The History of Gina Marie Bakery

My mother, Maria Antonia Cavallo, started making taralli by hand with my grandmother in 1916 when she was just 6 years old. In 1956, my Uncle Tony, who had been living in New York, submitted paperwork that would allow my father, Santuccio Cavallo, to move to the United States. Two years later, our family immigrated to the United States from Colliano, province of Salerno, Italy. We opened a few delis in the Waterbury area. My mother continued her tradition of baking taralli and would frequently bring them into the delis for customers to sample. At the time, there was no one selling this timeless Italian food to the public. Customers loved the taste and began asking if we could sell taralli in our stores. As news spread that we were baking and selling this traditional food, other local stores asked if they could carry our items on their shelves.

In 1973, my wife, Concetta Mucciacciaro Cavallo, and I, Vito Cavallo, entered the wholesale business and sold to our first store in Bristol, Connecticut under the deli name, Cavallo's Imports. Soon after, larger supermarkets called and also requested to carry our products. Production started in a 1,200 square foot building on America Street in Waterbury, Connecticut. Customers began to call us "A Little Bit of Italy on America Street".

The deli was sold in 1989 and we concentrated on baking old fashioned Italian foods under its current name Gina Marie Bakery, which was derived from the names of my mother, my daughter Rose Marie, and my daughter Gina. We decided to sell our production building in 2006 and moved to a larger facility so that we could continue baking our wholesale products as well as offer other Traditional Italian Baked Goods directly to the public. In September of 2007, Gina Marie Bakery opened its new location at 289 Fairfield Avenue, Waterbury, Connecticut. In addition to our popular baked goods, we now sell frozen pasta, Italian pastries, cookies, Rustic Italian Breads, and other Italian specialties directly to the public.