This motto represents normal business practice for many in the restaurant and retail industry—in fact, it's what put Nordstrom on the department-store map.

Like Nordstrom, San Jose's Del Monaco Specialty Foods aims to please. This might be why it has a lucrative contract with Whole Foods Market to sell pasta, sauces and soups—the only outsourcing the organic market contracts—and why in only a short time, the company has reached impressive profits. It is also why director of sales and marketing Tony Del Monaco, a Willow Glen resident, won't hesitate to call Naples, Italy, to find the perfect tomatoes for his customer.

Del Monaco Specialty Foods' business is to act as a commissary for local restaurants. Eighty percent of the company's operation is to maintain product-flavor consistency for restaurant chains. Del Monaco contracts with various restaurant chains and prepares the specifically requested items, such as a marinara sauce or chili, in large quantities.

This guarantees that if a customer visits Cucina Cucina Italian Cafe in San Jose's El Paseo de Saratoga shopping center, the sauce on its pepperoni pizza will taste the same any day the customer orders it.

When the business first began in 1998, the company focused its efforts on selling its own homemade pasta, thinking the business would be supported by those sales. But it soon became apparent that a small company couldn't compete with larger manufacturers. So, the company's strategy changed when Del Monaco decided to ask companies in the restaurant trade where they needed product help.

Many restaurants were initially skeptical of the idea of sharing their recipes with Del Monaco Specialty Foods, but Del Monaco says it usually doesn't take too long to convince each restaurant chain of the quality and consistency of the product produced at his company's plant.

"We have nothing to hide," Del Monaco says of the facility. "We'll bring in someone from the restaurant to watch our cooking process and test the final product. And, we'll do it until we get it right."

It was this hands-on approach that made the business successful.

Del Monaco's devotion to the customers' needs was taken to another level when Cucina Cucina came on board as a client. The Italian cafes use a special red sauce using San Marzano tomatoes, grown in the volcanic ash from Mount Vesuvius in Naples.

Before Del Monaco's help, Cucina Cucina was buying its tomatoes in cans—but Del Monaco told the company he could do it one better. He called the farm in Naples that produces the tomatoes and asked that the fruit be sent to the United States, in drums, which reduced Cucina Cucina's tomato costs by 15 cents per pound.

Del Monaco is currently playing the waiting game with the Naples farmers, and he anticipates that the first transatlantic shipment of prized tomatoes will arrive any day.

"The Italians work on their own time," Del Monaco says. "But, I don't think any other company would do this for the customer."

Once the tomatoes do arrive, they will be turned into sauce in a 1,600-pound kettle at the Del Monaco 11,000-square-foot facility. After the ingredients are stirred to exactness at 200 degrees, the sauce is packed in 10-pound bags. The packaged sauce is then transferred to a huge chill tumbler that brings the temperature of the soup from 200 to below 35 degrees in less than 45 minutes.

Del Monaco says this is the fastest way to get the sauce out of the temperature danger zone, which is the area between 140 and 40 degrees. If the sauce were to sit too long in this danger zone, dangerous bacteria could begin to form.

"There is a negative perception of outside manufacturing," Del Monaco says. "It can be a tough decision. But we consider their trust to be the biggest honor."

Along with Cucina Cucina, Del Monaco counts Armadillo Willy's Real Texas BBQ and Taxi's Hamburgers as clients.

Taxi's Vice President of Operations Lou Kasprack says he was more than a little skeptical about letting Del Monaco produce the hamburger chain's chili, but now, two years later, he is satisfied with the product.

"The chili recipe is from the president's mother, so we had to make sure they got it right," Kasprack says.

The chili goes to five of the company outlets and one franchised restaurant. He appreciates the Del Monaco company mentality, which he believes is looking out for the little guy and taking time to get the recipe right.

He adds, "They do it the old-fashioned way—they do it right."

John Mitchell, Whole Foods' prepared foods coordinator for the northern Pacific region, says the organic food giant started working with Del Monaco about a year ago.

"We're a good fit because of the custom nature of their business and they use organic ingredients," Mitchell says.

Some of the most popular Del Monaco items at Whole Foods have been the spicy Thai pumpkin soup and butternut apple soup.

"He fit our needs and provides a very professional level of customer service," Mitchell says about Del Monaco.

What has earned Del Monaco the respect of those in the restaurant industry might stem back to his youth and early years in the restaurant world.

He began learning the trade as a young boy in his family's Italian restaurant, Florentine Restaurant and Pasta Market. Del Monaco was paid $2.75 an hour to wash dishes. From early on he had a preference for working behind the scenes that included learning Spanish from his co-workers in the kitchen.

He and his three siblings became mainstays at the family restaurants, but the family's success in the industry might not have even occurred if, decades ago, their parents hadn't taken a chance by moving halfway across the world.

His father, Mike, who is owner, president and CEO of Del Monaco Specialty Foods, and his mother, Ernestine, moved from Italy to California in 1963, chasing dreams of success in America. They arrived with only $300 and the clothes on their backs. They lived in an apartment and borrowed some money from a friend in 1964 because they were unable to obtain a bank loan. This set the stage to open the first Florentine in Cupertino. At its peak, the family's Florentine business had 15 restaurants. Del Monaco calls his father the "classic entrepreneur."

"Mike basically grew up in his family's restaurant in Naples, but he wanted to move here and originate one of his own," Ernestine says. "He said that in America, dreams could happen, and I knew he meant it."

Ernestine says her son Tony has had a much easier path in the restaurant business because of the one blazed by his parents. When Ernestine arrived in California, she had hardly traveled outside of Italy, didn't speak a word of English and had no restaurant experience.

But once she and Mike purchased Florentine, she quickly turned into the hostess, waitress, cashier, prep cook and janitor.

"I would learn English by reading the menu and talking to the customers," she recalls.

The first eight to 10 years in the Bay Area were the toughest for the family. All the profits that were garnered from the restaurant were returned to their friend who had loaned them the dollars to start the business.

About five years ago, the family sold the Florentine restaurant chain to focus on Del Monaco Specialty Foods. And Ernestine, 61, is proud of Tony's accomplishments with the family business.

"I always said he was going to be somebody someday," she says laughingly and adds, "And, he brings in the big accounts."

The family's pasta tradition is also alive in San Jose and Milpitas with Ravioli's Italian Restaurant, owned and operated by Tony's brother, Vic.

Vic also works at Del Monaco Specialty Foods, helping with management, focusing on the accounting and production management side of the business

"I basically put systems in place for management to run the business more effectively," says 37-year-old Vic.

Like his brother, Vic also began in the family's restaurant. At the age of nine he began his career as a dishwasher in the Cupertino Florentine. He spent most of his young life in the service industry but decided to take a break to become a pilot for American Airlines, to fulfill a childhood dream.

But even as an American Airlines pilot, he felt the pangs of missing restaurant life and returned to his family roots, leaving his job as a pilot.

And like Tony, he credits much of his knowledge surrounding the restaurant business to his father, whom he calls "one of the most brilliant businesspeople I ever met."

Tony Del Monaco says the company plans to stay small, with about 20 employees, and continue to provide custom products to businesses. But he is targeting to reach $5 million in profits next year.

"We're going to continue to use fresh products and work to alleviate operational headaches of restaurant chains," he says. "Our facility is basically like your kitchen at home, just a little bigger."