🔒With roots in Italy, Sabatino company now operates world’s ‘largest truffle manufacturing plant’ in CT

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Federico Balestra, standing in his recently expanded West Haven manufacturing facility, was surrounded by boxes full of black winter truffles — a delicate fungus that grows at the roots of oak and hazelnut trees.

“This ​truffle ​arrived ​last ​night, shipped ​yesterday ​morning ​from ​Italy,” said Balestra, the third-generation owner and CEO of his truffle company, Sabatino. “​The ​order ​will ​go ​out ​to ​UPS ​and ​FedEx ​by ​this ​afternoon. ​It ​will ​be ​to ​the ​customer ​tomorrow.”

Sold and shipped whole like this, truffles are used by upscale restaurants to garnish and flavor exclusive dishes. This small, climate-controlled room contains a lot of value — just one ounce of this truffle sells for $95; a handful could yield $1,000 or more.

Balestra is himself an Italian transplant. The Sabatino company began in Umbria, Italy in 1911 — founded when Balestra’s grandfather, Sabatino Balestra, opened a small shop selling the delicacies. At that time, the product was only found in the wild by truffle hunters using specially trained dogs.

“For many years we just sold in Italy,” Balestra says now. Truffles were considered a highly local product that might not travel well in the days before mass air travel.

But, by the time Federico and his sister, Guiseppina, took over the family business, it was clear they would have to become more ambitious. Growing competition in Italy was cutting into their market share.

“We said, ‘you know what — let’s try to go outside,’” he says. Germany was their first export market in 1996, and from there they spread to other parts of Europe.

“I came to the U.S. in ‘99, for three months, supposedly,” he remembers. He was 26 years old. “We started door-to-door in New York City, selling to restaurants.”

The company gained a foothold and, until 2005, it continued to rely on shipping truffles and truffle-based products, like oils and seasonings, from Italy.

“The company was doing okay, but it was not jumping to the next step,” Balestra said. “I told my sister, ‘we need to open a manufacturing plant in the U.S.’”

At that time, many fewer specialty food products of European origin were manufactured here. Most maintained their exclusivity by being able to boast that they were imported from Italy or other countries of origin.

At first, Balestra identified a 5,000-square-foot premises in the Bronx.

“The day we opened a manufacturing plant (in the U.S.), the company took off,” he said. Just a few years later, he realized they were going to outgrow the space.

Property prices in New York prompted him to begin looking elsewhere for expansion. Balestra was already living in Connecticut, and, after the 2008 crash, he identified a building in West Haven just a block from I-95, that had the potential he believed the company needed.

The 40,000-square-foot industrial property, at 135 Front Ave., had originally been a seafood production plant.

It took time and work to renovate the building before the company moved in 2012. At first, he said, the space was far more than they needed.

“Within two years it was full,” he said.

In fact, Sabatino has continually expanded the plant until it now extends to 125,000 square feet. The newest addition is a 42,000-square-foot, fully automated warehouse and distribution center that Sabatino opened in December. With this additional space, the company has been able to consolidate warehouse operations that it had elsewhere in West Haven and New Haven.

The West Haven plant now employs around 100 people.

“This is the largest truffle manufacturing plant in the world,” Balestra said.

Product diversification 

Balestra has set a company goal of reaching $100 million in sales within three years, and he believes the new warehouse is a big step in making that happen. The company also just opened a flagship store in the Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, its first ever U.S. retail location.

Sabatino’s original operation in Italy is still the biggest hub of its global export business, with customers in 70 countries. The U.S. operation focuses on domestic sales, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean.

But one of the reasons Balestra believes the U.S. operation has been so key to their success is innovation.

In the past, he says, truffles were for high-end restaurants, “not for everybody. Now, the truffle is much more democratic. I think, we as a company, we’ve been the pioneer of that.”

This democratization of an extremely expensive natural fungus has been achieved through a wide array of products that now contain truffle and truffle flavor. The biggest seller is truffle-flavored olive oil. From there, the company has branched out into truffle salt, truffle honey and beyond.

“The big step was done in 2016 when we invented truffle zest,” Balestra said. “Truffle zest is truffle seasoning. It’s easy. People ask me how you use truffle zest? My answer is, do you know how to use black pepper? It’s that simple.”

There’s even a truffle hot sauce and truffle chili crisp for the Asian-American segment, things that would have never been made in the conservative Italian market.

“We are servicing the whole industry with all sorts of products,” said Sabatino Senior Vice President of Marketing Pauline Charles. “Whereas in Italy, it’s a little more limited in terms of the types of products that we’re producing. Obviously, we’re not speaking to Italians. We would never speak to Italians with truffle hot sauce!”

The advantage of this diversification is cost — there’s very little of the expensive truffle itself in the condiment products, so they can address a wider market. In fact, whole truffles now only account for about 8% of Sabatino’s sales — the rest is made up of manufactured truffle products.

Domestic production

Meanwhile, most truffles are no longer sourced in the wild. Instead, the industry has planted truffle orchards, deliberately infecting tree roots with the fungus to yield a consistent and more accessible crop. Sabatino has expanded far beyond Italy, with truffle orchards around the world.

So well has the U.S. market taken to the democratization of the truffle, that Sabatino now wants to grow truffles here.

The company has purchased 143 acres in Kentucky, which has a productive climate for the fungus. Sabatino has planted a hazelnut-tree orchard and hopes it will start to yield truffles by 2029.

“In the past it was high-end restaurants. That’s it. Now we went from the high ends to the fast casual, the pizzerias,” Balestra said. “In Asia we have (customers) like McDonald Burgers — they have a truffle option, and that will happen in the U.S., I believe. Because culturally, my generation met the truffle at an adult age. My kids’ generation — my son will say, ‘why don’t they have truffle fries?’”