It was after closing at Bazzini and the eerie quiet of the empty café and gourmet market seemed somehow fitting as the owners’ talk turned to the store’s final days coming this winter.

“A little boy today heard we were going to be closing and his jaw dropped,” recalled Electra Damato, seated for an interview with her husband,  Rocco. “‘I don’t know what I’m going to do,’ he said. ‘Where am I going to go?’”

“I told him, ‘I’m really glad to hear you’re upset,’” she continued. “‘Because I’m upset, too.’”

Assuming the pending deal with Sarabeth’s gets signed and the Damatos rent their ground-floor space at 339 Greenwich St. to the upscale eatery, they intend to close the store in January or February. Many will miss the homey charm and neighborhood feel of the place. No one more than Electra.

“I think I’ve pretty much run my course here.” she said. “I feel bad. Every day I feel bad.”

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In 1988, two years after Rocco Damato bought the more than century-old nut processing and wholesaling business, Electra carved out space for a small café on the factory’s ground floor. After Rocco moved the manufacturing end of the business to Hunts Point in 1998 (and the upstairs plant was converted to condos) the couple expanded the café and set up a food market.

For many neighbors, Bazzini served as a place of ritual: a kind of kitchen table for moms to sit around in the morning and plan school fundraisers, and where kids got fortified after school.

These days, the café still does a brisk lunch business with regulars from Citigroup and other workers in the area.

“I find the closing very sad because this is a business that is part of the community,” said  Jim McCummings, a Citigroup employee who has been a Bazzini customer since 1994. 

“I don’t know where I’ll eat lunch,” said Lauren Pasternak, who works nearby on Harrison Street. “I may have to start bringing my lunch from home.”
But the regulars are not enough, the Damatos say.

“There was 9/11, there was the economy, there’s Whole Foods. There’s a whole trail of things that make things not work,” Electra said. She estimates that they lost half their business to Whole Foods after it opened last year.

“Their produce department is probably the size of my whole store,” she said. “Young people today like a lot of choices. We don’t have a lot of choices.”

The couple tried reinventing the Tribeca store. It was a soda and sandwich shop, a burger, ribs and chicken dinner spot. Neither worked out.
“Do we want to stay in the store for the next three to five years, to put our energy into this, or do we want to go do other stuff?” Rocco said. “You’re in your mid-60s and you realize time is waning.”

Were it up to him, Rocco said, the store’s end would have come sooner.

“I’ve been wanting to get out of here a long time ago,” he said. “And she just said ‘No!’”

Rocco, in fact, is excited about the future and the brands the Bazzini company has acquired (it now owns Barracini Candy and recently purchased Barton’s Candy Co.). Still, he acknowledges that the store’s exit is part of a trend in the city that he, too, decries. “It doesn’t make me feel good,” he said.

Store manager Peggy Horan, a longtime Tribeca resident who started at Bazzini 20 years ago (and expects to work for the Damatos in the Bronx), said the neighborhood will miss Bazzini as one of the “funky” New York places where they know your name.

When those businesses are replaced, she said, “You’re not a name any more. You’re nothing but a register receipt.”

Asked what message the Damatos would like to send their long-time customers, Rocco thought for a moment.

“I really felt embraced by the people in this neighborhood,” he said. “Thank you very much.”

And Electra? She was almost too emotional to speak. “I’m very grateful,” she said softly.