Damele's Bay Area Biscotti Co. was born in Southern Nevada
eight years ago. Damele, who lived in Northern California,
had worked as a national executive job recruiter. So when
the market flattened out in 1991, she decided to take
a hiatus and pursue the possibility of starting her own
business.
Over the years, Damele had made anise biscotti for family
and friends, and many of them suggested she might try
her hand at the lucrative bakery business. One day while
staying at her vacation condominium in Las Vegas, she
ran across a bakery for sale in a small strip shopping
center near Torrey Pines Drive and West Sahara Boulevard.
In 1992, the aspiring entrepreneur decided to purchase
the bakery and reopened it as a combination coffee shop
and bakery. Her biscotti were an immediate hit.
"I was the first one to put a coffee shop in,"
Damele says of the days before Seattle-style coffee shops
invaded Las Vegas. "I only knew how to make anise
at the time, but everyone liked them."
Damele began packaging her biscotti into colorful red,
white, green and black boxes. She called the cookies Biscotti
Dameli - changing the letter "e" in her last
name to an "i" because she liked the way it
played off the last letter in biscotti. She also developed
other flavors - lemon peel, hazelnut, almond chocolate
chip, orange decadence and marble decadence.
Nothing goes to waste at Damele's bakery, as the left
over end pieces of biscotti are crushed, coated with chocolate
and transformed into delicious candy bars
Damele has been successful in having her cookies sold
in all the major hotels in Las Vegas and some in the Northern
Nevada area. They're also in fine dining restaurants and
retail shops throughout the state. Wild Oats grocery stores
and Smiths and Albertson's supermarkets carry them.
Nationally, Biscotti Dameli is sold in Northern California,
Beverly Hills and Newport Beach, Calif. Soon, Demele says,
they will be sold in New York, Philadelphia, Nashville
and New Orleans.
"My dream is to have a biscotti factory and have tours,
so people can see how they are made," an excited Demele
says.
In 1995, Damele moved her bakery to a larger 1,800 square-foot
facility off Industrial Road in Las Vegas. She still does
most of the sales herself and has five fulltime and seven
part-time employees do the baking. Recently, she hired
a national sales representative to sell her biscotti domestically
and internationally. "We pretty much can do any type
of custom work," Damele says. "People just tell
us what they want and how much they want and how much
they want to spend."
For more information, contact: The Bay Area Biscotti
Co., 3125 Ali Baba Lane, Suite 706, Las Vegas, NV. 89118.
Phone: 1-800-497-9556. Fax: (702) 795-8704.
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