How the love of pie and family brought Table Talk back from extinction – Masslive
By Noah R. Bombard | nbombard@masslive.com
When Table Talk Pies owner Harry Kokkinis was just 3 or 4 years old, his father took him one weekend to the family factory in Worcester’s Kelley Square. There, in an office, Kokkinis’ grandfather, Greek immigrant and company founder Theodore Tonna, and his business partner Angelo Cotsidas would often have a sampling of pies from the day’s production.
“They had a pumpkin pie there and I still remember them offering me a piece,” Kokkinis recalls.
He quickly gobbled it up.
“They said, ‘Oh, you like it that much? Have another piece.'”
He had another piece. And then another.
“All of a sudden my father turned around and said, ‘You ate the whole thing!'”
It was Kokkinis’ first piece of a much bigger pie that he would one day inherit — a multi-million dollar family business that today produces a whopping 3.6 million pies a week and employs more than 300 people between its Canal District production plant in Worcester and another location it recently opened in Shrewsbury. The company also just announced plans to build an additional production plant in the long-vacant South Worcester Industrial Park where it will hire 50 more employees. It is opening a retail store on Green Street — the first Table Talk retail store in more than 20 years.
