Boston Days - Part 13

Cardullo's: One Corner. Seventy-Five Years.

(I am writing "Boston Days" as a series of articles for quick reference for myself and other retail pilgrims. This article covers what a 75-year-old gourmet store at Harvard Square taught me about the one decision no retailer can ever get wrong — and what happens when a business outlasts the family that built it.)

Ownership changes. Legacies don't.

There is a small brass plaque on the pillar outside Number 6, Brattle Street. It reads: Cardullo's. Since 1950. Three owners later, that plaque has not moved an inch.

Frank Natali Cardullo was born in Messina, Italy in 1915. He arrived in Boston in 1929, originally intending to become a doctor. By 1942, he had bought the Wursthaus — a beloved German restaurant at the heart of Harvard Square — earning himself the informal title of "the unofficial Mayor of Cambridge." 

On April 1st, 1950, he opened Cardullo's Gourmet Shoppe at Number 6, Brattle Street, to serve the neighbourhood's fiercely international community. Imported foods, a deli counter, an oyster bar and fine wines became its staples.

In 1978, he originated Harvard Square's Oktoberfest, now an annual tradition.

When Frank Sr.'s health began failing in 1993, his son Francis — a former airplane pilot — stepped away from the skies, bought the shop from his father, and took the counter. He sold the Wursthaus to focus entirely on the gourmet store. 

Frank Sr. passed away in October 1997, four years after handing over the keys — but not before Cambridge's Mayor officially proclaimed him the originator of Oktoberfest. He lived to see his life's work in safe hands.

Francis died in 2009. His daughters Donez and Francesca took the counter next — the third generation of Cardullos at Number 6. They ran it for six years before making a decision that no family business takes lightly. 

In 2015, they sold. "We have children who are still at home," said Donez. "We're switching our efforts from family business to family."

The buyers were Rich and Kim Wilson, a Newton couple walking away from corporate careers. 

"We wanted to leave the corporate world," said Kim, formerly of Staples. 

"And we wanted to continue this legacy in Harvard Square." 

Three years in, they made a decision the Cardullo family never had — they expanded. In August 2018, a second location opened at Boston's Seaport. 

"It felt like the perfect fit," said Kim, "to bring our rich legacy from one of the city's oldest neighbourhoods to one of its newest."

In late 2024, restaurateur Joel Hidenfelter took ownership, partnering with hospitality group Flying Line — and announced a third location at Chestnut Hill for 2026.

Four ownership chapters. Three locations. Seventy-five years. The same corner that started it all.

Every time Cardullo's changed hands, the incoming owner said the same thing in different words — I am here to protect this, not replace it. 

That is not sentiment. That is the power of a location so right, so embedded in the life of a place, that no new owner dares disturb it.

Frank Cardullo settled one question in 1950 — where. Every owner since has simply had to honour it.

Boston was teaching me. Again.

Cardullo’s was among the 150 cases that we studied during my ongoing Senior Leadership Program at Harvard Business School, Boston, MA.

(I am writing "Boston Days" as a series of articles for quick reference for myself and other retail pilgrims.)

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11 and Part 12 here.

Boston Days - Part 12

Leg Godt: How a 94-Year-Old Toy Company Out-Engaged the Smartphone

(I am writing "Boston Days" as a series of articles for quick reference for myself and other retail pilgrims. This article covers what a Harvard classroom, a LEGO store in downtown Boston, and one small race car taught me about customer engagement and repeat business.)

Footfall is rented. Engagement is owned. That is the only difference between a store you visit once and a brand you return to for life.

I had waited forty years for one walk into a LEGO store — to build something with my own hands beside other children, browse every shelf without an agenda, and spend a modest, self-imposed budget down to its last dollar. 

Small ambitions, held for a very long time.

I understood why that wait mattered inside a Harvard classroom, months before Boston. Early on during my Senior Leadership Program, we studied LEGO's turnaround as a case in discipline. 

Founded in 1932 by Ole Kirk Christiansen in Denmark, the company took its name from "leg godt" — play well. 

The interlocking brick arrived in 1958, the minifigure in 1978. Then came theme parks, video games, and licensing deals that nearly buried it — $800 million in debt by 2003. 

A new CEO cut thousands of products, sold the parks, and rebuilt around the brick. 

By 2015, LEGO had overtaken Mattel and Hasbro to become the world's most valuable toy company — still earning over $9 billion a year, as newborns now inherit smartphones before toys.

That paradox pulled me into the LEGO Store in downtown Boston. 

A three-storey brick giraffe named Gio guards the corner, stopping strangers before they step inside — engagement earned on a public sidewalk, for free. 

Inside, a wall traces the company's history, ending on its founding motto: only the best is good enough. 

Nearby sat a bin of loose bricks, no set, no instructions, where I built beside a teenager, a toddler, and a father, united by nothing but the bricks. 

A sign above read "Adults Welcome," and I took that personally.

I browsed every wall, each merchandised as a complete idea, then bought the one thing that mattered — a small LEGO Formula One race car, a nod to three decades watching the sport, and a deliberate choice of Team LEGO over any real one. 

Twenty dollars, two hundred and one pieces, one evening of building I still remember.

A smartphone holds a child's attention for an hour. It cannot hand a stranger a brick and watch two generations finish something together. 

That difference is why LEGO still outsells every screen, ninety-four years on.

Retailers spend fortunes chasing footfall and forget that footfall without engagement never returns. 

LEGO stopped chasing new customers decades ago — it simply gave the ones it had a reason to return, never with a discount, always with a brick placed in the right hand.

Boston was teaching me again — that repeat business is never bought. It is built, one engaged customer at a time.

(I am writing "Boston Days" as a series of articles for quick reference for myself and other retail pilgrims.)

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10 and Part 11 here.

Boston Days - Part 11

The Floor Never Lies. A Levi's Story.

(I am writing "Boston Days" as a series of articles for quick reference for myself and other retail pilgrims. This article covers what a Levi's store in downtown Boston taught me about frontline investment, people culture and the only leadership strategy that never goes on sale.)

Every retail store tells you the truth eventually. You just have to know where to look.

Not at the window display. Not at the promotional banners. At the floor. At the people on it. At what they do when no one is watching — and whether that changes when the store gets busy.

Labor Day in America is more than a national holiday. The first Monday of September each year, the country pauses to honour its working men and women — and then, with cheerful irony, heads straight to the shops. 

Retailers treat it as one of the season's defining sales events. Discounts go deep. Footfall spikes. The floor gets difficult to manage. That is precisely when culture either shows up or gets exposed.

I walked into the Levi's store in downtown Boston a few days before Labor Day 2026.

Promotions everywhere. Deep discounts. Stacks of denim at prices that stopped you mid-stride. Trial rooms with a moving queue. Customers working the racks with that particular focused energy that only a genuine deal creates. 

The kind of footfall that tests every system a store has — replenishment, trial room management, billing, floor discipline.

And yet the floor was immaculate.

Every rack faced. Every folded stack clean and aligned. An associate moved quietly down an aisle straightening merchandise while a customer waited at the trial room. 

Unhurried. Unannounced. 

Not performing for a manager. Simply doing what they had been trained — and trusted — to do. The reset was continuous, invisible and relentless. Clockwork, in the middle of a frenzy.

I have seen this before. Not often enough, but I have seen it.

A sunny afternoon in March 2005. Java Green Coffee Shop, Forum Mall, Bangalore. Sanjeev Mohanty, then Vice President - India, sat across and interviewed me for the role of leading United Colors of Benetton's Southern India operations. 

What stayed with me from that conversation was not the questions. It was his conviction — unhurried, like that associate on the Boston floor — that stores are built from the inside out. People first. Standards second. Sales will follow.

Over the year that followed, working under his leadership, we set up five new stores across four states. We also envisioned what was then the largest UCB store in India — 10,000 square feet at the famed Indira Nagar in Bangalore. 

Every one of those stores worked because the people in them understood why the work mattered.

After a long stint at UCB followed by Jabong, Sanjeev went on to build Levi's India into a formidable, consumer-connected business before being elevated to lead Levi Strauss & Co.'s US and Canada operations — the brand's largest commercial cluster in the world. 

That arc does not happen by accident. It happens because you never stop believing that the frontline associate is the business.

What I saw in that downtown Boston store was not good operations management. It was culture made visible.

The wages you pay, the incentives you design, the wellbeing you protect, the training you invest in, the mentoring you make time for — none of these are HR activities. 

They are the actual work of leadership. They are what determines whether your floor holds its standard on a chaotic pre-holiday Saturday.

The associate folding jeans in the middle of a sale frenzy is not completing a task. That person is protecting your brand, enabling your conversion and defending your margin — simultaneously, willingly and at scale.

Take care of your frontline. They will take care of everything else.

Boston was teaching me. Again.

(I am writing "Boston Days" as a series of articles for quick reference for myself and other retail pilgrims.)

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9 and Part 10 here.