Angelo Mazzone at Glen Sanders Mansion in Scotia in 2019.
Catherine Rafferty/Times Union
The Capital Region's biggest restaurant success story is Angelo Mazzone, who built an empire from a Schenectady pizzeria he opened in 1980, when he was 27 years old and already had been director of food service at Union College. His next big step, in 1988, was to acquire Glen Sanders Mansion, a 17th-century estate on the banks of the Mohawk River in Scotia. Mazzone expanded the property to include ballrooms and other banquet facilities, added an inn in the mid-1990s, and began branching out, taking on big catering contracts including the Hall of Springs at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. For about a decade, starting with the 2005 opening of the high-end 677 Prime Steakhouse in downtown Albany, the company that would become known as Mazzone Hospitality had explosive growth: a northern sibling for 677 Prime, called Prime at Saratoga National; business- and senior-dining wings; acquisition of his biggest rival, Classé Catering; and a-la-carte restaurants in Albany, Clifton Park, Latham, Saratoga Springs, Schenectady and Scotia.
And then, in 2017, Mazzone, who was 64 at the time, announced Mazzone Hospitality was affiliating with Restaurant Associates, a subsidiary of London-based Compass Group. The largest food-service business in the world, Compass' half-million employees in 50 countries serve 5.5 billion meals annually. Becoming part of the conglomerate allowed Mazzone Hospitality to grow as a regional caterer and provider in ways it couldn't on its own, but it also signaled the years-long winding down of Mazzone's personal involvement.
He no longer owns or co-owns the six restaurants he founded; the last in which he had a stake, Prime at Saratoga National, officially will be taken over by Restaurant Associates as of Nov. 1, Mazzone told me this week. He remains an employee, he said, his familiar presence at Mazzone-catered events around the region reassuring to generations of patrons, from brides to business bigwigs, but he is not directly responsible for day-to-day operations. He expects to gradually ease back further on duties, he told me, "But I'm not somebody who could ever just be happy sitting on the porch on a rocker."
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