Client Profile

Strega Restaurant and Lounge
Salem, Massachusetts
www.stregasalem.com

MSBDC clients often learn a portfolio of skills from their MSBDC counselors. Linda Cappuccio’s experience with the MSBDC has been more focused. “Focused but absolutely critical. I simply would not have launched my restaurant without strategic advice from MSBDC’s [former counselor] Jim Roll,” insists the owner of Strega Restaurant and Lounge in Salem. Still in its first year, Strega—Italian for witch—features contemporary Italian cuisine with a French twist in an upscale atmosphere that is equal parts Manhattan and Salem. To date, Strega has received kudos from The Boston Globe, North Shore Sunday, and The Salem Evening News, “It is certainly one of Salem’s top restaurants; it’s got a real New York feel; at the same time it pays homage to Salem and has done great things for the Lafayette Street neighborhood,” remarks Roll.

Before 2001, Cappuccio was gainfully ensconced in Manhattan and corporate America, a fifteen-year veteran of Nortel and other communications firms. She had extensive experience in national sales, global account management, and direct services to customers, including clients in the hospitality, media and entertainment industries. Then, the IP technology bubble broke and Cappuccio left the employ of Global Crossing, one of the great business fiascos of the era. Out of a job, Cappuccio encountered tight employment markets in her field along with the disruption and dislocation from 9/11. (She had been at work at Wall Street Plaza on September 11.) “In a matter of months, I vowed to create a situation where I’d never get laid off, I’d never get stuck like that again,” she emphasizes.

Spending increasing time in her home town, Salem, Cappuccio decided that the city’s commercial real estate market might offer her an opportunity for self-reliance and economic success. “The property that I now own had been on the market for six years. The downstairs had been an old beauty supply store; the second floor, which includes a large ballroom, had once been Salem’s French social club,” Cappuccio recalls. “I bought the building with loans from a local bank, as well as my own savings, with plans to redo the first floor to attract a restaurant-tenant.” After interviewing potential tenants and coming up short each time, Cappuccio, undeterred, decided that she would run a restaurant herself. “I wanted it to offer quality dining and to reflect the city’s heritage. Some things you have to do yourself.”

Seeking funding for the restaurant, Cappuccio brought her business plan to Danvers Savings Bank, which promptly referred her to MSBDC’s Jim Roll at Salem State College. “Jim immediately spotted an opportunity. We would refinance my ownership in the building with Danvers (another bank had held the mortgage), leveraging that equity in a package with an SBA-secured business-restaurant loan, also with Danvers. Because I came to the table with that property equity, the bank was able to give me two dollars on every dollar. Jim knew all the formulas and how and where to integrate them into my business plan. The bottom line is, I couldn’t have launched the restaurant without his advice.”

With her new loans, Cappuccio moved ahead with completion of her property’s first floor infrastructure, interior, and stylish new façade. She hired a hospitality consultant to help with the restaurant’s name and logo. And she hired a Johnson & Wales-trained chef that she characterizes as “one of the best.” The restaurant’s grand opening on August 7, 2003 was at the height of Salem’s tourist season (if you exclude the witch-frenzied days of October), but Cappuccio’s strategy focuses on a year-round clientele in a ten-mile radius from her business. For her, the tourist crowd is whipped cream on the cannoli.

“My revenues are slightly ahead of the conservative numbers that Jim and I wrote into the business plan. As far as I’m concerned, I’m on track,” Cappuccio affirms. “Linda has become an anchor in the renovation of Lafayette Street,” observes Roll. “There’s a new bank just across the street as well as a project to develop fifty condos. Linda’s probably too modest to admit it, but she’s returned to her hometown and done exceptional things for the community.”