Community Highlights: Meet Nando Benincasa of Castanea Sicilian Cafe

Today we’d like to introduce you to Nando Benincasa.

Hi Nando, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
If you create something the world has never seen before, there’s probably a pretty interesting story behind it. This is ours.

We are Nando & Rose, a married couple & the founders of Castanea Sicilian Cafe. Both of us have Sicilian roots & we were lucky to have spent every summer of our life on this beautiful Island.

A typical Sicilian lightheartedness, delicious traditional food & the Italian coffee culture is what we grew up with & what we both cherish a lot.

The idea of a cafe emerged from the desire to preserve our precious heritage by sharing it. We want to make it accessible to all those who need a little break from everyday life & want to immerse themselves in the world of Sicilian enjoyment & the ideal of “il dolce far niente” – the sweetness of doing nothing – the Mediterranean meditation!

With a lot of love & dedication we blended our affinity for coffee food & Sicilian culture into an ambiance of warmth & hospitality. Today, we proudly present our unique cafes to Los Angeles in Venice Beach, Beverly Hills & Hollywood.
Now our dream has become reality & we are catering to fulfill yours!

We import our ingredients from Italy, even our doughs, that we bake everyday fresh in our cafes, to deliver the best quality & the most authentic Italian cafe experience you can get in LA.

Our business is like a like family. You will find us every day behind the counter of our cafes laughing with the team and serving Espresso Coffee Drinks. Italian Pastries, Focaccia Sandwiches, Roman Style Pizza, Arancini, Healthy Salads, Gelato, Cannoli & more. We also do Caterings for birthdays, weddings, other parties & business lunch for offices & have an online market to deliver the ingredients we use as well as the coffee beans to the whole US.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
No, not at all. We started in Europe developing the concept and it took a lot of pain and time to be where we are now. We started with another brand ended up starting again from scratch, we were close to loose our investor, after we convinced him to stay we chose a tough first location looking at it from the eye of a tourist, it took way too long to get our visa, lost the half of our first summer, were close to loose everything because of the fires and closures at the beach, standing up again and again we found great spots in Beverly Hills and Hollywood that we just opened because we believe in our concept. Yesterday the Mayor of Beverly Hills was at our place to welcome us and our business is growing every day.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I already said everything I think. What I didn’t mention is my background and how the idea came up to go into gastronomy at the early beginning. I own a online marketing agency since 11 years and was supporting franchise gastronomies in Germany (Dunkin’ Donuts Germany launch was the most famous client I had in 2014 right when I founded my company) while I used to live there. The dream to come to Los Angeles was always there. So I took my experience and started my own concept and brought business, passion & the dream together.

What are your plans for the future?
We are looking to open a valley cafe and maybe downtown and culver city let’s see. Also we are still learning a lot about the Americans and their expectations and needs if they walk into a cafe. So first of all we want to make it as good as possible without loosing the authenticity and then we want to grow.

Pricing:

• Espresso $3 (because it is part of Italian culture that Espresso has to be affordable).
• In general we would say for the quality that we deliver we have a very fair pricing.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.castaneacafe.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/castanea.cafe/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/castaneasiciliancafe
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/castanea-sicilian-cafe-beverly-hills