Inside Business

Growing up on the rougher side of Brooklyn, John Felico learned to improvise.

His father's Italian sausage business, Dominic's of New York^®, seemed as good a place as any to work when Felico graduated from Grover Cleveland High School in the mid-1980s.

Felico, opened his own sausage stand in an industrial section of Queens and soon found himself a nice little niche. While his father spent his time pushing spicy pork at mostly street fairs and festivals, Felico went commercial.

"I started looking for other ways to become something special," says Felico, now president of FoodNet Inc., the operating arm of Dominic's of New York^®. "I started trying more and more things."

By March of 1995, Felico had worked out an arrangement with Lowe's home improvement stores to place one of his sausage stands at the Lowe's on West Broad Street. Overcoming obstacles such as Lowe's insistence of month-by-month leases and numerous health code requirements, Felico was forced to wriggle out of several potentially disastrous situations in the early going.

And Felico, Who once had Howard Stern endorse his sausages and Philly cheese steaks, now has a deal with Ukrop's Supermarkets to sell his signature sausages on its grocery shelves. What's more, Felico was nominated for the Virginia Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Not forgetting his roots, however, Felico has also been giving back. He spends a considerable amount of time with the Virginia Home for Boys, and has done a lot of speaking at Richmond area hospitals and universities. Felico has also helped with fundraising efforts for the Richmond Children's Hospital, Benedictine School, the Richmond Jaycees, the Science Museum of Virginia and the YMCA.