Joe Aiello Biography

          Hello and welcome to our site.  I would like to take this space to personally thank you for clicking in.  Hopefully either we are currently engaged in, or about to, begin, a business relationship.  Before we do that however, I would like to tell you a little about myself, and my company.

          As you may or may not have read, this family business has been around in some form since 1914.  Originally my Great Uncle John Aiello ventured north from New York City about 1912.  Getting accustomed to the landscape he sent for his brother, my Grandfather and the original Joe Aiello, (who’s the Joseph Aiello of Joseph Aiello & Sons) and in 1914 they set up John Aiello & Brother, the original Aiello produce company.  As both families grew, John’s sons, one being tragically killed and another opting for a more scholarly profession, did not succeed their father, while Joseph’s sons (my father and Uncle) took up the profession.  My Uncle, A. George Aiello, is still alive today, and he can regale you with great, colorful stories about the “olden days,” in the produce business.  He can recall with great detail about how they used to deliver fresh vegetables with horse and wagon.  He still has very vivid dreams (maybe sometimes nightmares) about loads of strawberries, cantaloupes and iceberg lettuce- which by the way received its moniker from the mountains of ice they used to load on top of the product when it was placed in railcars.  Sorry to say however that I lost my father in 1999, for the stories were far livelier when the two “Sons” got together.

          Thus the “roots,” no pun intended, were planted very deep for the third generation of Aiello’s to break into the business.  With good labor always at a premium, I was recruited early and often as a young man, being on the loading docks at the age of 13.  My father and Uncle were always very proud of my academic accomplishments, first at St. Catherine of Siena School, then at Christian Brothers Academy, and encouraged me very openly to choose another life than the one they had lead.  Yet during all this encouragement, the “boys” would readily recall all the good times they had working together, the various characters they met and employed over the years, and the advantages to their own health in being surrounded by a plethora of fresh fruit and vegetables.  Thus after 4 years at Colgate University where I was awarded a Bachelor of Arts in History, I came back out of loyalty to both my father and Uncle, and to help them as they struggled with the plight of tackling the day to day challenges of business.

          So here I am today, scribing this introductory piece for our company website.  It is hard to imagine that I can speak simultaneously  to a variety of people using this mass of silicon and optic wiring, when only about 70 years ago we were using horse drawn carriages to transfer product between our warehouse and your establishment.  I hope to continue to embrace all the new technology available, and maybe some day one of my sons will use this space to project live images of strawberries being received and shipped, or iceberg lettuce as it arrives at our distribution center.  There are days, however, when I wonder if it would be the right thing to do to encourage a fourth generation.  If you could ask my Great Uncle John and my Grandfather Joseph if they could have imagined their success four generations later, I wonder what they would say?

Joseph J. Aiello Jr.
Vice President
Joseph Aiello & Sons
2004

PS.  If you would like to gather further insight into my life, including hobbies, interests and loyalties, please feel free to email me. I am fairly well read on subjects such as nutrition, politics, sports, business including marketing and investments, and I make it a priority to attend the Saratoga thoroughbred-racing meet.  You can also catch me on the various squash courts around the area as not only do I sell squash, but also play it as well.  Sometimes I get confused! JA