Amighetti’s is a St. Louis landmark

In February, a familiar name in St. Louis bread baking and sandwiches returned to the Hill after a nearly four-year hiatus, restoring a legacy that began during the first World War. Amighetti’s opened its new Hill location in the former Hanneke Hardware & Industrial Supply Co. at 5390 Southwest Ave., less than a mile from the bakery’s former location at 5141 Wilson Ave.

“When I first told Marge that we were renovating the Hanneke building, she grabbed my arm and said, ‘Oh my gosh, that gives me chills,’” said Amighetti’s owner Anthony Favazza. He’s talking about Marge Amighetti, the widow of Louis “Junior” Amighetti and former co-owner of Amighetti’s. Marge is long retired but remains a trusted advisor and friend to Favazza. “She is very much alive and well in Shrewsbury,” Favazza said.

“Even today, she is such an ambitious, driven person and really remains our biggest cheerleader and our biggest fan,” he added. “She's still mentally sharp and grills me on how many slices of beef I'm getting to a pound, and what does a pound cost, and what am I charging for a sandwich? She knows all the numbers.”

Junior’s father, Louis (the Americanized version of Luigi, his birth name), founded Amighetti’s in 1916 at 5111 Daggett Ave. on the Hill, before moving the bakery to 5141 Wilson Ave. in 1921. Louis would bake bread in the early hours, then cross the street to deliver bread for the priests at that other pillar of Italian American life on the Hill, St. Ambrose Catholic Church, letting himself in using a key he was given by the church. Favazza now has that key, a gift to him from Marge Amighetti.

By the 1950s, the business was well established among the Hill’s top bakeries, with a long list of wholesale clients as well as retail customers. “They did some pastries and cakes and things, but really from the earliest days, they were very well known for bread,” Favazza said. Junior took over the business in the 1950s and was “a hell of a baker” according to Favazza. But it was his wife Marge’s invention that would define Amighetti’s next act.

In 1969, Marge decided Amighetti’s should sell sandwiches. Junior was skeptical, but the determined Marge spent eight months working out her recipe. She eventually arrived at a combination of roast beef, salami and ham layered on Amighetti’s bread with cheese, lettuce, pickle, tomato, onion, pepperoncini and what would become Amighetti’s signature sauce.

The Amighetti’s Special was a huge hit, and soon enough Amighetti’s was known as much for its sandwiches as its bread. Before Marge and Junior expanded into the adjacent space on the corner of Wilson and Marconi to add seating, customers would take their sandwiches over to eat them on the steps of St. Ambrose. “They had to start locking the church doors because everyone was coming inside the church and eating their sandwiches,” Favazza said.

Expansion came in the 1980s via a licensing agreement with Anheuser-Busch that allowed the brewing giant to open a series of Amighetti’s locations across the region, with Marge and Junior retaining control of the Hill location but selling worldwide rights to the brand as well as its recipes. The broader goal, Favazza said, was to go national, achieving what St. Louis Bread Co. would later do with Panera. A downtown location at Broadway and Chestnut Street had the capacity to bake bread for a planned 30 Amighetti’s branches in the St. Louis area; it got off to a blockbuster start during the Cardinals’ 1987 run to the World Series.

Downtown restaurants and bars, however, weren’t so keen. The way they saw it, they were selling gallons of Anheuser-Busch beer while the brewery was effectively cutting into their revenues. “Within about two weeks of opening, there was actually a boycott at about 20 local restaurants,” Favazza said. “Budweiser and Michelob disappeared from a big chunk of downtown St. Louis, and in came Miller and Coors.”

Anheuser-Busch soon decided to change course, selling their Amighetti’s locations to another company. Eventually, only two locations remained, the Hill location and a Rock Hill location. Favazza bought the Amighetti’s brand and the Rock Hill location in 2016. Three years later, the independently owned Hill location closed, with Favazza citing a licensing dispute between Amighetti’s and the owners of the shop on the Hill.

Favazza said he always planned to bring Amighetti’s back to the Hill, and that old regulars will be satisfied with what they find. “I think the core of what we're doing is true to the origins, and you definitely would recognize it compared to what it was even 50 years ago,” he said. Favazza said the response from customers and neighboring businesses has been “tremendous,” but bringing Amighetti’s sandwiches back to the neighborhood is just phase one of his mission. The next step is reestablishing the bakery operation, also in the Hanneke building. The footprint will be very reminiscent of the former location, with the retail bakery operating out of a separate entrance adjacent in the same building as the sandwich shop. For now, Amighetti’s is sourcing its bread from Fazio’s Bakery.

Favazza has made changes at Amighetti’s since taking the business over – for example, adding items like kale salads – but don’t all businesses need to move with the times? Amighetti’s is certainly a story of innovation and reinvention. Those “chills” Marge Amighetti felt when Favazza told her about the new location were a memory of an encounter she had at the Hanneke hardware store in the late 1960s when she was shopping for bowls to be used in her research for the Amighetti’s Special. “A rival baker from another bakery that is still in business and very well known in the neighborhood was in Hanneke when she was there,” Favazza said. Asked what she was doing buying so many bowls, Marge explained she was getting into the sandwich business.

Years later, Marge bumped into that bakery owner again. Taking Marge to one side, the baker said “I owe you an apology. We all made fun of you. We all laughed and said, ‘What a fool she is to get into the sandwich business. What does she know about sandwiches?’”

Ruefully, the baker told Marge, “Boy, I wish I had gotten into the sandwich business.”

5390 Southwest Ave., St. Louis, 314.843.4455, amighettis.com