Angelo’s Pizzeria owner Danny DiGiampietro has been pursuing two ambitious goals: reviving a landmark Montgomery County bakery and opening a branch of his Michelin-recommended pizza-and-sandwich operation in South Jersey, where it all began.
Both projects now appear to be gaining momentum. While Angelo’s vaunted rolls are being baked at the former Conshohocken Italian Bakery property, which DiGiampietro purchased last year, the long-held plans to reopen the bakery’s counter to retail customers remain on hold. DiGiampietro said the building requires additional work, which he declined to specify. “Every time we fix one thing, something else comes up,” he said.
But Angelo’s is moving into wholesale bread production, the backbone of Conshohocken Italian Bakery’s business under the Gambone family for more than a half-century before its 2024 closing.
A key piece of the puzzle is on the way: a massive Polin oven imported from Italy to give his bakers more flexibility, DiGiampietro said.
At “Conshy,” as the Jones Street bakery was known, the Gambone family supplied rolls and bread to hundreds of restaurants and sandwich shops throughout the region. Its closing created a frenzy among customers and competitors.
DiGiampietro said the new oven will allow bakers to create a line of kaiser rolls, potato rolls, steak rolls, and hoagie rolls. Although he will in effect be selling to his sandwich shop competitors, he likens it to giving shops “the canvas to make their art,” DiGiampietro said. “Everyone’s different.”
A return to wholesaling was not in the initial plans for DiGiampietro, who owned a bread bakery in South Philadelphia about 20 years ago. “I went bankrupt the first time. So hopefully I don’t go bankrupt again.”
Meanwhile, demolition and rebuilding are underway at the future Angelo’s Pizzeria location at 310 Black Horse Pike in the West Collingswood Heights neighborhood of Haddon Township, Camden County. The stand-alone building was formerly Di’Nics.
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Crews recently gutted the building, which DiGiampietro hopes to transform into a full-service Angelo’s within the next several months.
The project will mark his return to New Jersey. DiGiampietro opened his first Angelo’s in Haddonfield in 2013 before closing it in 2018 to focus on the Ninth Street location in South Philadelphia, which opened in 2019 and helped turn Angelo’s into one of the region’s most sought-after pizzeria and cheesesteak shop.
Since then, Angelo’s has expanded to a second South Philadelphia location at Wolf and Swanson Streets and a counter at Wilmington’s DECO Food Hall. DiGiampietro is also a partner in Uncle Gus’ Steaks at Reading Terminal Market and, with actor Bradley Cooper, at Danny & Coop’s in Manhattan.
The Angelo’s in West Collingswood Heights, about 10 minutes from the Walt Whitman Bridge, will include table seating as well as a counter overlooking the kitchen. Initially, DiGiampietro wanted more seating. Then he began talking about a takeout-only operation.
“But people love the show,” he said. “They like to see everything happening.”
The build-out still requires installation of a pizza oven, walk-in refrigeration, and other equipment. Even so, DiGiampietro believes the compact space can work.
“We think we can keep a dining room and still fit everything we need in there,” he said. “It’ll be tight, but we work on Ninth Street in basically a submarine, so how much tighter can it get?”
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