Seventy years of Puglia, now at your door.

It started with a single van, a handful of olive growers, and a notebook of deliveries Roberta's grandfather kept in his breast pocket. By the 1970s the Gigante family was supplying every bar, trattoria, hotel, and B&B from Noci to the Adriatic.

The rhythm never changed. Producers call in the morning, vans leave before dawn, boxes land at the back door before service. The calendar changes — the phone calls don't.

Why a boutique pantry, now

Our customers — hoteliers, restaurateurs — kept asking the same thing: can I take a jar of that passata home? Can the guest at Trullo Casa Gialla have a bottle of Primitivo delivered to their room? Can the newly-moved family in Putignano get the olive oil we buy for our own kitchen?

Until now, the answer was a polite apology. We were wholesale-only. Apothéke Alimentare is our answer today.

What we mean by "boutique"

Our catalog holds 518 products. 113 of them are regional: made within a 90-minute drive from our warehouse, by people we can call on the phone and visit on a Sunday. The other 405 are the complementary staples a well-stocked Puglian pantry needs — from Abruzzese saffron to Sicilian salt.

We don't carry a brand unless Roberta would cook with it at home. That's the whole editorial line.

The mission

To reconnect people with food in an intimate way — to return food to its original meaning of nourishment and taste, elevating it from product of consumption to gift.