As the Main Line contends with the recent abrupt closure of Di Bruno Bros. markets in Ardmore and Wayne, a homegrown Italian-specialties purveyor — just as storied as its South Philly-rooted counterparts — remains open for business.
On the day before Valentine’s Day, shoppers at Carlino’s Market on County Line Road tucked heart-shaped macarons and chocolate-dipped cannoli into baskets already full with marinara sauce, freshly packed chicken cutlets, and imported cheese. Regulars stopped by for their pre-weekend deli orders, and shoppers took refuge from the cold amid aisles of dried pasta and prepared foods.
Carlino’s is an Ardmore institution, founded in 1983 as a small, family-owned pasta shop serving Lower Merion’s Italian community. In the decades since, the market has grown into a suburban powerhouse, supplying Ardmore, West Chester, and the surrounding towns with prepared foods, baked goods, and high-end groceries seven days a week.
The Carlino’s brand has started to transcend its Ardmore roots: In recent years, the family-run operation has expanded its wholesale business to hundreds of grocery stores, from New York to Delaware and as far as Texas. Even as the company grows, its second- and third-generation leaders remain grounded in its origins as a mom-and-pop shop.
From Abruzzo to Ardmore
Carlino’s was founded by Nicola and Angela Carlino, who left Abruzzo in 1968 to move to the United States with their two sons, Pasquale (“Pat”) and Carmen. In Abruzzo, the Carlinos tended to olive groves and grape vineyards and raised livestock on Nicola’s family farm. They left in search of better opportunities for their sons, landing in Ardmore, where Nicola initially worked as a bus driver and groundskeeper at Mitchell Prep, a private school, while Angela sold cookies, fresh pastas, and sauces out of their home.
When Mitchell Prep closed in the early 1980s, Nicola and Angela decided to take a chance on a family business. They opened Carlino’s Homemade Pasta in a former barbershop on East County Line Road in South Ardmore — at the time, an Italian American enclave. Residents in search of a taste of home regularly patronized Carlino’s, and the family started wholesaling some products to local restaurants and casinos.
According to Pat Carlino, 63, now the company’s CEO, it’s easy to take the Philly area’s formidable Italian-food scene for granted. But when his parents opened Carlino’s in the 1980s, Pat said, you could barely find marinara sauce in the grocery store. No one knew what tiramisu was, or how to tell the difference between high-quality Parmigiano Reggiano and grocery-store sprinkle cheese. Mention of ciabatta would prompt blank stares.
Carlino’s was “an education to the public,” he said.
As time went on, the store expanded, subsuming other houses on its block, and shifted to a retail focus. The family renamed it Carlino’s Market and expanded offerings to include baked goods, pizza, sandwiches and wraps, imported meats and cheeses, and groceries like sauces, olive oils, and coffee. By the mid-1990s, Carlino’s selection and specialties — handmade ravioli, freshly stuffed sausage, garden-grown bruschetta on house-baked bread, tiramisu cake, and more — attracted savvy customers from as far as New York City and Washington, D.C.
A growing business
The Carlinos opened a second market, on Market Street in West Chester, in 2007. Angela, aka “Mama Carlino,” died two days after the second store opened. (Many of Mama Carlino’s recipes, the backbone of market’s origin story, have been recorded in two cookbooks, including a 2023 volume compiled and written by granddaughter Nadia Carlino.) Nicola Carlino died in 2020.
In 2022, Carlino’s began wholesaling its sauces, dry pastas, and pestos — which you can now find at other small, local retailers like Riverwards Produce and Kimberton Whole Foods, as well as large grocery chains like Wegmans and Giant. Carlino’s products are available in parts of Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, Washington, D.C., Florida, Texas, New York, and Massachusetts, and will soon be on shelves in California and the Chicago area.
Pat declined to share specifics about the company’s business model, though he said future growth will be in wholesaling and the grocery market, not retail. (Many former patrons of Di Bruno’s now-shuttered suburban outposts said the company grew its retail presence too hastily, diminishing its quality).
While Carlino’s business is growing, Pat said his core customers are still people he knows — “people that I grew up with.”
Carlino’s also remains a family operation. Pat and his wife, Laura, are the company’s top executives, and their children — now the third generation of Main Line Carlinos — help manage marketing, wholesaling, importing, and manufacturing.
Talking about Carlino’s products, a word Pat comes back to regularly is “clean.”
Before influencers and foodies popularized the idea of “clean eating,” Carlino’s was doing it, Pat said. Nicola cooked with fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, and herbs he grew in his Ardmore garden. Pat said Carlino’s continues to rely on fresh produce, organic flour, and high-quality olive oil and French butter.
“Things that are trending now, we were doing 40 years ago,” Pat said.
“You can pick up anything and it’s clean,” he added, just like how your grandma would make it (or at least how a Carlino grandma would).
This suburban content is produced with support from the Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the project donors. Gifts to support The Inquirer’s high-impact journalism can be made at inquirer.com/donate. A list of Lenfest Institute donors can be found at lenfestinstitute.org/supporters.
