Local food products, talent can spawn national industry

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Daniele Inc. co-owner Davide Dukcevich said “incubator kitchens” could allow innovative food ideas to flourish in Rhode Island. / COURTESY DAVIDE DUKCEVICH
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Daniele Inc. co-owner Davide Dukcevich said “incubator kitchens” could allow innovative food ideas to flourish in Rhode Island. / COURTESY DAVIDE DUKCEVICH

As a young man, Davide Dukcevich wasn’t interested in making cured and processed pork products as his father and grandfather had and followed his own path into business journalism. But after years profiling companies, Dukcevich decided he could have a greater impact helping run one himself.
After returning to Daniele Inc. in Burrillville, Dukcevich realized the storytelling skills he learned as a reporter are now essential to building the narrative of his third-generation prosciutto and sausage-making company in today’s gourmet food market. Recently Daniele launched a local line of products featuring meat raised in Rhode Island and the company’s local prosciutto and mortadella were recently honored by Good Food Awards in a blind taste test in California.
Daniele is currently in the midst of a $60 million expansion. Dukcevich believes Rhode Island can use its reputation and resources as a foodie hub to become the “Silicon Valley of food.”

PBN: What is the latest with Daniele’s expansion project?
DUKCEVICH: We started the expansion last year and it is such a giant project it will not be completed until the fall. We have the shell in place and are slowly progressing. It is going to be the most sophisticated charcuterie factory in the world. It will be incredibly modern and all white, like the first scene in Star Wars where you see Darth Vader.

PBN: Is the expansion focused on volume or expanding product lines?
DUKCEVICH: In general, volume. The story in the U.S. is really interesting. When my dad got here in 1976, the foodie culture didn’t exist and the seeds of it were just starting to germinate. When my dad got here he anticipated the gourmet-food tidal wave that washed over the country. The Food Network is a huge benefit to us, because people see all this stuff on TV. But in general, as late as the 1980s in New England, the deli counters would just have baloney. Now the delis are the cornerstone of most modern supermarkets.

PBN: How has Daniele changed as a result of that?
DUKCEVICH: Because we are a family business we have been very conservative and grown only when the market could sustain growth. As we grew and products traveled to new markets, such as Asia, we felt this need to engage with our neighbors, with Rhode Island. At the beginning my dad would drive down to Brooklyn and the North End [of Boston] to do demos. We wanted to get back to that because it is essential to keep it real. When we launched the local line a couple of years ago, we met with local farmers in Rhode Island and Massachusetts and started buying pigs from them. The hogs they have provided have been the very highest quality and it is great to go to the farm and see how the hog is raised. Then we had Rhode Island School of Design students draw the packaging and took it to farmers markets. The whole idea of having this line be a product of the community, that was the most fulfilling thing I have done.

PBN: You’ve talked about Rhode Island becoming the Silicon Valley of food. What would that actually involve and look like?
DUKCEVICH: One of the things that inspires me about Rhode Island, at least in the food business, is it is still a «constant ****SSLq»do it yourself’ state. Say you went to Johnson & Wales [University] and have an idea, you can give that idea a shot. Costs are still low compared to New York and one great restaurant or product can improve the entire city and state. One person here can make more of an impact than Boston or New York. When you look at Silicon Valley, it has Stanford. Here we have Johnson & Wales, which is in my opinion the top-flight culinary school in the U.S. It seems to me JWU graduates have contributed to the economy already with restaurants and if we could capture that in a more sophisticated way, that would be one of the best things for the state. What I have in mind specifically are incubator kitchens. You see these sprouting up around the country, where if someone has an idea, they could bring it to farmers markets and if it takes off, they could scale it up. I think something like that would be great. We already have the ingredients we need to foster innovation here.

PBN: When you get into food manufacturing like Daniele, is there a tension between the local and artisanal production and scalability?
DUKCEVICH: With this local line I find nothing but support and the best support has been from local producers who want to leverage the Rhode Island brand and have it communicate high quality, like how Vermont does with honey or butter. One of the things we are careful about is, when we grow, the quality is still intact. It is funny, with new technology our volume will increase and quality will increase. We are in Pascoag where the air is clean. Even though the expansion will quadruple production, we will have ventilators that will ventilate and cycle in clean, county air. … Charcuterie is all about the air. You can’t do it in a polluted place.

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PBN: What is your favorite pork product?
DUKCEVICH: It evolves. Last year I was crazy about mortadella with pistachios. Then when the first local prosciuttos came out, that became my favorite. But I ate a salami my brother made last night and that was one of the best things we have made. My brother is the mad genius of the company and he is developing the things I love. •INTERVIEW
Davide Dukcevich
POSITION: Co-owner Daniele Inc.
BACKGROUND: Born into a family charcuterie business, Dukcevich decided to become a journalist out of college instead. After years of writing about businesses at Forbes, Dukcevich came back to Daniele Inc.
EDUCATION: Bachelor’s in history from Tufts University, 1996; master’s in journalism from Northwestern University, 1998
FIRST JOB: Packaging salami at Daniele
RESIDENCE: Providence
AGE: 39

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