The Worcester-based company famous for its 4-inch pies is opening a retail storefront later this month in the city’s Canal District.
Table Talk Pies will open its store on 153 Green St., attached to its factory, sometime this month.
Harry Kokkinis, president of Table Talk Pies, said the store will primarily serve pies overrun from production. Customers will be able to come in and have a cup of coffee with their favorite 4-inch or 8-inch pie.
By Alban Murtishi, MassLive.com
on September 07, 2016 at 12:00 PM
The Worcester-based company famous for its 4-inch pies is opening a retail storefront later this month in the city’s Canal District.
Table Talk Pies will open its store on 153 Green St., attached to its factory, sometime this month.
Harry Kokkinis, president of Table Talk Pies, said the store will primarily serve pies overrun from production. Customers will be able to come in and have a cup of coffee with their favorite 4-inch or 8-inch pie.
For long-time Table Talk Pie customers, this set up should not sound unfamiliar. Kokkinis said the original Table Talk Pies location, which opened around 1944, was the perfect place for coffee and pie, until the entire Table Talk brand was closed down in 1984 by the then-corporate owners. Kukkinis’ father bought the brand back and relaunched it shortly after.
WNT Table Talk Pies Expanding – September 21st, 2016
By Alban Murtishi, MassLive.com
on October 20, 2016 at 2:44 PM, updated October 20, 2016 at 3:17 PM
WORCESTER — A project 22 years, six months and some days in the making, the city of Worcester has finally sold all of the parcels available in what was once a South Worcester industrial wasteland.
“SWIP is done,” City Manager Edward Augustus Jr. said.
Chacharone Properties, Advanced Machinery and Table Talk Pies have finalized deals to develop six parcels of land equivalent to about 95,000 square feet of new construction. The entire South Worcester Industrial Park is more than 200,000 square feet of land.
ADVERTISING
inRead invented by Teads
James Chacharone, president of Chacharone Properties, announced at a groundbreaking for Table Talk Pies that he wants to construct a manufacturing building about 7,500 square feet on spec which he hopes to fill with an industrial tenant. Chacharone’s purchase was the last remaining parcel in the industrial park area.
Chacharone’s company is also building Table Talk Pies’ new, 50,000 square foot manufacturing plant, which will open in approximately six months.
By Aaron Nicodemus
Telegram & Gazette Staff
WORCESTER — In six months or so, Table Talk Pies will have a new, modern manufacturing building in South Worcester.
Table Talk, which currently bakes 2 million 4-inch snack pies and 400,000 regular sized pies per week at its facility in Kelley Square, will occupy a new 50,000-square foot facility being built by a Worcester development firm, Chacharone Properties. Once built, the facility will employ 80 workers and crank out thousands of pies an hour.
“My only regret is that my father and grandfather can’t be here to witness this great day,” said Table Talk Pies owner Harry Kokkinis, who represents the third generation of his family to run the company. “Not only are we able to build the type of building that Table Talk needs to expand, but it’s also in the place we want to be. … Worcester is so important to us, it has given us so much.”
Table Talk was founded in 1924 by Greek immigrants Theodore Tonna, Mr. Kokkinis’ grandfather, and Angelo Cotsidas. After being sold in 1965 to Beechnut, the company changed hands several times before closing down in 1984. In 1986, Mr. Tonna’s son-in-law, Christo Cocaine (whose name had changed from the original Kokkinis) reopened Table Talk, focusing on selling snack pies to grocers and convenience stores. In 2016, the business is expected to earn nearly $100 million in sales, with 300 full-time and seasonal employees.
And now, Table Talk Pies will be able to keep growing in the city in which it was born.
BY SAM BONACCI
10/20/2016
Harry Kokkinis, president of Table Talk Pies, said it was important to have this new Table Talk facility located in Worcester.
Table Talk Pies broke ground on a new manufacturing site in Worcester that will produce 1 million pies a week once it comes online.
The groundbreaking took place at the South Worcester Industrial Park on Thursday morning and was attended by numerous city officials, representatives of Table Talk as well as James Chacharone, founder of Worcester-based Chacharone Properties that is developing the site.
The Table Talk project covers the construction of a 50,000-square-foot modern industrial building set to be completed in approximately six months. The site will bring 30 jobs from the company’s existing facility on Water Street and create an additional 50 full-time jobs.
Table Talk Pies is a family business that was established in 1924. Harry Kokkinis, president of Table Talk Pies, said that the company spent four months looking for a proper site for the expanded manufacturing capacity and could not find an existing structure in Worcester.
The property’s construction is being handled by RP Masiello Inc. of Boylston, which has worked on eight other projects with Chacharone Properties.
By Peter S. Cohan
Over a hundred years ago, a sheep rustler in northern Greece killed a shepherd. Absent that tragedy, local pie maker Table Talk might not exist today.
As Table Talk CEO Harry Kokkinis explained in a September 27 interview, a sheep rustler killed his great grandfather in Macedonia – which was then part of Turkey and was home to Serbians, Romanians, Albanians and other groups. In 1912, Mr. Kokkinis’s grandfather immigrated to America to find a job so he could feed his family in Macedonia. Today Mr. Kokkinis – after significant ups and downs over the intervening years – leads the now nearly-$100 million (estimated 2016 revenues) pie empire that his grandfather co-founded back in 1924.
Theodore Tonna – Mr. Kokkinis’s grandfather – and Angelo Cotsidas met and worked at a bakery in Worcester. Before that Mr. Tonna was working at a bakery in Woonsocket, R.I.
The company started as a bread bakery. “Mr. Tonna had recently moved to Worcester, because there was a larger Greek population and a better market for bread and pastry. The owner at the bakery they were both working at was looking to sell and move back to Greece. They saw this as the perfect opportunity to open their own bakery – on Clayton Street, which is now underneath Route 290 near Belmont Street. They financed the bakery with money they had set aside due to their hard work. Their bread was very popular with the locals, so they wanted to expand into pies because they felt pies represented America and everyone loves pie. They were trying to come up with a name for the company based on my grandfather’s initials – TT – and agreed to call it Table Talk,” said Mr. Kokkinis.
Table Talk’s first customers were the local bakeries and grocers that were already buying their bread. The pies were sold in the store front and also out of the back of a truck. As Mr. Kokkinis explained, “They believed quality was their most important product. Mr. Tonna would say, ‘Pies have to be made with romance.’”
One of the challenges with a family business is what to do when the founders retire. Table Talk could not find a successor among the three founding families, so it sold the company in 1965 to Beechnut, a maker of baby food and other products, for $15 million to $20 million – a price that Mr. Kokkinis said was reported by the Telegram & Gazette. At the time, Table Talk was “the largest pie bakery in the country at the time with over 400 employees,” he said.
The main protagonist of the next part of the story was Mr. Tonna’s son-in-law, Christos Cocaine. Mr. Cocaine’s last name was changed from Kokkinis – which understandably raises questions in the minds of people who hear or read it for the first time.
From here, Table Talk headed downward. “Mr. Cocaine continued to work at the bakery even after it was sold until 1970. Beechnut was subsequently bought by Squibb, and Mr. Cocaine left in 1977. Squibb decided to sell it to Texas General, a leveraged buyout firm which pretty much ran the business into the ground. Its doors closed in 1984,” he said.
But at that point, the Table Talk story took a much better turn. “In 1985, Mr. Cocaine bought back the bakery, the building and the name – financed by a bank loan and a mortgage on the building – and built the business back up on our four-inch snack pies. In 1986, he reopened Table Talk – deciding to focus on the snack pies, because some of Table Talk’s restaurant customers – diners and luncheonettes – were going out of business as the fast food industry was becoming more popular. Table Talk sold the snack pies to grocers and convenience stores.”
Mr. Kokkinis came to work at Table Talk with his father in 2003, and took on the chief executive officer role after his father passed away in February 2015.
“In a few short years there were over 100 employees and we had over $30 million in sales. Since 2008 we have enjoyed great growth thanks to new products including eight inch pies and frozen private-label pies. Today we have over 300 full time and seasonal employees and sold over 100 million four inch pies in 2015 all over the United States. Our 2016 sales are trending towards $100 million,” Mr. Kokkinis explained.
Table Talk is investing in its local brand – planning to open a retail store that sells pies, on Green Street in October.
A story that started with a Greek tragedy a century ago has had a happy ending in Worcester.
By Nick Kotsopoulos
Telegram & Gazette Staff
WORCESTER – The City Council Economic Development Committee Tuesday night endorsed a pair of tax-relief deals to facilitate the private redevelopment of three city-owned parcels in the South Worcester Industrial Park, including construction of a 50,000-square-foot industrial building for Table Talk Pies.
By a unanimous vote, the three-member committee approved a tax-increment financing deal for the redevelopment of parcels at 25 Southgate St. and 17 Southgate Place, which is where the $4.6 million Table Talk building will be constructed.
Table Talk will lease the building from the developer, Chacharone Properties LLC.
The committee also approved a so-called TIF agreement for a parcel at 65 Armory St., where the developer plans to construct an 8,000-square-foot building that will be marketed for lease.
Chacharone Properties is acquiring all three parcels from the city.
Approval of the tax-relief deals is considered key to the redevelopment of the properties. The committee’s recommendations will next go before the entire City Council for final approval.
