Here’s why Voltaco’s, the Ocean City takeout shop, plans to close next month after 68 years

Ocean City, N.J., residents and visitors will have about a month more to get their pizza, subs, and platter fix from Voltaco’s Italian Foods, which on Friday announced on social media it is closing.

The always-busy takeout’s last day will be Oct. 9, capping 68 years.

In a statement, the Taccarino family said: “We’re finishing things on our terms.” Son and operator Jeff Taccarino told the Philadelphia Business Journal that his parents, Joseph Sr. and Victoria Taccarino, plan to retire to Florida and that he will transition to a job outside the food industry.

Voltaco’s dates from 1954, when cousins from the Volpe and Taccarino families — hailing from the Italian island of Ischia and the Sorrento coast — merged their names and opened the modest shop at 957 West Ave.

“Now in our fourth generation, we are proud of the business we have built and the legacy we have made for ourselves in the process,” wrote the Taccarino family on Facebook and Instagram.

Few if any Ocean City visitors have not tried Voltaco’s, putting the number on speed dial to crack the constant busy signal and remembering the cash-only policy (there’s an ATM inside).

“The [subs] at Voltaco’s, with their fresh meats and crisp-yet-light Jersey Shore rolls, might very well rank among the finest in the land,” Inquirer critic Craig LaBan wrote in 2005. “But it’s the homespun Italian meals at this Ocean City takeout landmark that I find truly special. Eating the hearty lasagna is like traveling in a red-gravy time capsule back to 1954.”

Jeff Taccarino, reacting to an outpouring of public support since the announcement, told CBS3: “I know we’re doing the right thing. It does make me sad. But I know as tough as the restaurant business is, to get that kind of reaction [we] definitely did something right these past 68 years. The heart of a small business is its employees and its customers. We couldn’t do it without you.”

In the social media message, the Taccarinos noted that the family had done its best “to approach every order, every day, every season with our best foot forward, with the mindset of it could be our last, because in a business like this there are no guarantees.”

The decision to close was “not so easy,” the note said, in part, thanking its employees and customers. “We do this with sadness in our hearts, as this life here is the only one we have truly ever known, but we are also happy and optimistic for our futures.”

The business had remained “through wars, hurricanes, floods, multiple economic recessions, employee shortages, supply shortages, a pandemic, and just about anything else the world can throw at a small family business to try and stop it,” the note said. “We would be naive to think there is not some sort of divine intervention at play there.”

Jeff Taccarino said on Instagram that the family would compile recipes for a cookbook.