Vince Valenza — Blues City Deli

**Vince Valenza** (0:00)
I had a quadruple bypass in 2024 So on my way back from the hospital, I told my wife, I'm like, we've got to go on multiple little vacations and bring the kids, you know?

**Lauren Healey** (0:12)
Yeah.

**Vince Valenza** (0:12)
So that's what we did.

**Lauren Healey** (0:15)
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Hello, welcome to The Sauce Podcast. I'm your host, Lauren, and I am here with the owner of Blues City Deli over in Benton Park. This is Vince Valenza. And Vince, Blues City Deli is just such a hotspot over there and for the city as a whole. Can you kind of just tell us about your business?

**Vince Valenza** (1:03)
Well, we've been around 22 years and it's just chugging right along. We've been serving a lot of people and enjoying ourselves ever since day one.

**Lauren Healey** (1:14)
What do you think makes it so popular?

**Vince Valenza** (1:17)
Well, the food, hopefully. That's the main thing and hopefully the friendliness and the consistency of the product.
And we have a great front of the house team that tries to make people feel at home. So, yeah, it's fantastic.

**Lauren Healey** (1:35)
I know when we did that article, the landmark article a few months ago, I mean, it just blew up. People love that spot.

**Vince Valenza** (1:42)
Right.

**Lauren Healey** (1:43)
So, but I know you didn't necessarily intend to open as just a sandwich shop, your original vision. So kind of walk us through how that evolved.

**Vince Valenza** (1:52)
Oh, yeah, it was, we didn't know for sure. We knew we were going to have some sandwiches and we knew, we didn't know, we thought we would offer some product, like almost like a market type thing and sort of like an Italian market, like meat by the pound and salami prosciutto, different cheeses. And it didn't take long for the community to just say, this is what you're going to do. You're going to be a sandwich shop. So it just evolved pretty quickly.

**Lauren Healey** (2:24)
Okay. And what did you do before this?

**Vince Valenza** (2:27)
Oh, a variety of things. I worked. I was a laborer for years. And my heritage, Sicilian heritage, we did a lot of food, a lot of food. So I was interested in it and toyed around with opening like an Italian type cafe type thing. And then a friend of mine had a place up in North County called Fratelli's.
And they're now in St. Charles. And back in the day, it was in probably 1985, he said, why don't you come here and maybe help us out?
And then right as soon as that happened, that was it. I fell in love with it.

**Lauren Healey** (3:10)
That's really cool. Now, I just feel like it's so tough for restaurants right now, and it's getting harder, but you guys just seem to be chugging along over there. So what is setting you apart from all of these restaurants that are having to close their doors?

**Vince Valenza** (3:27)
I hate to hear that. People shutting down. It's very sad. And it's been a blessing for us to still be here, especially maneuvering during COVID and whatnot.
We just try to be consistent and don't try to take on too much at once, and try to offer a good line of core products and maybe have a little innovation in there in between. And so the people know what they're getting when they come in the door.

**Lauren Healey** (3:54)
Yeah.

**Vince Valenza** (3:55)
So we have some surprises once in a while.

**Lauren Healey** (3:57)
Yeah. Okay. Well, let's talk about your core menu. Like, what are the most popular items there?

**Vince Valenza** (4:03)
Every, if you break it down, we have like Delicious Italian and in that area, the Italian sandwiches, we have about four or five different ones. The Muffalata is sort of what we built our reputation on, even though we don't sell a lot of those.
But consistently, every day, we sell some and so that one, I have to say it is because there's not a whole lot of places in St. Louis serving Muffalatas.

**Lauren Healey** (4:30)
Okay.

**Vince Valenza** (4:30)
And we've brought in some new stuff. The Sally's Spicy Italian is just really taken off. It has prosciutto and capicola, fresh mozzarella, it's got balsamic glaze and extra virgin olive oil and all the good stuff.