DSR of the Month

Born in Sicily in 1944, Vito Conigliaro immigrated to New Jersey at the age of 24 and began working, as his brother had back home, in an Italian pizzeria – first as a dishwasher and then learning other positions. It was there, even before learning to speak English, that he met Louis Piancone Sr., the founder of Italian specialty distributor ROMA Foods. Piancone took a liking to him and offered him a job as a driver, but quickly recognized Vito’s natural ability to relate to people. A year later, he offered him a sales position and personally mentored him, helping him to learn both the industry and English. “I owe him for everything that I am today,” Conigliaro says. “He took me under his wing and shared his knowledge. Louis Piancone is the best human being in the world.”

As a DSR, what Conigliaro is today is an impressive success story in any language. Working for the first 30+ years of his career out of ROMA’s New Jersey division, he covered a large territory and built a strong business providing exceptional, personalized service to the type of accounts he knew best—Italian restaurants and pizzerias. After ROMA Foods became part of PERFORMANCE Foodservice, he transferred to the Richmond market, where several of his accounts had operations, and became one of eight ROMA reps working out of that division. It’s one of several that the company combined to operate as both PERFORMANCE Foodservice broadline and ROMA Foods specialty locations. A top rep for many years in Virginia, Conigliaro was awarded the Circle of Excellence sales award for fiscal 2010. He will be recognized as the top selling rep at the division, as well as one of the top reps in all of PERFORMANCE Foodservice at the company’s upcoming national awards ceremony. His sales this year will hit $5.5 million from 52 accounts. That’s after recently splitting his route with a new rep, who he’s now mentoring.

His ability to build relationships is what sets Conigliaro apart, according to his sales manager, Jan Brunetti, and it’s a skill that, as Piancone saw long ago, comes naturally to him. It’s also what he enjoys most about the job. “You have to sell your personality first,” Conigliario asserts. “If you’re honest and you sell your personality, you will sell food.”  

He also feels it’s just as important today as when he started 40 years ago to take a hands-on, personal approach to sales. “You need to visit your customers every week,” he says. “You will sell much more in person than you will over the phone.”

That approach combined with his niche specialization has seen him achieve almost 100% account penetration, becoming primary supplier to the majority of his accounts.  Like him, many of his customers are of Italian descent and, while he’s now fluent in English, much of his business is conducted in Italian. He enjoys interacting with them and prides himself on taking good care of them. He works to source the specialty products they need and helps them to improve their businesses by focusing on cost control, cutting waste and improving service and hospitality. Since ROMA Foods combined with PERFORMANCE Foodservice, he’s become skilled at selling the full line, well beyond ROMA’s Italian specialties. As he likes to say, “Everything makes the minestrone soup. Whether it is paper or spices, it all makes the bottom line and it shows the customer that you’re truly there to help them with all aspects of their business.”