For the Saleh family, running a successful bakery is about more than perfecting their pita bread. It's about making the customer feel like a part of their very large family.
"That's what has separated us and continues to separate us," said Chris Saleh, a member of the third generation who helps run the family's Neomonde Baking Co. in Morrisville. "It's not just about the fresh food, but it's about the warmth."
That warmth has been there for 34 years, guiding the Salehs' success since the launch of the bakery and helping the brand thrive in the Triangle's competitive environment.
Two days ago, the Salehs opened the third store under the Neomonde name. Their new North Raleigh location offers baked goods finished onsite as well as a restaurant and the market offerings its other locations also provide.
And despite a persistently unhealthy economy, the Salehs have kept their eyes on expansion. They hope one day to invite the entire Triangle, including Chapel Hill and Durham, to dine at their family's table.
"There's been faster growth by other companies," Chris Saleh said, "but my family said, 'slow and steady.' They invested it all in quality."
The Neomonde story starts in 1976, when most of the Saleh family emigrated from the mountainous village of Mazraat El-Tuffah in northern Lebanon. The family matriarch, Cecilia, had a brother who was then the director of the N.C. Museum of Art. Moussa Domit, or Uncle Moussa as he was called, helped them obtain sponsorship.
"I was 10 years old, so I didn't know a whole lot about the U.S.," said DeGaulle Saleh, the youngest in a clan of four brothers and two sisters. He now runs Neomonde's sales and marketing. "At that age, I couldn't speak the language. ... I started crying when I found out we were leaving."
The family moved into a one-bedroom apartment with Sam, the oldest brother who had come to America ahead of time to prepare for their arrival. While their father began work in construction, a career that he loved, the rest of the family put their shoulders behind a big dream.
"At first the idea came out of necessity," said Sam Saleh, CEO of Neomonde. "We missed having our Lebanese food. ... We missed the food we grew up with."
With the encouragement of Uncle Moussa, the family decided to open a bakery. They found a place on Medlin Drive and paid their first rent in July 1977. Although their frustrations of the time are now cause for laughter, learning on the job was no easy feat.
"We buy an oven, an old pizza oven converted," Sam Saleh said. "We come in here and get it all shined up and ready to crank it up, and you get inspected by the fire inspector. He came in and said, 'You can't turn this oven on. This is the most dangerous oven I've seen.' "
Southern hospitality stepped in to save the day, he said.
The inspector said, " 'I'm going to find you a gas man to see what you can do,' " Sam Saleh said. "That's the thing about here: You find a lot of kindness. People will work with you and help you achieve your needs."
Starting out with no employees, the bakery was run by the three oldest boys - Sam, Joe and Mounir - who were in turn run by their mother.
"Mom's role is always, 'How good is the bread?' " Sam Saleh said. "Nobody was expecting a payload or anything. As long as we made enough to pay the landlord, we would be OK."
First big customer
The family got its first big break in 1979, when they were contacted by Harris Teeter. The grocery chain was considering placing Neomonde's pita in its stores. Sam Saleh was to meet with a buyer.
"My uncle helped me put the tie on the proper way," Sam said. "I said, 'Does that look good?' and he said, 'It should sell the bread.' "
Neomonde won the contract and was asked to supply 300 cases a week, about 28,800 loaves of pita bread.
"I didn't know what to say because our whole production a month could be 300 cases," Sam Saleh said.
The brothers, who by then had finished school and were still working part-time jobs, decided to devote their full attention to the bakery to ramp up production. Joe quit his job at the Environmental Protection Agency, where he checked in nuclear packages coming through the lab - "I'm the expert coming from Lebanon" - and Mounir left his tennis court maintenance position at Carolina Country Club.
"My dad has this really curly afro," said Mounir's daughter, Noelle. "All the ladies at the country club thought he was so cute."
Their day started at 4 a.m., when the baking began. As they waited for the bread to rise, the brothers would go have their mother's breakfast and coffee before delivering their loads and starting all over again until 2 p.m., when baking finished. By 1981, they had about 15 employees to help with the routine.
That year, Neomonde moved to Beryl Road near the fairgrounds to expand the bakery and its production schedule. Seven years later, they bought out the other tenants in the building and opened the restaurant. By then, their number of employees had doubled.
Their father, Fahd Saleh, would also help out around the bakery, planting pomegranate trees in front of the store and haggling produce prices at the farmer's market.
"We felt like we're really representing our culture," said Joe Saleh, vice president of the bakery. "We wanted to do it with pride and feel like we're great ambassadors to our culture and our food."
As demand for their food continued to grow, it became apparent that the bakery needed to be in a centralized location within the Triangle. In 2001, they moved the bakery and their offices to a 21,000-square-foot space in Morrisville.
And despite the economy's recent slump, Neomonde has benefited from a movement toward fresh food and Mediterranean fare. Though 70 percent of their customers are local restaurants that have seen a drop in customers the past few years, Neomonde was able to continue to pull in new accounts to its bakery business. In 2010, bakery sales grew by 18 percent.
"Our concept of running our business is very conservative," Mounir Saleh said. "We know Neomonde's food is what's in demand."
'A great collaboration'
The diverse population of the Triangle has helped fuel Neomonde's success. Though pita is still Neomonde's best-selling bread, ciabatta follows in second-place.
Neomonde now has nearly 415 bakery customers spanning from local grocers to the U.S. military. Its success, like that of longest-running restaurants, is the product of great food, great service and great prices, said Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of research for the National Restaurant Association.
"The industry still remains a bastion of small mom and pop operators," he said. "Family ownership is obviously a very important component of the industry."
He said areas like the Triangle that are economically diverse also have robust restaurant sales even in a recession because demand can be picked up by industries experiencing growth.
The demand for Neomonde's concept spilled into downtown Raleigh when the Salehs partnered with entrepreneur Greg Hatem to help create Sitti, a Lebanese casual dining restaurant.
Hatem, who also is Lebanese, wanted a space that would have the feel of a Middle Eastern sit-down restaurant with the comfort provided by his sitti - Arabic for grandmother. The Salehs helped Hatem develop the concept and menu.
"It's been a great collaboration," said Hatem, who has known the family since the early 1980s when his family became Neomonde customers. "Even when you first meet them on a business level, you start to know them on a personal level. That's what so wonderful about that family."
Hatem fondly remembers the time Cecilia, the Saleh family's own sitti, surprised him with her intuition two months into his marriage.
"She came up to my wife, and she touched her stomach, and she said, 'You're pregnant,' " Hatem said. "And we just looked at each other and thought how could she possibly know that? We hadn't told anybody."
Cecilia Saleh, now 84, works at the bakery daily and has many titles, including "executive chief" and "kitchen police." She's had just one job, though, over the years.
"She still does the same thing: she comes to harass the employees on quality," JoeSaleh said.
Her husband, Fahd, died in 2007 but was always remembered for his strength, work ethic and those pomegranate trees.
"He used to get so mad because the Middle Eastern customers, they know it (the fruit), and so they'd go run to grab it," Chris Saleh said. "He'd be watching and come flying out the door and say, 'No touch!' "
'Slow but solid'
The Saleh family continues to grow. In addition to taking on bigger responsibilities within Neomonde, the third generation also is taking on new responsibilities at home.
Sam Saleh's son Chris and his wife, Laura, were married in September, while Noelle, the daughter of Mounir, celebrated her marriage in May.
"My husband for the longest time was very scared of my uncles," she said. "The first time he met the family was at Thanksgiving about two years ago.
"He had a mohawk, and he shaved it all off because he wanted to look very presentable. He got himself together to meet the family."
There are no plans for the brothers to retire anytime soon, but the new generation is finding its place in the Neomonde empire.
DeGaulle Saleh's children worked at the State Fair this year, helping sell bread to vendors. Chris Saleh runs the restaurant in Morrisville. Noelle Saleh Scott is working with her father at the North Raleigh location.
Though customers have asked for locations as far away as Fayetteville, Mounir Saleh said North Raleigh was the best place to start Neomonde's gradual expansion.
The store has more than 100 seats along with a market. Customers are able to watch the baking. With its opening, Neomonde now has about 150 employees - a far cry from the company's size in its earlier years.
"Obviously we're not aggressive or in a venture capital situation," Joe Saleh said. "The move is slow but solid. We inspire one step at a time."
