Click here to subscribe today or Login.
EDWARDSVILLE — Dino Riviello manages to keep himself pretty busy.
The Kingston resident holds down a full-time job in restaurant equipment sales and raises two young daughters with his wife, Sondra.
He also finds time to co-own two businesses in the Wyoming Valley with his partner Dr. Charles Scrobola.
“It keeps me very busy,” Riviello laughed.
The 52-year-old Kingston resident and Scrobola own and operate the City Tobacco Company and KJ’s Pickle Barrel.
Last October, Riviello and Scrobola bought KJ’s, a sub shop on Main Street in Edwardsville, and re-opened the business in January.
Riviello was born in New Jersey, but moved to the Wyoming Valley when he was in fifth grade. After graduating from Wyoming Valley West, he headed west to California to study music at The Guitar Institute of Technology.
After moving back to the area Riviello, a cigar fan himself, would frequent other shops with Scrobola. In the early 2000s, they decided it was time to bring a cigar shop to the West Side.
Enter the Gateway Shopping Center.
The duo saw the center renovations coming along and were sold on the location for the future shop.
“We thought it would be the perfect opportunity,” he said.
City Tobacco opened in 2005, and in addition to selling fine cigars, the business has a lounge where customers can come and smoke and network with other cigar fans in the area.
“It’s like a big family,” he said.
And that was the atmosphere Riviello wanted. He said he wanted the shop and lounge to serve as a gathering place for their customers, where people could come and relax.
“We wanted it to be a place where anyone could come and be comfortable,” he said.
“It’s become a second home for a lot of customers.”
Riviello said it’s a diverse clientele, but everyone bonds over a love for cigars.
“It’s all walks of life in here,” he said.
Riviello said his favorite part of owning a cigar shop is the tight-knit community and their passion for the product.
“We’re all cigar lovers,” he said.
He also said his customer base has turned into a family-type atmosphere, and that was part of the vision all along.
“(I’ve made) a lot of good friends through here.”
