Across Marin, Sonoma and Napa counties, family enterprises are the lifeblood of the North Bay economy.
According to the most recently available U.S. Census Bureau data (circa 2023), family-owned businesses accounted for 23.3% of employer firms reporting family-ownership status in Marin County, 30.4% in Sonoma County and 42% in Napa County. Together, the family-owned employer firms represented in those figures employed more than 42,000 people across the three counties.
Behind those numbers are tasting rooms, bookshops and butcher counters where families make daily decisions about what to preserve, what to change and what to pass on. These businesses are more than mere commerce—they’re living legacies. What follows are six North Bay businesses building tradition one customer at a time.
Well Read
An independent bookstore is a particularly ambitious family undertaking: essentially, inviting several thousand other people’s stories into one’s own. Elaine and Bill Petrocelli’s Book Passage has been doing just that since 1976, building a business whose appeal extends well beyond the transaction at the register.
Author appearances, classes, writing conferences and book groups give the shelves a genuine social life. Readers can encounter the person responsible for their latest obsession; aspiring writers can find instruction and encouragement (and presumably additional books to purchase). It’s a complete ecosystem of literary creativity.
Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera. 415.927.0960. bookpassage.com.
Sister Act
The Giacomini family’s business evolution makes a persuasive case for listening to one’s daughters. Bob and Dean Giacomini bought their Tomales Bay dairy in 1959. Decades later, the family rethought the operation, launching Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Co. in 2000 and introducing Original Blue that August.
Today, sisters Jill Giacomini Basch, Lynn Giacomini Stray and Diana Giacomini Hagan co-own and lead the company. Their enterprise shows how an agricultural inheritance can become the starting point for something new, with a distinctly delicious argument for keeping a family connected to its land.
For visitors, The Fork, the farm’s culinary and educational center, offers reserved cheese tastings and scheduled dining events. Likewise, its Marketplace welcomes shoppers and provides a unique opportunity to take home a wonderfully curated sampling of local offerings.
Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Co., 14700 Hwy. 1, Point Reyes Station. Tastings require reservations. 415.663.8880. pointreyescheese.com.
Prime Relations
Bud Gamba’s original business plan had a practical goal: Earn enough money to buy a ranch. While working as a butcher, he began custom cutting and processing for local ranchers out of his garage. By 1975, he had purchased a ranch and established Bud’s Custom Meats.
His son, Matt, grew up learning the trade and took over the business in 1997. He expanded its retail offerings and developed sausages, jerky, smoked meats and marinades, inspired by customers’ requests.
The result is a butcher shop connected to both ends of the food chain: the ranchers raising livestock and the people deciding what’s for dinner. Custom processing remains part of the operation alongside the retail counter. For the home cook, it’s an invitation to ask questions, try something new and enjoy local offerings at a whole new level.
Bud’s Custom Meats, 7750 Petaluma Hill Rd., Penngrove. 707.795.8402. budscustommeat.com.
Changing Courses
Before the Balletto name appeared on wine labels, the family was selling vegetables. At 17, following his father’s death in 1977, John Balletto stayed home to help his mother, Hazel, run their five-acre farm. Balletto and his wife, Terri, later shifted toward grapes. Their first Balletto Vineyards wines came from the 2001 vintage.
That progression gives the Russian River Valley winery a story rooted in farming—from veggies to vines. Pinot noir and chardonnay became the next chapter in an ongoing relationship with the land.
There’s another family-business detail worth raising a glass to: a regulation-size baseball field among the vines. When vineyard employees asked about sponsoring their team, the Ballettos provided land and building materials, and the crew supplied labor. Wine Country has plenty of diamonds in the rough, but this one is a homerun.
Balletto Vineyards, 5700 Occidental Rd., Santa Rosa. Tasting reservations recommended. 707.568.2455, ext. 101. ballettovineyards.com.
The Fix Is In
Family-owned and operated since 1955, Steves Hardware & Housewares handles the essential business of keeping daily life functioning in St. Helena.
Its Main Street store offers hardware, tools, plumbing and electrical supplies, paint, lawn and garden products, and housewares. In other words, the necessary elements for those weekend projects that begin with optimism and may eventually require another trip to the hardware store.
The shop is also a useful reminder that behind every enviable garden or dinner-party-ready home in Wine Country are hundreds of practical purchases and DIY maintenance. Thankfully, this St. Helena family hardware business is ready with the right tool for the job.
Steves Hardware & Housewares, 1370 Main St., St. Helena. 707.963.3423. acehardware.com/store-details/00915.
Sweet Equity
John and Tracy Anderson first imagined a chocolate business while traveling in Europe as college students. Life intervened, including years working at the Anderson family’s Napa Valley winery. Later, a screening of the delectable film Chocolat, starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp, helped rekindle the idea.
Woodhouse Chocolate opened in 2004. Today, the couple runs the company with daughters Christina and Caroline. Tracy and Christina handle the chocolate-making side, while John and Caroline work on the business side.
Their Main Street shop and kitchen occupy a stone-and-brick building dating to the 1890s, producing European-style chocolates by hand. The family’s backgrounds include both culinary training and fine art, a combination that adds a certain elan to their offerings—and makes them all the more tantalizing.
Woodhouse Chocolate, 1367 Main St., St. Helena. 800.966.3468. woodhousechocolate.com.
