Working in Riverdale

An occasional series

By Kate Pastor

The task before a cookie eater is simple enough: unwrap the plastic, place the sweetened morsel between the tongue and roof of the mouth, and chew.

But in cookie production, as in life, there is sweat behind even the most indulgent pleasures.

Alex Nardella works at the Stella D’oro factory in Kinsbridge. He is one of the people whose brains and hands are not only behind the cookies, but also behind the men and women who bake them.

He works a late shift making sure the giant mixers and conveyor belts used by the factory’s bakers, dumpers and packers are up to task, and fixing ones that aren’t.

The 52-year-old started as an apprentice in the maintenance department when he was 20. He moved up to become a “class two” mechanic, learning the ropes on a 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift during which he, along with one other man, lit the factory’s nine, 200- foot-long ovens, equipped with 60-80 burners apiece.

“They don’t light by themselves, you know,” he said, a reminder of tasks large and small nowhere near a cookie eater’s mind when chomping down on a personal favorite.

Each day Mr. Nardella worked, set up had to be complete before it was time for other workers to start making the cookies at 6 a.m.

The carreer that began when a neighbor and a supervisor at the Stella D’oro factory noticed his prowess with cars, motors and hotrods, and asked him to come and work at the factory, has yielded a long line of promotions. Mr. Nardella became a class one mechanic, then a lead mechanic in charge of other people on his shift, and then an assistant engineer, his title today.

“Just about everything that’s built and hanging in that place, I made it and built it and hung it. So I can say I’ve done an extensive amount of work over here over the years,” he said.