Wright's Gourmet House is a beloved South Tampa sandwich shop, nurtured by the same family for 45 years, with die-hard fans of every age and background. When regulars move away, Wright's is the kind of place that goes on the must-visit list for every trip back home, often above family members and friends and childhood haunts. Wright's is a piece of Tampa history.
It's also a machine, with two buildings, 50 employees and an off-site baker keeping it running. By 4 a.m., cakes are mixed. By 6 a.m., roasts go in the oven and salads are prepped. By 11:45 a.m., every day but Sunday, the line snakes out the door and almost a dozen people scurry behind the deli counter, taking orders and assembling stacks of sandwiches and sides, while another dozen stock supplies and keep the dessert cooler full. By 2 p.m., the front of the house is quiet and business is all but done for the day. In the back of the house, the cycle continues, and prep for tomorrow can last until 9 or 10 at night.
Wright's churns out an average of 700-800 sandwiches, 80 cakes or pies and 440 slices of dessert each and every day. It's a beloved assembly line.
In 1962, recently widowed Marjorie Coggins and widower Pete Wright married, and sought new direction in their lives. She'd been fired the previous year as director of admissions for Tampa General Hospital; he lost his insurance job just days after their wedding. She wanted to open Tampa's first serious gourmet food store; he didn't. She won.
Wright's Gourmet House opened in 1963.
In the market's early days, Marjorie was ahead of the times. She envisioned the place as a source for high-end, gourmet ingredients. Sales were slow; maybe Tampa wasn't ready to go gourmet. According to the oft-repeated official history of Wright's, one night Marjorie made a turkey tetrazini casserole for the family dinner and left it on the counter to cool. When a customer asked to buy it, she didn't hesitate to ring the register and wrap up the meal.
It didn't take long for sandwiches to become the real core of the business.
That surprised Marjorie, who first offered them merely as a convenience food. When she sold that turkey tetrazini, Marjorie saw that convenience is what people were seeking. So convenience is what she provided, albeit with her own gourmet touches.
By 1980, with retirement looming, the couple wanted to see Wright's in familiar hands. They decided to sell the restaurant to Marjorie's grandson, Jeffrey Mount, a Wright's employee for almost a decade. He was 21 years old.
"Virtually every one of my customers can make a sandwich," Mount explains. "Its not rocket science, so we have to give them something unique." Wright's still does everything possible in-house, from roasting meats to mixing salad dressings to whipping buttercream frosting from scratch. "You can go to Sysco to buy everything you need," says Mount, "but by making it ourselves, we can make it unique."
Unique? Maybe, and a neighborhood treasure to boot. But how is the food?
What started as gourmet 30 or 40 years ago is now quaint and traditional. That turkey tetrazini is still on the menu, loaded with egg noodles and covered in a blanket of sharp cheddar. Great comfort food. Same with straightforward lasagna and chicken pot pie highlighted by bits of red pepper.
Of the dozens of soups that cycle on and off the menu daily, most are hearty and unassuming, good for warming up during a cold snap or warding off a cold, more lunchtime standards than the gourmet concoctions they may have seemed like in the 1970s.
The real joy at Wright's, reflected in the sheer volume dished out, lies in the fresh sandwiches. Although the classics — like the Beef Martini topped by white-wine-marinated mushrooms and garlic herb sauce, or the Golden Gate laced with peach chutney, both created by Marjorie — are ever-popular, I find that Wright's true artistry is found in the simplest of sandwiches. They start with meat roasted in-house, piled high on giant, round slices of buttery, fresh "bucket bread" baked specifically to their standards and topped with mayo or mustard and some crisp veggies. (According to Mount, Marjorie stole the idea of "bucket bread" from a shop in Pinellas called Pueblo Village. The distinctive cylinder-shaped bread originated during World War II, when bakers were forced to use cans as loaf pans due to metal shortages.)
Salads are the usual deli options. Best are the Greek potato salad or turkey and pecan, but you'd be better off saving room in your stomach for a slice of the incredible triple-layer cakes that Wright's bakes daily.
More than 25 percent of Wright's sales come from desserts, and it's easy to see why. The red velvet cake is astounding, so moist it almost drips sweet liquid, the layers separated by rich buttercream frosting. Yellow cake is a close second, the layers denser than the typical supermarket mix cake. White and chocolate cakes are also worth a nibble.
Mount's own kids are approaching the age when he first bought Wright's from his grandmother, but they haven't shown much interest in continuing in the family business. That's fine with him. "I used to say that my grandparents started late in life since my grandmother opened the place when she was 48," he says, just before the lunch rush. "Now that I'm 48, it seems quite young."
This article appears in Feb 27 – Mar 4, 2008.