Jeff Brown, former mayoral candidate and founder of regional grocery chain Brown’s Super Stores, has secured a significant stake in long-running local specialty-food purveyor Di Bruno Bros.
In a statement sent to Billy Penn, Sandra Brown, executive vice president at Brown’s Super Stores, wrote, “we can confirm that a Brown-owned company is a secured creditor of Di Bruno Bros.”
Specifics of the deal and any subsequent changes to the Di Bruno brand are still unclear.
The investment, Brown clarified through a statement, aims to leverage the “retail experience, technology acumen and systems at Brown’s to create a new entity that is financially resilient and builds upon the exceptional quality and customer experience for which the Di Bruno Bros. brand is known.”
That brand got its start in 1939, with brothers Danny and Joe Di Bruno setting up a neighborhood grocery store on Ninth Street in the Italian Market. In 1965, faced with the realization, according to their website, that “big chain supermarkets could jeopardize their humble, neighborhood grocery business,” Danny reinvented the shop as a gourmet cheese destination, with imported cheeses from Italy alongside cured meats and “thousands of pounds” of aged provolone.
Di Bruno’s had since been managed by grandson Bill Mignucci Jr. and cousins Billy and Emilio, who have expanded the business since taking over in 1990, with five current locations, a catering service, and approximately 350 employees.
“As Danny Di Bruno’s grandson and president of Di Bruno Brothers, I am honored that our family business has meant so much to so many for so long,” Mignucci Jr. wrote in the joint statement provided to Billy Penn. “We are confident that a like-minded family business will fuel the brand’s growth and more importantly preserve the legacy that Danny and Joe started 85 years ago.”
Brown’s Super Stores currently operates nine ShopRite supermarkets and two Fresh Grocers throughout the Delaware Valley, with over 2,300 employees. The company started with the purchase of a Roxborough ShopRite in 1988 by Jeff Brown, whose father had been a grocer.
Over the years, community outreach efforts by Brown’s Super Stores, including providing employment opportunities for formerly incarcerated individuals, have earned the company praise, including being recognized as one the region’s best employers by the Philadelphia Business Journal.
This is a developing story, and will be updated accordingly.
