College student has the recipe for winning entrepreneur prize

Constantino "Tino" Procaccini Jr., a 22-year-old business administration senior at Rider University, was named the 2001 East Coast Collegiate Entrepreneur of the Year for the State of New Jersey as well as a number of nearby states at Fairleigh Dickinson University last month for his La Principessa restaurant and café businesses in Kingston.

By: George Frey, Staff Writer,
Constantino "Tino" Procaccini Jr., a 22-year-old business administration senior at Rider University, was named the 2001 East Coast Collegiate Entrepreneur of the Year for the State of New Jersey as well as a number of nearby states at Fairleigh Dickinson University last month for his La Principessa restaurant and café businesses in Kingston.
The Italian restaurant has been open for two years, and the adjacent pizzeria and café have been open for about six months in the Kingston Mall on Route 27. The restaurant was formerly known as La Borgata, but had to change its name in March due to a squabble with an Atlantic City casino which claimed it has the rights to the name.
Mr. Procaccini not only holds the distinction of being the recipient of the state and regional prizes, but is also probably the youngest owner of any restaurant in the area.
"I was determined all throughout school to have a restaurant," he says, "and now the kids I was friends with in school are coming to me for advice. ‘We wish we had some of your determination,’ they tell me."
The regional competition at Fairleigh Dickinson was recently expanded to include students enrolled in colleges in New York, Connecticut and Delaware, and is conducted in conjunction with the North American Collegiate Entrepreneur Awards program at St. Louis University in Missouri. Mr. Procaccini will advance to the next round of competition in Chicago in November, where the top prize is $10,000.
Leo Rodgers is the director of the Rothman Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at Fairleigh Dickinson University, which identifies individuals in college who are simultaneously running a business. He said the competition used to be available for students only in New Jersey, but this year opened for the first time to students from the other states.
"We look for students with perseverance," Mr. Rodgers said. "He (Mr. Procaccini) was runner-up in the New Jersey competition last year and he decided he hadn’t had enough and came back again this year. Overall, we look for students with entrepreneurial initiative and success," he said.
The students can nominate themselves or, more typically, they are brought forward by a professor or mentor at their schools, Mr. Rodgers said. In Mr. Procaccini’s case, that professor was Dr. Ron Cook, director of the Small Business Institute at Rider.
Mr. Procaccini said he was happy to have won second place last year, but in talking to the first-place winner from New Jersey, who was a disc jockey, he wondered about the merit in the judges’ decision. Mr. Procaccini said the DJ told him he worked only a few hours of a few days of the week – whereas, for Mr. Procaccini, 12 hour days, six days of the week is the norm at the restaurant. Mr. Procaccini said he eventually thought he hadn’t placed higher because the restaurant was rather new last year. Now that it is a bit more established, he feels he has a better shot at winning at the finals.
"Last year I won second place and this year my professor said, ‘I have good news for you,’ so I thought to myself, ‘OK, I won third place.’ But he said to me, ‘You won first in New Jersey, and first in the region,’ so that makes me a finalist in the national competition in Chicago in November."
Mr. Procaccini said he donated $1,000 of the $2,000 prize money to the Small Business Institute at Rider.
At the restaurant, Mr. Procaccini said 80 percent of his customers are repeats and they treat each other as if they were part of the family. Getting cards from customers for holidays, various awards and the recent stream of attention because of winning the entrepreneurial prize make his job worthwhile, he said. The relentless work of both school and the job leave little time for fun, and the financial rewards may not be seen at the business for a long time, Mr. Procaccini said.
For the summer semester at Rider, he is at class from 8 a.m. until 10 a.m. two days a week. Then he races to the restaurant to be open by 11 a.m. for lunch. He stays until 11 p.m., then goes home and tries to do some homework. He still lives at home – which, he says, is integral to the work ethic and family-like cohesion of the restaurant today.
"I think my parents – who came here from Italy 28 years ago without a penny – are what inspired me because I saw what they did to put some money away," he said. His father actually tried to dissuade him from the restaurant business because he worked as a landscaper and didn’t want his son to have to do physical work. Also, other members of the family were in the restaurant business, and Mr. Procaccini’s father knew firsthand what a grind restaurant work could be.
"My customers who know my father come in and say, ‘Don’t believe anything he says, he’s so proud of you, and can’t stop talking about all the great things you’ve done for yourself,’" they say.
As for advice to young people interested in going into business for themselves, Mr. Procaccini said they should think long and hard about what they want to do, and ask themselves often if that is what they really want. He is the owner, chef and everything else of his restaurant, which doesn’t leave much time for a social life.
"Hopefully it will pay off someday," he said. "When friends come in and ask me how I did it, I say to them, ‘When we were in school, and you were out on Friday and Saturday nights having a good time, I was working, and doing whatever I could to save and save.’ That’s what you have to consider," he said.