Community Corner
Growing Up in El Cerrito's Family Grocery, Italian-style
Nicolo Bolla enjoys working for the family business, Giovanni's, though he plans to go to Italy this summer.
Name: Nicolo Bolla
Occupation: Employee at Giovanni’s
“Employee, student — I have another job in Novato: I take care of people with developmental disabilities. I’m busy!”
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You have two jobs and you’re going to school? Yeah.
What are you going to school for? At DVC (Diablo Valley College) right now, for psychology. I’m just there to get in and get out.
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What do you want to do as a career? I want to work — over in Italy, my whole family worked in mental institutions — something like that with the state maybe.
What has been your experience working for your dad at Giovanni’s? I’ve been here since I was born, first it was my grandfather, who I was named after. He started the store in 1987. I grew up coming here, learning about the different fruits: it was talking around the table, what’s going on down at the store, that kind of thing. Coming up, six, seven, eight years old, over the summer coming in and sweeping up, cleaning up, things like that. Gradually more things — unloading the truck in the morning, going to the big produce market in Oakland.
Just recently I’ve had enough free time to become full-time. I’m just learning the business. A lot of our customers are parishioners from St. John’s. I know them. I went to school around the corner from here. It’s nice to be a part of it. It’s my family.
Are you going to miss it when you go to Italy someday? I’ll be in Italy in June. My family from Italy was here last week. They just went back. It’s really nice to have them as my family, and our customers are so great. It’s nice to have a little community, because there’s not too many stores like this left anymore. My family has known a lot of these people for 50, 60 years.
Whatever I want to do, if that doesn’t work out or I change my mind, I always have this to fall back on and that’s nice.
You could be the third generation. Yeah. My great-grandparents had a farm not to far from here, back when there were farms (here), they were into produce — it’s been in my family for a long time.
What do you do for fun when you have free time? This is my fun. This is fun. I like to take little weekend trips here and there. I can’t tell you what I like to do for fun (laughs).