Portland, Maine is like most coastal New England towns in that it has a long history. It was originally founded by the British in 1632 as a fishing settlement under a different name. Four times in its history the city has been completely destroyed by fire, most recently in 1866, after which it was rebuilt in brick and took on the look it has today. In 1902 an Italian immigrant by the name of Giovanni Amato started baking a soft loaf of bread and began selling it to dock workers on Portland’s waterfront. Shortly, his customers started asking him to slice it and add some meat to it for their lunches. Finally, the dock workers told Giovanni that it was perfect, but it was too long to fit into their lunch boxes. He took a knife, cut off the ends and with that the Italian sandwich was born.

Today, Amato’s is owned by Dominic Reali who got his start at the company’s original India Street location. He has managed to grow the company to 27 sandwich shops spread throughout southern Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont and in 2000 repurchased the bakery business which was separated from the sandwich shops a couple of generations earlier.

Several years ago when I first met John and Anthony Amato (great grandsons of Giovanni) they were running the bakery in a small, 3800 square foot space. After Dominic purchased the bakery they moved to a 10,000 square foot space and we walked around it wondering how they would ever fill it up. To walk in the place today you realize they did. It’s a great bakery. It’s spotless and well organized and has the efficiency needed to handle the requirements of supplying a diverse array of their own sandwich shops along with a growing wholesale business. But they still do things much as Giovanni must have. The flour still comes in 100# sacks, there is some automation but the Italian loaves are still ‘string tied’. That is, a knotted piece of string is soaked in bucket of water and laid down the center of the loaf before going into the proof box. The wet string causes a weak spot to develop along the top of the loaf allowing it to split along that line as it bakes .

But while Amato’s holds onto many of its traditional methods it is a very different business today. The original India Street location still exists and 13 of the stores in Maine are company owned. But most of today’s growth in stores is through franchising, with plans to expand into Massachusetts shortly. With all this growth the real challenge for the company, and the bakery, is to keep the products: the original Italian sandwich and their signature pizza’s, consistent across all the stores.

They have addressed this challenge in a number of ways. First, everything comes from the central bakery. It’s there that they produce the bread, then deliver it fresh, for all the stores company wide. The challenge for any bakery with multiple locations is getting consistency across the locations. To my mind the approach of baking from scratch in a central location and delivering daily to the stores gives you the most flexibility while ensuring quality. Ukrops, an independent grocery chain based in Richmond, Viriginia, has just rolled out such a program: baking centrally and delivering fresh each morning to each of their 20+ stores. This approach eliminates the costly overhead of baking at each location and with a central bakery you can produce a consistent loaf of bread for all stores.

But with the pizza dough Amato’s takes a different approach: each of the 13 company owned stores makes their dough fresh form scratch each day, while, at the franchise stores, the dough balls are made at the Amato’s central bakery and then delivered to the stores frozen via a distributor. You might think that’s a lot of trouble to go to; why not frozen for everyone. I asked that question, and the answer from John Amato at the bakery was that with the dough made from scratch at the company stores it’s much easier to control waste. I really thought that the answer would be that they felt they made a better dough when they made it fresh at the stores. But, of course, they aren’t looking for some stores to be better than others: they are looking for consistency. So with the fresh dough at the stores they make up what they project their needs for the day are and if they don’t end up using it all they can retard it over night for the next day. With frozen dough balls they give up some of that flexibility but they gain control over the final product, even at some of their most distant stores.

Amato’s today appears to have been successful in balancing the tradition and spirit of their founder’s products with their need to grow as a company. But, of course, whether these various approaches work is borne out in their signature product: the sandwich. I have been eating these sandwiches for years, but in the interest of research a couple of weeks ago I went to Amato’s St.John’s Street store (where upstairs you will find the company headquarters) and got Tim Ferente, a 27 year Amato’s veteran, to make me one their signature sandwiches.

It starts with their traditional soft sandwich rolls. He split the top and opened it up. First came the cheese, then two type of meat: looked like salami and capicola. Then came the onions (you’ve got to have onions), then Amato’s own dill pickles. Next they hand sliced the tomato onto the sandwich. Hand slicing onto the sandwich is how it has always been done but Tim indicated that as they grow they are being forced to reconsider this move (for safety). Then a hand sliced green pepper. Finally, the black olives, salt and pepper and their own special oil. I don’t want to overplay it, but that is one great sandwich.