From grandma’s recipe to Long Island shelves: the story of The Biscotti Company

Growing up the son of Italian immigrants in Toronto, Bruno LoGreco looked forward to the holidays. That was when his Sicilian grandmother always baked biscotti — the crisp, oblong-shaped Italian almond cookies. 

“It was something constant,” LoGreco said. He recalled being 10 years old, arriving home from school for the Christmas break, “just salivating, waiting for those almond biscotti to come out of the oven, so I could start dipping them and do my homework.”

That love for biscotti became a business. Today, LoGreco, 50, runs The Biscotti Company from the Stony Brook University Food Business Incubator in Calverton. 

LoGreco, who lives in Southampton, learned how to bake biscotti from his grandmother. His recipe is a twist on hers, crafted to create a cookie that’s “crispy, crunchy and highly addicting,” LoGreco said. 

“I will say that we take no responsibility for any weight gains or any addictions,” he added with a laugh.

The company sells about 13 different varieties of biscotti, ranging from the classic almond to unique flavors like cranberry pistachio, as well as seasonal options like pumpkin spice. Some are also available in gluten-free versions and nut-free versions are in the works, LoGreco said.

“We have a lot for every palette,” he said.

LoGreco’s favorite is double chocolate, which he says tastes like a fudge brownie. “It’s just heaven on earth.”

LoGreco’s didn’t start in the kitchen. His career started as a business and life coach for the pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson. After leaving, he went into private practice, wrote two books and appeared as a coach on the Canadian makeover reality show Style By Jury, he said. 

His love for biscotti and baking was never far away. As a part of his life coaching sessions, he would have clients bake biscotti. The idea, he explained, was that the client’s mindset would shift as their attention was split, helping them reach that “lightbulb moment” when LoGreco asked questions.

After tasting the biscotti, LoGreco’s clients would urge him to take the cookies to market. He told them: “I’m a therapist, I’m a life coach, I’m not a baker,” he said.

It wasn’t until 2018, after moving from Toronto to New York, that LoGreco decided he wanted something different. “I was tired of being the product,” he said. He set out to apply his life coach techniques to himself. 

“I went on a mission to reinvent myself, and I didn’t quite know what it was yet. I knew it was something [about] food,” he said. 

In November 2019, he attended a food business boot camp at the Hudson Kitchen in New Jersey, which trains entrepreneurs to break into the food industry. 

“At the time, it was either biscotti or hot dogs, and I’d never made hot dogs — nor do I eat them — so I couldn’t imagine myself doing hot dogs,” he said. After the bootcamp, he filed the paperwork to start The Biscotti Company. 

Initially, he planned to start his business at Hudson Kitchen, another food business incubator, but then the pandemic hit. It ended up being a blessing, he said. In March 2020, he began his business at the Stony Brook University Food Business Incubator in Calverton, which he found “way better than Hudson Kitchen.”

“You have the facility right here where you can store, you can bake, you can sell [wholesale],” he said. 

LoGreco’s first goal was to land 50 wholesale customers. “Everything’s a hobby until you have 50 wholesale customers,” he was told by the incubator’s manager. Within three months, he had them. “Building the first 50 was a lot easier than building the next 200,” he said. 

Now, The Biscotti Company’s products are sold in supermarket chains such as King Kullen, IGA and Iavarone Bros., as well as smaller stores like delis and specialty food shops, LoGreco said. 

“We’re in every nook and cranny of Long Island,” LoGreco added.

The company is also featured on QVC, the television home shopping network.

The business sells about 60,000 bags of biscotti a quarter — amounting to tens of thousands of pounds of cookies, LoGreco said. He believes he’s well on his way to achieving his ultimate decades-long goal: to create a national cookie brand.

“In another five years, I think that will have distribution in every corner of the states,” he said. 

The Biscotti Company has outgrown its space at the Calverton incubator. The next step, LoGreco said, is to find a larger facility and “graduate” from the incubator, just as companies like North Fork Chocolate and North Fork Doughnut Co. have done.

“It’s gonna be hard to leave,” he said.