Trouble spotting - Industry Spotlight - restaurant industry

Art Culinaire, Summer, 2002

How do you keep your whites "white"? This is not a commercial for bleach, no sir! Instead, it is an inside scoop on how the top chefs keep looking their best. UN Piece Cleaners is one of the best-kept secrets in the New York restaurant world--or dry-cleaning world, for that matter.

Business partners, Robert D'Andrea and Troy Ocasio are the brains behind the stains of a very dirty business. Childhood friends, they had an early start in the dry-cleaning business. In high school, they began working for Ocasio's mother, who ran a tailor/valet service in a Manhattan residential building. D'Andrea left to study chemical engineering at Brooklyn Polytechnic, and Ocasio stayed in the family business, eventually opening his own storefront. Eventually, they met up again and shortly thereafter; they joined forces and formed a partnership.

It is nearly impossible to avoid soil, splatter and sweat in the worst degree when working in the kitchen. Food can leave some of the most impossible stains imaginable. Add that to the fact that uniforms are white. How then, can cooks manage to stay clean? Good work habits, yes, but for anyone working in a kitchen, getting dirty is inevitable.

Everyone wants to look sharp, but the UN Piece Cleaners handles top brass. The "celebrity" client list does not include movie stars, but rather stars of the Wednesday NY Times food section and the darlings of Zagat. In alphabetical order, some of UN Piece Cleaners top clientele are Daniel Boulud of Daniel (and the spinoff restaurants); Ed Brown of the Sea Grill; Harold Moore of Montrachet; Rocco DiSpirito of Union Pacific; and the wait staff of Alain Ducasse at the Essex House. They all look great, thanks to a couple of Mr. Cleans.

With the high profiles and public relations, chefs today are the new celebrities, the new beautiful people. The public wants to know them; they have fans, write books, and give autographs. Walking through the dining room with clean jackets makes chefs always look pristine and cool. Everything has got to be under control if the jacket is clean. The public demands it, and these folks have got an image to keep. Stark, clean and cool... that's the look; now you know where to go and get it.

Q: You went to school to study chemical engineering. Why did you leave that field?

A: When I graduated, the job market was terrible for engineering. Most of the openings were in Saudi Arabia. I was actually interviewing at the time when I met up with Troy again. I started helping him out, and we became partners.

Q: Is that when you purchased the shop on First Avenue?

A: No, we were working as valets at that point, making pick-ups and drop-offs. We opened the First Avenue location in '94 because our valet business was expanding and we needed to do our own work. Originally, the cleaning was sent out to wholesalers. But, as we expanded, we needed to have better control.

Q: When you started, did your client base consist of food professionals?

A: No, we started out as a regular dry cleaner, and I guess around '95-'96 we started to expand into restaurants. I started doing work for the Met-Life building, where Restaurant Associates was a resident. So, we started doing the chefs' and waiters' uniforms at that location. When Restaurant Associates did the US Open, they used our services and our name got out a little bit. The chefs at the Open saw what we could provide, and, little by little, chefs heard about us through word of mouth. In restaurants now, the chefs are much more visible than say five years ago. When they come out of the kitchen, they need to look nice.

Q: What kind of services do you provide that other cleaners do not?

A: Well, most chefs' jackets get cleaned by a linen service, which is pretty much washed at a really low cost. What is happening now is that a lot of these executive chefs are getting a much better quality jacket; it's Egyptian cotton and embroidered. Chefs are wearing a two hundred dollar jacket compared to the eight dollar jacket the linen service usually supplies. The regular linen companies couldn't provide the special cleaning service needed for the high-end jackets. They couldn't get them as clean and pressed the way the chefs wanted [them done.] So we started providing the chefs with a dry cleaning service. If you bought an Armani suit, you wouldn't want to pay $1.50 to have it cleaned, right? So we started providing more specialized services; we clean the jackets like we clean a wedding dress and press the jackets by hand. Little by little, there was a need.

Q: How much of your business is made of chef clients?

A: Chefs and restaurants? About forty percent.

Q: Who are some of your clients?

A: We do the restaurants at Rockefeller center, Tribecca Grill, Layla, and Fresh Direct. We've done the Embassy Suites downtown. We do a lot of corporate catering, too.

Q: We hear that you can get any stain out. What's your secret weapon?

A: Well, we started out with a bucket--I'm not kidding. We started out doing it like you do a restoration; you know--you soak it. You soak it with certain bleaches and de-greasers and stuff like that. Instead of using heavy chemicals and trying to force it out, we take the time needed. As we expanded, we started buying equipment, but the best method is still soaking.