Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Albino.
Hi Michael, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
This story is the culmination of centuries old traditions from families in the small towns Morcone and Alta Villa in Italy, and a passion for cooking food for family and friends. All 4 of my grandparents came to Ohio, from Italy, in the 1940’s and 50’s. They were teenagers at the time and had spent crucial adolescent years living in their home towns with no electricity or refrigeration, where preserving and dehydrating meat with just salt and seasoning (No Fermentation and No Chemicals) was a regular practice to extend the shelf life of their food. Both of my grandfathers, Michael Albino and Raymond Medaglia made sausage with family and friends every year even after moving to Cleveland, because the flavors and textures of the old fashioned dehydrated meats were unrivaled to any food. Even though the art of dehydrating meats was not a necessity, it had become and still is a nostalgic delicacy that is performed all over the world with many varying methods.
My Grandpa Mike and Grandma Jenny Albino got into the restaurant business in 1958 and purchased a Pizzeria named “Guido’s” in Euclid. This pizzeria was 1 of 5 or 6 in the Cleveland area, all started by a man named Guido in the 1950’s. All the other “Guido’s Pizzerias” closed in the 1970’s, but my grandparents had a passion and a vision for their future in the restaurant business. The business did well for a few years and in 1961, my grandparents purchased a small strip mall in Chesterland and added on a store front and opened ‘Guido’s Pizzeria and Italian Restaurant” in 1962. They kept the same base recipe for the pizzas that was from the original Guido’s, but they added many family recipes of homemade sauces, pasta, Chicken cutlets, Eggplant, Veal cutlets, Meatballs etc.
I grew up making dried sausage with my grandfathers every year, hanging it in our garage, attic or basement cellar during the winter months so we would have the meat for snacks and family gatherings throughout the year. Both of my grandfathers had their own recipes for sausage but I always longed for more flavor. Since we had the family restaurant, when I was in high school I was able to use our equipment to experiment with different recipes and grind and make my own sausage for dehydrating. I developed a recipe that became a favorite among family and friends that were always encouraging me to sell it.
For years I came up with every excuse not to sell… It took so long, it was tedious, what if people don’t like it, how am I going to make it all year round, what will the USDA and Health Department say. The family business was very busy and in 2015 we built a new restaurant and party center right next-door, ” Guidos Pizzeria and Italian Restaurant and Generations Event Center” with two party rooms hosting up to 450 people, we had 3 generations all working together, my grandparents, my parents and my 3 siblings and I, so it was easy to overlook and lose focus on a side gig sausage business.
In 2018 I met my wife Carla Palmisano and everything changed. I had finally found a partner that shared my passion and appreciation for food, family and tradition and was ready to dive into life with me and become my team mate. Carla appreciated and enjoyed the hard work ethic of our family at our restaurant and encouraged me to pursue production and selling the dried sausage. Having her at my side, I felt that we were unstoppable and taking risks and pursing new endeavors would be an adventure for us to accomplish together.
In January 2021, with having more free time during COVID, Carla and I decided to start selling our dried sausage at Guido’s. We retrofitted our industrial restaurant cooler with racks and a dehumidifier and used part of it as a dehydration facility so we could make sausage all year round. The customers loved our product and came from all over town to get it because this type of dried sausage was not sold in stores. We later developed a “HOT” sausage recipe in addition to our original mild and they were both flying off the shelves. We also started bottling the seasoning for our hot sausage, that was also the dry rub for our Capocollo, we call It “2 NONNI’s zesty Italian Seasoning and Dry Rub”.
The sausage business was doing well and we wanted to branch off of Guido’s and start our own business with dried sausage and capocollo so in 2022 “2 NONNI” was created. We called the company 2 NONNI to honor both of my “NONNI” (Grandfathers) for teaching me the art of dehydrating meats, and for instilling proper work ethic and family values that have allowed us all to work together in our family business and continue to get along and stay close. That’s very rare, and we respect and appreciate the fact that we have that for our family and we work very hard to keep it that way. We were making and dehydrating the sausage at our restaurant and we would regularly cook the leftovers for our staff who would encourage us to also sell fresh sausage, but at the time, we were not ready for that.
We slowly started to market our Dried Sausage and in January, 2024 we were in about 10 stores on the east side of Cleveland. It was a busy year for us but we ran into some issues with our dehydration process because it was 100% natural dehydration with no chemicals or fermentation process, and in November we had to stop selling the Dried Sausage. We are currently working with the Ohio Department of agriculture and the Ohio Farm Bureau to restructure our process to keep a natural way of making old-fashioned Dried Sausage as close to the original way as possible.
Coincidentally, we started selling our “Fresh Frozen Sausage” around the same time that the we had to stop selling the dried sausage. We now have 6 different flavors of Italian Sausage available, and a variety of our products are being sold at “Heinen’s” Grocery stores in Ohio and Illinois and “ACME Fresh Markets” in Ohio. All of our products are recipes and techniques that Carla and I grew up with or have developed ourselves in our passion for food. The original purpose of 2 NONNI’s Dried Sausage was natural products with clean ingredients and that continues to be our mission with every recipe we develop, “Quality, Flavor and Simplicity”. We are still in the process of fine tuning our recipes for Salad Dressings and Pasta Sauces, but the 2 NONNI brand of Italian foods is constantly growing from our family recipes and our lives of cooking and entertaining for family and friends. We have photos and videos of making all of our products, including the Dried Sausage on Instagram, Youtube, Facebook and TikTok.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
There is never enough time which is why it took so long to take the leap and get started. Carla and I have a big family so juggling family and work time is very difficult. We feel like every time we take a step forward, we are immediately hit with 3 steps backward. Distributors, Retailers, Logos, Labeling, Phone calls and emails… Everything takes much longer than expected and also costs lots of time, effort and money. Every time we think we have it figured out, something surprises us and sets us back. On any given day, we are waiting to get a response from at least 3 different people about something with the business. Persistence and consistency is the key! We have a passion and confidence in our products and our rich history and we want to share our love with the world!
We’ve been impressed with 2 NONNI, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
The foundation of 2 NONNI is tradition and family. 2 NONNI means 2 Grandpas in Italian, and the label and logo for our company is both of my grandfathers. They have been an inspiration and motivation in many things in my life and have laid a solid foundation for our family. 2 NONNI started as an old fashioned cured meats business making all natural dried sausage and capocollo the old fashioned way with just salt, seasonings and dehydration, no chemicals or fermentation process.
All of our products were being made and processed at our restaurant Guidos, and I was putting in countless hours to get everything done. We eventually contracted our meat supplier to help make our sausage for us but we still dehydrated it and made the capocollo. Carla and I built a new home in 2022 and had a custom cellar built into the foundation of our home in the basement with hopes of moving production there. We were inspected by the Ohio Department of Agriculture and the Health Department and we were told that with a few additions to structures on the outside of the room that we could be ODA certified. We still do “Privately Contracted Dehydrating” and hope to one day be able to retail our all natural Dried Sausage again and fully utilize our custom built Meat Cellar.
Our generational, family restaurant will always be our career and main focus of my time and physical effort. I am still working 55-65 hours a week at Guido’s, and Carla also works part time at the restaurant and is raising our family. Now that we have hired people to help make our products, in our time off of Guido’s we are working on dressings and sauces, marketing our products, logistics with orders and delivering, doing demos of our products in grocery stores, networking and trying to grow our brand. Creating new recipes and perfecting current recipes to have them measured and mass produced, cooking and performing cooking tutorials to show case our products on social media and spending time with our family and involving them in the growth of the business.
We are proud that we could start a business and honor our grandparents and our rich history and unity as a family. We bring our family together and gather around food that offers comfort and flavors that bring joy and happiness to everyone. With 2 NONNI, we want to encourage others to do the same with our delicious products. We also take pride in using clean ingredients with the least amount of sugar and salt possible while still offering amazing flavor. I personally am very proud of the flavors and ingredients that are our base flavors for most of our products. Our mix is very unique compared to other sausages and offers so much flavor that many foods are lacking. Our HOT is truly a HOT SAUSAGE also supporting amazing flavor and our Zesty Italian Seasoning and Dry Rub goes great on everything from breakfast to dinner!
We are constantly growing! We are in a total of 44 grocery stores, we are with a local regional distributor and are also working with a nationwide distributor to start offering our products soon.
Can you share something surprising about yourself?
My dad fired me from our family business when I was in 7th grade because I told a customer that “my dad makes me work at the restaurant”.
I was 12 and didn’t understand why I had to work. I woke up the next morning to him in my room and he had removed all of my belongings including my alarm clock and he had a list of all of my favorite things to do at home with a price tag next to them. Watching T.V $20, Fishing Pole $15, Rollerblades $15, Dirtbike $300, etc. He said I needed to get a job and then buy back the luxuries of our home because our business provided them. I lived in a rural area and I was in 7th grade so I couldn’t really get a job… I wrote him an apology letter explaining that I was very nervous about cooking pizzas and I was under a lot of pressure. I and went back to work the next week, and Ive been there ever since! Obviously I am now grateful for my fathers tough love and insistence that I learn and appreciate our business, but at 12 years old it was hard to understand why no one else had a job.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://2nonnimeats.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/2_nonni_meats/
