Our community supports us, and Gambino’s loves supporting it back

For decades, our community has given Gambino’s Bakery so much support. We love being able to give back to the community as much as possible.

Our community has always been a top priority at Gambino’s Bakery. Yes, of course that means baking the best pastries, cookies, and cakes possible to help make our customers’ special moments a little more memorable. But it also means serving the people of Louisiana and supporting the causes we care most about.

“These are our neighbors,” said Sam Scelfo, whose family has owned Gambino’s Bakery for more than four decades. “We are a part of the communities we serve, and so if we have an opportunity to make our community better in some way, we are going to do it.”

Looking through old newspaper articles, we were proud to find many-dozens of examples of philanthropy by our bakery’s leadership over the past 75 years. Even before the Scelfo’s took charge.

Supporting our neighbors with physical handicaps and health challenges has always been important to us. This blog post about our work with Bryan Thomas, the boy with a “bad heart” is just one example.

We also found this article in the April 5, 1973 edition of the Times-Picayune about how the State of Louisiana was honoring five businesses for their work hiring  and training handicapped employees. One paragraph read as follows:

“Five businesses were recognized by the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation of the State Department of Education as affording the handicapped an opportunity to prove ability counts.”

Gambino’s Bakery, along with Perrin’s House of Seafood in Marrero, Grants Store in Chalmette, St. Joseph and Mary Residences for the Elderly in New Orleans, and Anthony Abraham Builders in Marrero were all honored for their dedication to working with employees with some form of physical disability. 

There are also tons of examples of times where we donated cakes and other refreshments for events for these types of organizations. For example, we’ve proudly donated our products to the March of Dimes famous walk on numerous occasions.

Another example, from October of 1983, came when a special education school on the West Bank named “Percy Julian School” organized a one-mile “mini marathon” for its students. The event brought together all 155 of the school’s students, including about 20 in wheelchairs, alongside parents, school staff, and University of New Orleans faculty members. We were there, too, providing a cake for post-race festivities.

“It’s superb exercise for our students,” principal Pat Brothers explained to the Times-Picayune. She said the idea of the event was to show special education students and their families that exercising such as jogging or walking was possible for them.

Over the years, we’ve taken part in a variety of causes in which we believed.

When the Cabildo in Jackson Square was damaged by a devastating fire in 1988 due to a wire caused by a welder’s torch, we were there to support the rehabilitation effort — both as a fundraising event sponsor and as the bakers of a Cabildo replica cake! When the Society of St. Vincent de Paul wanted to provide Christmas gifts to 400 needy children in Baton Rouge, we were there, too. And when the Bloom ‘N Art gala sought to support the Hospice Foundation of Greater Baton Rouge, we were thrilled to provide dessert. From children to education and art to cultural cornerstones, we jump at the opportunity to back our state’s great causes.

One of our favorites is providing baking space to the New Orleanians that create many of the beautiful St. Joseph’s Day altars each March. The elaborate displays are filled with cakes, cookies, pasta, breads, and more. The more intricate the altar, the more necessary it is to find a cooking space. 

For years, we partnered with the Greater New Orleans Italian Cultural Society on their altar. In 1995, for example, dozens of women came to our kitchen to make more than 2,000 fig rolls to be placed on the region’s largest St. Joseph’s Day display.

It’s a cause that is near and dear to our heart, like so many others. In a future article we’ll talk about another one of our other favorites, the wildly popular Italian Open golf tournament. Gambino’s had close ties to the tournament helping to raise quite a bit for charity.

“We’ve always been proud to support the causes that are meaningful to us and to our city and state,” Scelfo said. “That’s not going to stop anytime soon.”