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The first product Joey D’s Frozen Foods has introduced is mozzarella sticks.
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Joey D’s Frozen Foods founder Joe Conigliaro and his daughter Jessica
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The mozzarella sticks from Joey D’s Frozen Foods are 5 inches long and weigh 3 ounces.
Joe Conigliaro has always been a forward thinker. It’s something he inherited from his father, along with a knack for the dining industry and the family pizza shop, Sergio’s, in the Brandermill area of Chesterfield.
Operating the restaurant since 1991, Conigliaro has responded to plenty of changes over more than three decades in business. When he noticed other pizza spots popping up nearby, he expanded Sergio’s menu. As the craft beer movement began to gain momentum, he added dozens of beers on tap. And when the Sicilian native couldn’t find a mozzarella stick up to his standards, he perfected his own — and then he took them to market.
“We weren’t happy with the mozzarella sticks we were [serving]; we were like, ‘Let’s make these things ourselves,’ so we started making them by hand, and people started loving them,” Conigliaro says.
Bringing an artisanal, local touch to a nostalgic comfort food, last month Conigliaro launched Joey D’s Frozen Foods, a brand available exclusively through Performance Food Group of Virginia.
According to The New York Times, the cylindrical cheese batons most likely originated in the 1970s as mass-produced mozzarella became readily available and commercial deep fryers a norm. But since their crispy, gooey inception, mozzarella sticks have gained a reputation as a third-choice bowling alley snack, a late-night inebriated order at Sheetz or the appetizer of choice during preteen visits to TGI Fridays with the family.
Cold cheese. Oily breading. Too much breading. Cheese and breading that are no longer one. Mozzarella sticks haven’t always been a food with a lot of finesse. But two years ago, in the thick of a pandemic-induced hunger for comfort food, the fried snacks and their characteristic cheese pull appeared to be making a comeback, coincidentally around the time Conigliaro and his crew began their R&D.
“Nobody ever talks about cheese sticks; they’re lackluster, and they all taste the same,” says Conigliaro, who hopes to change that perception and build some respect for the snacks.
“Being Sicilian, we do a lot of breaded products already, with veal, eggplant and chicken,” he adds. “We had to experiment with seasoning, we didn’t want it to overpower the cheese. It’s nothing complicated, just good fried cheese. Who doesn’t love fried cheese?”
A quick search of mozzarella sticks on the popular Facebook page RVA Dine & Drink — approaching 100,000 members — results in a flurry of responses raving about the versions at Sergio’s and Fire & Hops, a restaurant Conigliaro previously co-owned that also carries his product. Receiving positive feedback from customers and friendly encouragement from Sergio’s regular Xavier Meers, co-owner of frozen treat purveyor Nightingale Ice Cream sandwiches, Conigliaro reached out to PFG.
“We said, ‘We have a product we believe is unique and better than anything you can get commercially on the market, are you interested in carrying it?’ ” Conigliaro recalls.
After a taste test of the hand-cut, hand-breaded snacks dubbed FattStixx, the second largest food distributor in the country was on board. Weighing in at 3 ounces, the 5-inch logs of breaded and fried whole-milk cheese debuted at PFG’s Virginia FoodCentric food show earlier this week. A few weeks ago, the U.S. Coast Guard base in Yorktown placed an order for 20 cases of the sticks.
Currently, Conigliaro and his team are working out of Hatch Kitchen in Richmond to prepare and package the product. While FattStixx are currently available only through PFG, at Sergio’s and at Fire & Hops, the hope is to place them on more restaurant menus. Conigliaro says the goal is not only to add to his lineup of offerings, but also to extend the reach of Joey D’s Frozen Foods.
“Hopefully, we’re able to expand from Virginia to multiple states,” he says. “We started with cheese, but why limit ourselves to just one product? Our goal is to also go into retail and right now focus on Virginia as a test market.”
While the frozen food venture is still in the early stages, Conigliaro plans to take over the space next door to Sergio’s and introduce a small market with take-and-bake items, including Detroit-style pizzas. Conigliaro says much of his drive comes from his father. “He instilled that in me from when I was young, he was always hard working.”
That work included not only restaurants, but food sales. The elder Conigliaro previously worked for Italian importer Roma Foods, later purchased by PFG in 2008.
“My father was with them since the 1960s, so we have a passion for that company also because we’ve known the people who started the company back in the day my whole life,” he says.
With his wife and daughters assisting in operations, the Conigliaros are continuing a family tradition. “This is the third generation of restaurateurs at Sergio’s,” he says. “[Joey D’s] is starting the same way; my daughters are involved in it, my wife is helping me out, we believe in getting the family together.”
