Posted in Minoli
21st December 2022
Much like Minoli, Italian Continental Stores has built up a solid reputation for supplying some of the finest products from the most renown manufacturers of Italy. ICS, (as the company is known) Managing Director, Rosario Sardo, has built his business on sourcing, wholesaling and retailing sought after produce from Italian food and wine suppliers, with whom the family business has had relationships since the late ’60s.
Rosario’s father, Carmelo Sardo, emigrated to the UK in the early 60’s, with hope and a dedicated plan to provide authentic products to fellow Italian immigrants in England, with the help of a friendly importer and long-lasting Italian family relationships back home.
Although Minoli are a importers and distributors of Italian porcelain tiles, we run a number of hospitality events through the course of a year and like to take great care in making sure the food and beverage we offer to our clients is also authentically Italian.
It’s here that Rosario and the Team at ICS excel. Based in Maidenhead, affectionately known locally as ‘The Italian Shop’, the store provides beautiful Italian produce in a bespoke setting for public and wholesale customers, with almost 6,500 products including pasta, cheese, ham, sauces, freshly made delicacies and pastries.
For Minoli events, ICS is our sole supplier for delicious red and white wines, and prosecco sourced from the Santomè vineyards, with whom ICS have a well-established and exclusive agreement. At our annual Preview Event, attendees also leave with authentic Italian Panettones by Pasticceria Fraccaro, also from Italian Continental Stores.
It’s not just Minoli clients that enjoy treats from the Italian Shop. It’s traditional at Minoli that all staff receive a festive hamper for Christmas which are assembled by Rosario and his team with all sorts of goodies to enjoy over the holidays.
Given our personal and business relationships, when Italian Continental Stores decided to expand and fully refurbish their Maidenhead premises in 2011/12, Minoli was the obvious choice of supplier for the tiles they needed to create the perfect native-Italian style of their new headquarters.
This is far from the platform to go into personal details, but for many reasons 2022 has been a year of sadness and to a degree tragedy for the Sardo family and the team within Italian Continental, with both Rosario’s brother Mario and his father Carmelo passing away within months of each other. Throughout these trying times, the company and the family persevered to ensure that the service offered to their client base continued without any sign of the internal emotional disruption.
As is often the case, from tragedy of comes opportunity, and in this case a door has now opened, perhaps a little earlier than planned, to the next generation. Massimo Sardo (Rosario’s son) has already started to make his mark on ensuring the continuity of standards and values set by his grandfather and uncle for many years to come. Rosario, his family and his team truly believe in customer service and quality of product, and perhaps this is why we here at Minoli feel such a kinship.