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Nicholas D’Agostino, SR
At age 15, he left a $24-a-week job to become a butcher's helper at a weekly wage of only $18, in order to learn the butcher's trade. In 1932, he became a progenitor of the modern supermarket when he and his brother, Pasquale (Patsy), combined their savings and expertise to open a new kind of grocery store - the first in New York City to offer produce, baked goods, dairy products and grocery staples under one roof. This was a revolutionary ideas at the time. Their one small service store flourished. More stores were added and the product line expanded to include meat and other items. Today D’Agostino Supermarkets is a chain of 23 stores located in Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx and suburban Westchester County. Since it's beginning, the company has worked hard to earn the honored title of "New York's Grocer." A devout Roman Catholic, Nicholas D’Agostino was Knight of Malta and, until his last illness, served as Vice Chairman of the Cardinal's Committee for Catholic Charities. He was a founder and lifelong support of the famous Boy's Towns and Girl's Towns of Italy, a network of model communities providing sustenance, education and sponsorship to orphaned and abandoned children of any race or nationality. He was also a patron of the arts and cultural affairs in New York City. Although he became a multi-millionaire in his adopted country, "Nick" D’Agostino never forgot the hard years of his youth and was widely known as a generous humanitarian. Mr. D’Agostino died at the age of 86 at his home in Manhasset, Long Island, after suffering a long illness. |
Nicholas D’Agostino, Sr., founder of the famous New York
supermarket chain bearing his name, was highly regarded an innovative and
dynamic businessman, a philanthropist and lay religious leader in the Roman
Catholic Church. Mr. D’Agostino was the 1982 recipient of the Horatio Alger
Award, an honor shared with other self-made leaders of business and industry
and three former Presidents of the United States.. In the rags-to-riches
tradition that the award recognizes, he was born June 8, 1910 in Bugnara, a
picturesque, but poor hamlet in the province of L'Aquila in the Abruzzi region
of Italy. While still in his early teens he emigrated to New York where he
worked as a pushcart peddler and mill laborer.