Editor’s note: “Who is Syracuse?” is a series that runs in The Daily Orange every spring. It highlights individuals who embody the spirit of Syracuse. Members of the community were encouraged to nominate people they thought fit this description. This series explores their stories.

J

ohn Vigliotti grew up closer than three blocks away from the original Peppino’s Pizzeria, but he didn’t set foot in the restaurant until he was 18 years old. Unless he was at his uncle’s pizza shop, the chances of him eating food outside of his home were fairly slim. In his family of Italian immigrants, he said, no one ate meals out or got their food delivered. 

When his mother went away shopping, though, he would get dropped off at his uncle’s restaurant. This is where he first found his love for customer service, he said. 

“Ever since I was a child, eight years old or so, I always kind of liked the idea of making pizza, making something with your hands where then somebody else is going to enjoy your work,” he said. 

Five years after he first went inside Peppino’s, Vigliotti bought the restaurant for $5,000. It has since been renamed as Peppino’s Neapolitan and serves homemade Italian fare downtown, at the New York State Fairgrounds, as well as at its original North Side location. Even with his responsibilities of managing three locations and nearly 80 employees, Vigliotti makes time to visit students at Syracuse City School District schools, as he did this past Friday. 

For the past two decades, Vigliotti has made continual efforts to contribute to the success of Syracuse’s youth. He lives by the saying, “if you have the ability, you have the responsibility,” and focuses his mentorship on students, of all ages, through business partnerships and beyond. 

Vigliotti graduated from Henninger High School in 1992, going on to play football at Arkansas State University. Unfortunately, he remembers only studying there for a year because he found himself feeling ostracized due to his heritage. 

Vigliotti, his wife, Maria, and their three sons currently live in the Sedgwick area. After leaving Arkansas State, he studied at Central Connecticut State University for a year before moving back to Syracuse and buying Peppino’s. He and Maria started a family and married soon after.  

The people and the resources are what kept him in central New York, he said. 

“I’ve always been a big fan of Syracuse,” he said. “It’s a great place to raise a family.” 

Vigliotti speaks to SCSD students regularly and brings his experiences to the classrooms. He said he can empathize with the alienation and discomfort many first-generation children of immigrants experience — especially when their parents can’t speak English well, because he went through that, too. 

“I let them know that I was in their seats,” he said. When he spoke to a classroom of fourth and fifth graders earlier this month, he noticed signs of relief on some of the students’ faces as he said this. He encouraged the students to stay strong and put aside their cultural differences to better foster community. 

As a way to keep kids motivated, any school in the SCSD with perfect homeroom attendance gets put in a pool, and the winner gets a Peppino’s pizza party on Fridays. In addition to this pool draw, he also sends free pizzas to Grant Middle School every Monday, said Erik Saroney, a physical education teacher at Grant and one of Vigliotti’s longtime friends. 

At these pizza parties, students are getting award-winning pizza. Vigliotti has participated in various cooking competitions. In 2016, his PS2 pizza won second place in the traditional category of the International Pizza Challenge at the International Pizza Expo. He goes to seminars and watches a lot of videos to refine and improve his craft, he said. 

“We’re committed to constantly improving and serving the best product as we can,” he said. 

Vigliotti’s mission of uplifting and giving back to students extends to the basketball court, too. For more than 13 years, Peppino’s has sponsored an annual high school basketball tournament at the beginning of each season. The tournaments have grown to be “one of the premiere tournaments” in the area, Saroney said. 

Saroney went to Henninger with Vigliotti, where the two played freshman basketball together. He coached at Henninger for 15 years and is now the head men’s basketball coach at Onondaga Community College, where he’s been for the last three years. He coached one of Vigliotti’s sons at both Henninger and OCC. 

The tournament, which began at Henninger and was originally sponsored by Brooklyn Pickle, has since grown to 16 games over the course of two days on OCC’s campus. Saroney said that Vigliotti was instrumental in this expansion. 

“He was willing to go above and beyond I think what anybody else would do in order to kind of make the tournament bigger,” Saroney said. 

He added that, through Vigliotti’s sponsorship, each player gets some sort of gift at the tournament, and Peppino’s feeds every team, all staff and all referees.  

Over the years, Saroney has watched Vigliotti stay true to his roots. The Peppino’s on the North Side, where Vigliotti’s office is, is still his home base. Saroney called him “a North Side kid.” 

“He’s a Syracuse guy at heart,” Saroney said.