Bronx resident petitions to honor Stella D’oro legacy with street co-naming

Just by having that cookie factory there, that put a lot of kids through college because that was people’s livelihoods.”

Antonio Pepenella

Antonio Pepenella still remembers the smell of cookies filling the air when he would visit his father at the Stella D’oro restaurant growing up. 

Pepenella is now petitioning to co-name the street corner of West 237th Street and Broadway after Stella D’oro, a company famous for its Italian cookies, because of the legacy he feels it left on the community. 

“It is an integral part of me,” Pepenella said. “It’s part of my upbringing, so it’s very important to me.” 

Pepenella said he thinks co-naming the street would be a nice gesture for Kingsbridge and Riverdale after the restaurant’s 78-year stay in the neighborhood. 

According to Pepenella, the company was much more than just cookies. The location took up nearly two and a half blocks, complete with a pizzeria, bar, catering hall and upscale restaurant in addition to the cookie factory. 

When his father would work as a maitre’d at the restaurant, Pepenella would help out after school, prepping for parties, setting up chairs, even filling the salt-and-pepper shakers. 

Despite Pepenella’s young age when his father worked at the restaurant, he recognized then and now the role the company played in the neighborhood for the people it employed and beyond. He recounts many of the workers living in the neighborhood and, on the nights his father worked late, they would drive other employees to their homes in Kingsbridge and Riverdale, just down the street from where he grew up. 

“Just by having that cookie factory there that put a lot of kids through college because that was people’s livelihoods,” Pepenella said. 

Pepenella’s father passed away in 2020 due to complications with covid-19 and the loss hit him hard. He said he and his father were very close and all the things that made up his father are now ingrained in him, the Stella D’oro company included. 

The co-naming of this corner is not Pepenella’s first attempt at co-naming a street for a facility he has a lifelong experience with. He was once a student and now currently works as a teacher at Aviation High School in Long Island City.Before him, his father worked at the same school as a teacher, then a guidance counselor, and eventually the assistant principal. 

One day while on his way to work, he passed by Bronx High School of Science and saw the sign naming the street Bronx High School Boulevard, which sparked the idea for him to rename the street at his school.

He started the petition alone last year and after, reaching the necessary 500 signatures, he presented it to the elected officials in the district, who agreed to rename the street Aviation High School Boulevard. 

“My school has a very rich history,” Pepenella said. “It’s bittersweet because my father used to work there, I was a student there so it’s like that school is in my heart, and so is the Stella D’oro company.” 

The origins of the Stella D’oro location date back to 1932, when Italian immigrants Angela and Joseph Kresevich founded the company with their recipes for Italian baked goods. The company went on to change hands a few times before it was bought out by Brynwood Partners, a Greenwich, Connecticut-based private equity firm, in 2006, a decision some believe led to the Bronx location’s closure. 

After Brynwood Partners purchased the company, it wanted to lower hourly rates and employees, unhappy with the changes, went on strike. After a year of back and forth, the employees won their strike, with the National Labor Relations Board ruling in their favor. But Brynwood announced it would shutdown the factory in October 2009, just months after
employees had their jobs reinstated. 

The Bronx factory and restaurant closed forever, despite Brynwood Partners selling the brand to Lance, a subsidiary of the Campbell’s Soup Company, in September of the same year. 

Currently, Pepenella’s petition to rename the corner for Stella D’oro has 122 of the necessary 200 signatures, but he said once he has enough he’ll reach out to Councilman Eric Dinwoitz with the information to see about officially getting the street named Stella D’oro Boulevard.

The petition can be found at Bit.ly/StellaCoName.