Imagine being the proud descendent of a cigar-loving lineage and turning that heritage into a smoldering success. That's precisely what Tony Bellotto did with his company, La Barba Cigars, and we're excited to have him share his journey with us. From his $5,000 seed money adventure to his collaboration with industry giants, Tony's tale is one of passion, perseverance, and the art of crafting fine cigars. Join us as we unravel the secrets behind his entrepreneurial spirit and how he's blending tradition with innovation to set the cigar world alight.
As the smoke clears, we'll also delve into the heart of building a brand that resonates with aficionados and newcomers alike. Tony's experiences—from the thrill of his cigars gracing a Saturday Night Live celebration to the personal satisfaction of seeing customers commemorate their special moments with a La Barba—underscore the importance of connection in this craft. We'll pepper in some talk about pizzas, fries, and why mayonnaise never makes the cut, while also sipping on the details of Tony's ventures in coffee and cava. So, light up your curiosity and prepare for an episode that's full of flavor, entrepreneurship, and a dash of Youngstown charm.
http://labarbacigars.com/
Imagine being the proud descendent of a cigar-loving lineage and turning that heritage into a smoldering success. That's precisely what Tony Bellotto did with his company, La Barba Cigars, and we're excited to have him share his journey with us. From his $5,000 seed money adventure to his collaboration with industry giants, Tony's tale is one of passion, perseverance, and the art of crafting fine cigars. Join us as we unravel the secrets behind his entrepreneurial spirit and how he's blending tradition with innovation to set the cigar world alight.
As the smoke clears, we'll also delve into the heart of building a brand that resonates with aficionados and newcomers alike. Tony's experiences—from the thrill of his cigars gracing a Saturday Night Live celebration to the personal satisfaction of seeing customers commemorate their special moments with a La Barba—underscore the importance of connection in this craft. We'll pepper in some talk about pizzas, fries, and why mayonnaise never makes the cut, while also sipping on the details of Tony's ventures in coffee and cava. So, light up your curiosity and prepare for an episode that's full of flavor, entrepreneurship, and a dash of Youngstown charm.
http://labarbacigars.com/
Hey, hey, hey, we're here with the VIP cafe show. I'm Greg Smith and I have with me Debbie Larson. Yes, my esteemed co-host, we're here to have Anna. I'm esteemed, enjoying the mood, enjoying the environment. And there's a special event tonight yeah, pretty big one, yeah, real big one, and you know what else is big? Sometimes the boss's son. I'm not sure if he's the boss or not. Sometimes the boss's son has amazing potential, and not only potential, but he started. He does great things. He's doing greater things. He's still young.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can't say that about every boss's son. No, sometimes they ride on the coattails.
Speaker 1:You know probably threw him out and said, hey, go fly. And he did so what you're telling me.
Speaker 2:That's who we get to talk to today. Woo, all right, introducing Tony Bellotto. Tony has made his own cigar line right out of young San Ohio. He is only the second person to have a cigar line from young San Ohio and we have him with us here today. He is doing big things. He has great big ambitions, far beyond even what he's doing right now. So, without further ado, hello, tony.
Speaker 3:Hello, how are you guys?
Speaker 1:Good, good, good. So we always ask we want to hear the story from conception on. No, I can tell you the story.
Speaker 3:So I initially went to school for wine.
Speaker 3:So, I became a WST certified Somalia level three and I met a salesman that used to sleep on my dad's couch. His name was Tom Luzuka and Tom sold scars for Christian A Roa, which is the CLE brand, now used to be Camacho. And he found out about my history in wine and said have you ever thought about blending a cigar? And I said I thought that was only reserved for, like these idols that I had grown up with in my entire life, right, because you're third generation cigar guy, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Okay, it's my dad's 50th 50th year, I think in business this year. I thought that was insane and he said there's this really interesting gentleman in Miami named Robert Caldwell and you guys both like art and food and wine and cigars. You should go down and meet him. So I went down to the Winwood Cigar factory in Miami and met Robert and that's how the journey started. So I took a. I had a like one of those Gerber life insurance policies from when I was a kid. My mom got it for me, so I cashed that out for $5,000. And I started La Barba Cigars with my first company that I started. Wow.
Speaker 1:That is so cool. Look at that and they're good cigars.
Speaker 2:First of all, the fact that I've never heard or met somebody who actually had one of those Gerber life insurance policies.
Speaker 3:I think that's, but my mom's behind me so we can ask her what it actually was. Something like that, yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, so then you took that, and that was your seed money.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So then I was making cigars. I ordered 110 count boxes of each size there was four sizes, so 400 boxes of cigars to my Nile store and started making phone calls and trying to get accounts and I turned that five into 10 and then I took that 10 and bought more cigars and so on and so forth, and I was doing it at the behest of my dad, who'd never thought it would work. And I grew to a point where I was doing all the shipping and the processing and the ordering the cigar bands and doing the blends and ordering the boxes and ordering the cellophane and all that crazy stuff. I got to a point where I needed plus there's a big tax in Ohio called OTP, other tobacco product tax, where I have to pay 70 cents on every cigar that comes in.
Speaker 3:Oh, wow, and then I have to chase it backwards if I send the cigars out of state. So I was filling out all these forms and trying to get my money back from the state and it was just very frustrating doing business importing the cigars into Ohio. Okay, I partnered and I needed to grow and I needed inventory. So I partnered with Robert, who I started with initially in Miami and that's where the cigars come in and my inventory gets sit there without having to pay taxes on it and then when I send it up here to my shops in Ohio then we pay the taxes on it when it comes up.
Speaker 2:That seems like a much better way of doing it. Can I ask a quick question, cause I could tell you about the ass on? How do you like? How did you go and you work with a bunch of leaves and then blend flavor? How does that even happen?
Speaker 3:We ended up partnering with a another family business cause. It's like how we like to do business. Okay, William Ventura and Henderson. His son, William Ventura, was the master blender for Davidoff for 30 years. So all of the famous limited edition cigars from Davidoff, like the year of the rat or the chef's edition, or he was the master blender for all those and he was getting ready to retire and his older son, Weber, ended up taking his place at Davidoff and Henderson, his younger son, who's a little bit younger than me, was more of the rebel that wanted to start his own cigar factory. So after William retired, they started making cigars together at Tobaccalera William Ventura and we met them through a mutual contact at Davidoff because, Robert's, this is the craziest thing ever In Miami, if you believe it or not, there was not a single person that was servicing hotels and golf courses with cigars.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 3:And whoever curated it at the time was doing a terrible job. So Rob had all these connections in the food and beverage industry and before he started, called Ball Cigars was a company called Hotel Humidor and he invented it. He was a real estate agent at the time but he forgot his cigars in the car, didn't want to get. The valet asked for the cigar menu and it was all. The cigars had bug holes and were dry. So he asked the food and beverage guy where do you get your cigars? And he said we just order them online. We don't even know. So he made up on the spot that he owned a cigar company. Come on, yeah, created it overnight and then, with a buddy of his that, did work at a cigar store and then he started servicing all the major hotels in Miami.
Speaker 2:Wow, talk about a lucky opportunity.
Speaker 1:It's a whole thing where you break the rules but you don't break the law.
Speaker 3:Exactly, but anyway. So he had a. So then he was on the radar with Davidoff, because Davidoff obviously wanted all their skeet, because he was in, like the Trump course, turnberry, ritz, Four Seasons, all these high-end properties, davidoff, that's where they want their stuff, of course. So they made him a special vice president position within three weeks of him opening his own company. And he was the only person authorized in the United States to authorize white label dealers, for example, to be a Davidoff white label dealer. There's certain criteria you have to hit to get to have white label Davidoffs. And then they created an exemption for people with liquor licenses to be a reserve account Okay, just for him, so that he could open up these high-end hotels in Miami and then New York with their product. Long story short, he had this position at Davidoff.
Speaker 3:He met William Ventura. We had dissolved our relationship with Christian. As Rob says, some marriages ended divorce, but we had dissolved the partnership with Christian and we went on on our own with the Ventura family. So, to answer your question, in a very long window play, we go down and we start with a base. For example, milo Barber Purple. I had this really special tobacco that Rob challenged me on and said you can't make a cigar out of this. It's called carbonyl. It was a brand in the 90s, during the boom, and they usually, when you grow tobacco, you in the second, because Dominican Republic has two growing seasons a year.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:Because it's right in the middle of the country and the world. So it yeah. I never, they never, ever winter. So, they don't. They can harvest twice a year. Okay, so usually what people do is they plant soy or corn in the second part of the growing season. There are plenty of minerals in the soil.
Speaker 2:Oh, got it.
Speaker 3:This family grows sugar beads, so it's a very floral and aromatic tobacco that nobody thought I could work with. And it's a very small farm and I was a very small brand at the time and it was a challenge to use it. So we started with that as a base and then I built a cigar around it.
Speaker 2:Youngstown people always up for a challenge. Somebody else says you can't be done, young. The people from Youngstown are like oh really, all right, go Hesty. I love that, though.
Speaker 1:There's an interesting thing. I was just at a conference, two people that came here to do some work and do some things. Okay, they have a phrase called Youngstown it this is really cool and Youngstown it means take over and do what needs to be done, be a leader, come on. Yeah, because they saw that when they were visited here and they worked here, they saw that Youngstown people are like they take, they do love it so wait, they go after things, so that's funny.
Speaker 2:Come on.
Speaker 3:I love it. I've never heard that before.
Speaker 2:Love it, okay, wow, so you took this leaf and I'm assuming that was your first cigar. Like you were able to work with it. Yeah, my first.
Speaker 3:My first cigar was the was the Barbara red and I blended that at the Windwood cigar factory.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 3:But it was with very limited resources, like I didn't really know what I was doing. And they said here you should put this together and blah, blah, blah, blah and that's the guy that put me on the map. But then I had to re blend that was originally done. I went to Honduras and did that, so it was originally made in Honduras. Wow. And then I had to take that blend because we had dissolved our relationship in Honduras. I had to take that blend and redo it in the Dominican Republic.
Speaker 2:Got it.
Speaker 3:Based off of what we did in Miami and Honduras. So my first real cigar was the purple. The first cigar I made was the red, but that was with very limited. That was like with kid gloves, if you will. They said this is what goes with. This is how you should do this. It's like my foray into the business. It was like they were mentoring me because you got to the cigar business is one where you have to. It's still very old school and I think that's why I get it, because I'm from Youngstown.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You got to kiss the ring or you. There's no, it's very hard buried entry in that it's so old school that they won't even give you the tobacco as you want or give you the things that you need unless you have a relationship with them. Like the cigar you're smoking now are William Venture, his personal blend, and he would not sell them to me, even though I've been doing business with them for ten years. Mm-hmm. He didn't want to release him to the American public because it was for him and his neighbors. So I went to his house, we had dinner, his wife cooked us food and then he has a Penchant for it's real weird he drinks Johnny Walker, black and sprite. So I just dropped a handle of Johnny Walker and a two liter of sprite and I said when we get done with that, you're gonna sell me that cigar.
Speaker 1:And he did what's interesting If you know the mystery of David off in the excellence they Demand okay, what happens if you screw up is interesting within that and you could do the research on that it's. You are excellent, you know what you're doing if you work, and he Attracted those kind of people. Wow that's saying something, and I mean he's being a little humble here, but he, those people would not work with him unless he knew what he was doing and okay, see, I did not know that.
Speaker 1:I was not familiar with that integrity work with, wow, that group of people Well.
Speaker 3:Davidoff. Davidoff is, ironically, our distributor in Europe. So yeah, they're, surprisingly, abl in Youngstown. They do all the cigarettes, and if you needed paper cups or cigarettes, they're called jobbers. Okay the old school term for it, davidoff's with the biggest one in Europe. I think they do three or four billion dollars a year in sales from like everything from candy to Cigarettes, to paper goods, napkins, towels, all that wow, Wow.
Speaker 2:So what a what a great connection to have. So did you go to school around here?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I went to.
Speaker 2:Canfield. You have to. Can't feel that, okay. Graduate of Canfield 2002. You travel all over the world.
Speaker 3:It sounds yeah, yeah, my first two years trying to sell cigars. I was traveling about 225 days a year.
Speaker 1:Wow, wow, that's a lot, that's commitment.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was. It was tough because it was all my. I spent 40 or $50,000 a year on travel, so it was everything that I was making I was putting back into American Airlines.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately, People listen to this program. Yeah, even older bit. When you want to do something, it takes time and effort and work. It doesn't. There's no easy way no and and what kept you inspired, what kept you going? Because you obviously weren't afraid to make mistakes. And learn. So what kept you going? What especially I think part of it might be your dad saying, oh, come on, this will never work. That had to get a motivator for you.
Speaker 3:It was one of the thing. There's two. I have two stories. The first story was told to me by a friend that owns a company called foundations cigars. He used to. He basically invented acid for Drew State. He worked for Drew State for 20 or so years but one of the the most memorable things was he Told me he was at a party For Saturday night.
Speaker 3:Live okay and he had gone backstage and this and that the other thing, and he walked out Into this other room where they do questionable things Okay, saturday night live is famous for questionable and he smelled a cigar and he walked over and he saw one of my cigars in the room.
Speaker 3:No, and that was like one of the things that kind of made me think about other people enjoying something I made, and that's really what's pushed me when I get, when people tell me oh, I smoked. Cigars are usually made for celebrations and once, if somebody sends me an Instagram message and said I got married this weekend, your cigar's the one I smoked for my marriage, or I had a baby and I smoked, that's, on a small level. What kept me going Other than that was just the relationships with my retailers and developing and building relationships with the people that buy my cigars, and I think that's an important thing in sales. I heard one time someone say that you shouldn't necessarily like your customers as much as your customers like you, and that's, I think, the key in sales. So I based my whole platform on that in making sure that I was giving the highest level experience and treatment to the people that were buying my cigars and their customers.
Speaker 2:Wow, wow. So what's your dad say now? I bet he's proud of you because he wasn't sure, but that's really cool that he encouraged you along. I hope you don't fuck with him. I saw I met them together the other day and it was so cool to see Tony talking and just to watch his dad step back and watch him.
Speaker 3:He's a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a little bit.
Speaker 3:He would never tell me that.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:It's that old school way.
Speaker 1:That was the way. Yeah, that's true. That's definitely true. That's incredible. So what advice? Number one talk about okay, people talk about your brands. Talk about where to get them. Talk about maybe some of the pairings you would suggest.
Speaker 3:Oh good, when I was originally going to be a lawyer. That's what I went to school for until I found wine. Once I got that itch, as an entrepreneur I have gone a little too crazy and I've overloaded myself because I have La Barba Cigars Lost and Found Cigars Bellotto Premium Cigars. I own Youngstown Coffee Company, I make a cava out of Spain called Viva La Vida, and then I own three Havana houses with my dad. So it's a lot. But once you get that itch I don't know it's you can't ever scratch it. I think, yeah, that's good. But so La Barba Cigars is my main line. That's something that's available in about 800 stores in the US and I think we're in six or seven countries. That was my main state brand. Most recently, because it was my 10th anniversary as a manufacturer and my dad's 50th as a retailer, we decided to do Bellotto Premium Cigars as an homage to the family business and what we've been doing. So you guys are smoking now. Those are very limited. The age on the tobaccos is 21 years old.
Speaker 3:on the filler and then the age for a year instead of eight weeks. But once they're gone they're so hard to make that once they're gone, they're gone until I can get them back. I think we did 500 of each size and then they probably won't be around again for another year once they're sold out.
Speaker 2:Wow, oh, that's kind of cool that's really cool, I know right, I feel so special, I feel honored.
Speaker 3:It's my pleasure.
Speaker 2:Okay, so one thing we have not mentioned on this too much about is the Young Sound Coffee Company, which I heard is now moving to its own location.
Speaker 3:Yeah, is that accurate? Yeah, we've. Just we didn't think we started with and that company is crazy. We started we were getting coffee from a local roaster and he actually sold me a billboard. That's how I met him. But he roasted coffee on the side and it was just a hobby for me and he asked if he could have our coffee business and I said, well, if you could match these certain things that I want, then absolutely and the quantity that we did. And so he did that for a while and then he's like a grateful dead hippie guy that just wanted to retire and drive his. He bought a Corvette and wanted to travel and follow the grateful debt with his wife.
Speaker 2:Come on, are you serious, yeah?
Speaker 3:He said I'm gonna be done. Do you wanna buy the business off of me? And I said let's talk numbers or whatever. So then he essentially sold it to me and then stayed on as a consultant for a year or so and trained us on this Turkish coffee roaster and it was a complete nightmare because everything's in metric and we had to convert everything and we had to learn Celsius, because it didn't have Fahrenheit on it. We had to learn all these things like what the roasting temperatures were and all this and it only did 10 pounds of coffee at a time.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:And then we found this kid in California that worked for oh I can't remember the name of the big expensive they're like 200, they're like the Ferrari of coffee roasters. They're like $200,000 for these coffee roasters. He worked for them and then he piqued my interest because he was about 30 and left the company to start his own company making the same quality roaster for 25% of the price. So I ran into him, developed a relationship with him and we bought the roaster we have. Now it does 75 pounds at a time and he you know the whole thing got shipped. Any questions we had he answered he's an awesome kid. But then we, and then I started.
Speaker 3:I'm a marketing guy too, so I designed all of our bags. But then ordering bags is just like ordering cigar bands you can't order a hundred, you gotta order 50,000. I have, I have coffee bags in this hallway, I have stuff in this hallway. I'm doing cake-ups now, so I have to order, you know, a hundred thousand boxes for those. So I have all the stuff scattered out throughout this store and so we've outgrown our space last year. Good problem, man.
Speaker 3:I know right Correct, so we're moving to the Plazon 224, across from the shops at Bourbon Park. Oh, good, okay, that's awesome we're not gonna have we're still not gonna have a retail frontage for that, it's just gonna be the roastery.
Speaker 1:Oh, got it Okay. One thing I wanna grab here before we're done is relationships. You obviously are proficient at forming relationships and building bonds and you probably don't even think about it. It's probably ingrained in who you are. But if I asked you just to think, when you start a relationship, what do you, what's important to you on from the other, from both sides? What do you look for? What do you work on to maintain and grow that relationship?
Speaker 3:So I absolutely love collaborating. It's my favorite thing, especially with local businesses. So I'm friends with Josh at Perkfish and Adam at Modern Methods and I think that if you're with a like-minded person just as us today like we've clicked no pun intended Love it. But if somebody has bright ideas and wants to collaborate and wants to work with me is who I like to work with, and I say that because I feel like in Youngstown the most important thing that we have is relationships and I grew up at country clubs.
Speaker 3:My dad's a scratch golfer so I was always like he would. Just my mom was a teacher, special education teacher. In the summers I would just get dropped off at the pool and I had to learn how to make friends number one and I grew up with that kind of mentality of how my dad did things. And my dad always had friends at the country club and that's how he did all this networking and that's who always shot the distor and we always try to support each other in the valley.
Speaker 3:So if we have a good customer or we have a good relationship with somebody, then that's who we're gonna do business with. We buy our cars from them, they buy coffee from us, we buy our insurance guy buys coffee or cigars from us, and that's how we like to collaborate and work together. And then I've done beers with birdfish and modern methods using my coffee, and then I sell the beer at the store and I support modern methods, and then they support Youngstown coffee by buying the coffee off me, and it's like this. That's how I think you know we're starting to get the big business back in Youngstown and the Voltage Valley, so to speak, and that's really good.
Speaker 3:It's gonna bring a lot of jobs. But I think that Youngstown, at its core, is about that kind of collaboration, because that's all we've had and been able to do for my entire life, is how I grew up here.
Speaker 1:So it's beyond when it's grow, we grow together.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's good, and that's how I, that's what I take on the road with me too, because I have a lot of cigar retail accounts that also have brands. I carry their brands, they carry my brands, I carry their coffee, they carry my coffee, so on and so forth. And I think that nationally we can bring that spirit, that kind of youngstown spirit, to other places, because a lot of places I've been to don't have that. A Dominican Republic has it and Miami has it, okay, but Texas doesn't, california definitely doesn't, neither does Washington and Oregon.
Speaker 3:Wow and If we can bring that collaborative spirit kind of back rising tide ships thing, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wonderful.
Speaker 1:We always do this little thing at the end here. We always call. We always call it work Rapid fire. So we ask you questions what's your, what's your favorite kind of beer? Hazy.
Speaker 3:IPA or a Pilsner?
Speaker 1:I'm a sucker for Miller Highlife a white or red wine, red, red, what any specific?
Speaker 3:Pinot Noir. I Was actually just in that, but I did a huge tour of Carneros.
Speaker 1:I was there two weeks ago actually chocolate, white, dark or as dark as it gets you know what.
Speaker 2:And that says a lot about personality, because there was a whole book. When I lived in New York City, I found this book and it's told about your personality based on your chocolate choices and everybody I asked about it. It was spot-on. I couldn't believe it. I've looked for that book.
Speaker 1:So what's dark chocolate?
Speaker 2:That's what I'm saying. I've looked for that book because it, but it was like certain person, personality, characteristics, mint, white, dark milk and your Variations, oh my. If I could find that book, oh, it'd be a blast.
Speaker 3:No, I'll eat. I'll eat raw a cow, but nibs just raw. Yeah, chocolate, chocolate, tobacco and coffee are all related.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I could see them and cocaine. Oh yeah, I had that at the end. I was about to say I like all of them and then, except for that one, have you ever had coke that's eating?
Speaker 3:No, so when I was Honduras, it was a, and Honduras it was a big thing. They salt first of all. They salt coca leaves and you chew on them, okay, but they make a coca tea and it's about the same. Gives you about the same energy without the jitteriness as coffee.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, look at the shakes from it. Oh, favorite P for pizza place in Youngston. I Live in champion now. So I'm I always fight with my buddy about Mahoning County versus Trumbull County. And when I grew up I lived, we lived in in Cornersburg, so Cornersburg and Wedgewood were our two pizzas. But I never really liked peppers so my dad would always get Cornersburg and I wouldn't like it, but then I. But then I started to like it right, but then Wedgewood was always my. Wedgewood salami pizza is my favorite.
Speaker 2:Okay, and last miracle. Wait, can I ask one miracle or mayonnaise?
Speaker 3:I hate both yeah. I just, I can't I just don't like the fact that it's just eggs. Favorite french fry, Favorite French food. Yes, Louver's concessions Okay wow, that's unexpected.
Speaker 3:Plug your brands one more time and where they get them and so my brands are La Barba cigars Lost and found cigars which is a whole different conversation Balado premium cigars, youngstown coffee company and Viva La Vida Cava, and these all have websites, right yeah, they have websites and they're all available at the Havana Havana house locations and we'll put those in the show notes. I would hope that my dad by my own cigars.
Speaker 1:I bought them, so I know he does.
Speaker 2:Viva La Vida Cava. Yeah, I love that name on the side now.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. Thank you, it's your time I.