Faces of the Valley: Giuseppe Lopreiato of Brackenridge credits old-school work ethic — and wine — for success

Giuseppe Lopreiato immigrated from Italy in 1960 with nothing but a strong work ethic and a knack for making wine.

His wife, Maria, came first, settling with family in Brackenridge. Lopreiato stayed behind in his native Sant’Onofrio, working as a farmer and saving money to eventually follow.

“It’s good here,” Lopreiato said, through a thick accent, from his dining room table along Brackenridge Avenue. “Italy was beautiful, but there was no work after war.

“My wife bring me here for a better life.”

Together, they opened Vibo’s Italian Bakery in 1984, naming it for a small province near their hometown in southern Italy. For more than three decades, the pair served up homemade meatball sandwiches, Italian bread and fried dough, and were affectionately known as Mr. and Mrs. Vibo.

When Maria died at 84 in 2020, pandemic shutdowns curtailed a traditional funeral viewing. Instead, mourners lined the streets near the bakery as the funeral procession passed by.

Lopreiato, 92, continues with the family business, even as his son, Dino, officially took the reins several years ago. A visit to the tiny eatery will find the elder Lopreiato kneading dough, stirring vats of sauce or rolling meatballs.

“He never stops,” Dino said. “We had a recent fundraising order for the Springdale band – 372 pepperoni breads – and he wanted to start making them at 3 a.m.”

The elder Lopreiato said it’s in his blood.

One of eight children, his first job as a pre-teen was fixing wagon wheels.

“We didn’t have tools,” he said. “We do it all by hand.”

At 15, Lopreiato was hired by a farmer in Torino, which was about 10 hours away by train. He would leave his home for months at a time to tend to rice and wheat fields.

In America, he followed suit, learning the trades of bricklaying, landscaping and contracting.

“I learned to build houses,” he said. “I had one day off a week.”

In addition to the construction gigs, he worked a full-time job at Barsotti’s Breadworks on Pittsburgh’s South Side, which required a 2 a.m. start time.

He eventually landed a maintenance job at the University of Pittsburgh in 2000 from which he retired years later.

“He always worked two jobs,” Dino said. “Honestly, I don’t think he ever slept. You’d catch him nodding off at the dining room table sometimes, but that was it.”

Dino said the Old World culture kept alive by his parents made his childhood unique.

“I definitely felt different than my peers,” he said. “It was always Italian spoken here. They would sit around the table and talk and play cards. I loved hanging out with my great-uncles. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

Dino said his father, even now, has a routine that would make a younger person tired.

He delivers sandwiches from the bakery to ATI and local police stations, shops for supplies, tends to the fig trees in his side yard and still finds time to squash 900 pounds of grapes by hand for his wine-making.

In the evenings, you’ll find him playing bocce at the family’s court or walking his “grand-pup,” Marley the Goldendoodle.

His secret?

“I drink wine and eat hot sausage,” Lopreiato said. “You work, you want to eat good like greens and rapini and meatballs. You don’t work, you sit around.”