The Oxford Depot shopping center on Route 67 may seem like your average retail center in a long stretch of shopping centers.
But to Jeff Labrador, 28, of Watertown, and Santos Machado, 30, of Waterbury, owners of the new franchise Nardelli’s Grinder Shoppe located in the shopping center at 84 Oxford Road, it is something extraordinary.
“This is the gateway to southern Connecticut,” Labrador said on a recent Monday morning while preparing his kitchen for the frenetic dance called the lunchtime rush.
Nardelli’s is well-known in the Waterbury area, where it began in 1922 — but its six franchise locations are out of the grasp of much of southern Connecticut, including the lower Valley.
The Oxford location changes that.
The company was looking to spread out into southern Connecticut more and the Oxford location was available and looked right, Machado said.
They just opened earlier this month, quietly, without so much as a bouquet of balloons. But customers immediately noticed and have rewarded them with bustling lines at lunchtime, waiting for grinders.
“We did no advertising, but we had word of mouth,” said Labrador, who has a degree in marketing from the University of Connecticut.
He worked as a information technology specialist for a corporation before this, and was anxious to be his own boss.
The partners have no fear that the Valley will be a place of failure for them, as it was for the previous sandwich shop at his storefront, Quizno’s.
Quizno’s had two locations in the Valley, in Derby and in Oxford, and closed at both locations about a year ago.
“I have complete confidence in Nardelli’s,” said Machado, who said he began working for the company when he was 15, in Waterbury.
The company’s hallmarks are customer service, quality, and “giving a lot of meat,” as he put it.
“We make sure we are giving enough to make you satisfied,” Machado said of the quantity of meat on the Nardelli’s grinders.
Nardelli’s has two shops in Waterbury, one in Naugatuck, and others in Danbury, Southbury and Middletown.
Prices are generally around $7.79 for a grinder — more than the $5 specials at competing Subway shops, but the partners say there is far more meat on the roll at their price.
In addition to grinders, which are sold whole, half or wrap-style, Nardelli’s sells a variety of salads, including fresh mozzarella and tomato salad, which was being prepared while the Valley Indy visited the shop.
There are also green salads, desserts including cheesecake burritos, a soup of the day, a children’s menu at $4.99 per item, and a dozen hot grinders including the classic meatball as well as chicken cutlet, eggplant parmigiania, baked stuffed pastrami, and garlic chicken.
The chicken and bacon grinder is what drew customer Andrew Smith, 21, of Seymour.
“It seems fresher,” he said of the food he gets there. “They have more original stuff (compared to other delis).”
Click here to visit Nardelli’s on the web.
The local phone number is 203 – 888-2800.
