received and so much fun that everybody wanted us to be on a hole, and usually, they’d pair you up with a beer or alcohol company.
“We’d do about 80 or 100 tournaments a year. It got a little out of control because it got to be so popular. We had people come up to us that would say, ‘We went to that tournament because we knew you guys would be there.’ I know they were probably exaggerating, but that’s what they would say: ‘We were jacked when we heard you’d be at the halfway.’ And when oil was at $80 a barrel, some of those tournaments, the bigger ones, generated up to a quarter of a million dollars for charity.”
One of their most frequently asked questions was who came up with the name for the business.
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“Greg Peterson was a teammate, so of course, he was going to be our lawyer, 100 percent,” said Palumbo. “When we were discussing what to call this place, Greg came up with the idea: Put your two names together, Spoletini and Palumbo and call it Spolumbo’s. It sounded better than Palutini, right? Spolumbo’s sounds like a sausage. Greg’s still very proud of that.
“But that’s the connection to athletics, right?” added Spoletini. “Teammates. When we first started, so many of our teammates that got into law or oil or the fire or the police department, they’d come around. All of our buddies that ended up being coaches at Bishop Grandin and Notre Dame, they come in. The schools order sandwiches from us, post-game, or for their end-of-season banquets. Your teammates are just so good to you.”
Now that they’re open again and the customers are starting to return – in a socially distanced eating environment – Spoletini and Palumbo hope that the worst has passed and that the business continues to trend onward and upward.
They didn’t need a reminder, but if they did, the coronavirus proved that in business, like in sports, sometimes you’re only as good as your most recent performance.
“It was like when our time was up as players,” said Spoletini. “If you don’t keep playing football at a high level, you get cut. We can’t slip here at Spolumbo’s. Sure, you’re human and you slip occasionally, but we’re proud that in 28 years, we’ve been able to maintain high quality sausage, high quality service – and a great lunch.”
(Top photo, Mike Palumbo, left, and Tony Spoletini: Eric Duhatschek for The Athletic)
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