‘Say it loud and there’s music playing…’
Bilena Settepani sings praises for her family
bakery, founded in Williamsburg

January 4, 2024 Alice Gilbert

Bilena Settepani.
Photo: Andrew Cotto/Brooklyn Eagle

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Bilena Settepani is already 5 hours into her day at the Williamsburg location of her family’s Italian bakery when I catch her by phone at 10 in the morning. Between shouts of “Happy New Year!” to customers and the jingling of the front door, the “Panettone Princess” talks me through the exciting updates, family history and plans for the future of this Brooklyn institution.

GOOD FOOD: Tell me a bit about yourself, and a bit about Settepani.

SETTEPANI: My name is Bilena Settepani, my family owns Settepani bakery which has been in Williamsburg for the last 32 years. So Williamsburg is the area my dad moved to when he moved to America. His first bakery was actually in the heart of the West Village but then they outgrew that space pretty quickly so they opened up here, and the one in the West Village no longer exists.

My mom, who is from Ethiopia, is a huge fan of panettone and she always says that she married my dad because he makes panettone and all of her favorite treats. She’s mostly at our Manhattan location which is a restaurant/bakery concept, and my dad is mostly here in Williamsburg. I oversee anything that has to do with our e-commerce or retail.

GOOD FOOD: Settepani recently opened a new outpost at Time Out Market. Congratulations! Can you tell me a little bit about this process and how it’s different from your other locations?

SETTEPANI: We opened up in DUMBO the Friday before New Year’s, which was crazy! The holidays is our busiest time of the year. One of the things we’re known for is our panettone, which is a holiday bread which takes, like, 3 days to make, so it’s definitely a labor of love. So when we decided we wanted to open around the holidays it was to make sure that people were able to try panettone. I feel like panettone has always had a bad rap, so I feel like we take the responsibility to change the stigma of panettone to make it cool. So, at our DUMBO location, one thing that we’ll be doing there that we don’t do at any of our other locations is selling panettone by the slice.. The reason we don’t do that in Williamsburg is because they dry out and if we don’t have a lot of foot traffic it’s hard to sell that.

It’s a commitment to buy a $50 loaf of bread, and in DUMBO, I couldn’t imagine someone buying this massive loaf of bread and then walking around, walking across the bridge and doing all of these touristy things carrying this big loaf. So we’re adapting to our neighborhood, which is something we do at both of our other locations as well.

GOOD FOOD: Williamsburg has changed a lot over the past 32 years. How has this changed Settepani?

SETTEPANI: Our customers have changed so much. It’s no longer your Italian older woman coming after church. We have new people who have never had a cannoli before and we have to explain to them what that is. Part of our job of course is making delicious treats, but it’s also being an Italian food ambassador for pastry. That’s the beauty of New York, right? There’s so many different cultures, there’s so much going on, people are always learning different things and it’s our responsibility to keep doing what we do but also to educate our customers.

Bilena Settepani outside Time Out Market.<br>Photo: Andrew Cotto/Brooklyn Eagle — Bilena Settepani outside Time Out Market.
Photo: Andrew Cotto/Brooklyn Eagle

GOOD FOOD: It seems like you’re moving with the times, since you’re taking this product that our parents and grandparents loved and giving it a “glow up”.

SETTEPANI: To me, that’s the best compliment. If you pop open one of my veins, cannoli cream is going to come out. Italian food really runs in every part of me. Panettone has such a bad reputation because it was always what you would re-gift to people because it lasts such a long time. Artisanal panettone, which we make, should not last more than 3, 4 weeks max because at the end of the day it’s a loaf of bread. Would you buy a loaf of bread and want to eat it in 4 weeks? No. And if you do want to eat it in 4 weeks, what chemicals are going into it to make it last that long? We like to keep everything clean because at the end of the day my family and I eat our products all the time. I don’t want to use ingredients that I wouldn’t eat.

GOOD FOOD: You’re the person behind Settepani’s thriving Instagram presence. How has your social media work impacted the business?

SETTEPANI: I think it’s helped a lot because people know that we’re here. It’s crazy to me when people say “Oh my gosh, did you guys just open?” I’m like, “No, we’ve been here forever, my grandmother used to run this store, we’re a generational business!” But because our Williamsburg location has always been a wholesale bakery we didn’t need to have our storefront to be very ‘popping’.

During the pandemic, my mom got sick, and I dove into helping with my family’s business. I always had a personal Instagram and I was like, “Well, people are reaching out to us, they’re curious, why aren’t we posting more about this on our social media?”

I don’t think everyone values the impact of social media. Even today my dad will say, “Get off your phone!” and I’ll be like, “This is work!” Even if he knows that’s why people are ordering the Nutella panettone, he’ll still give me a hard time about it. Which is fine, I’ve learned to accept that. I see the value, I see the impact but it’s a constant conversation. That’s kind of the beauty and the curse of a family business. Everyone has a lot of opinions and everyone is from different eras. So the way things worked when my dad was my age and how they work now are very different. We’re always having to work together. There’s no handbook but you just have to figure it all out.

GOOD FOOD: Tell me more about the good and bad of working alongside your family.

SETTEPANI: There’s a lot of personalities and I think my favorite part is all of our personalities seep through into what we do. My mom is our packaging queen, and she takes care of all our events. My dad is really good with systems. He loves to make a schedule, he loves to make lists. I am very creative so I’m always coming up with new ideas. And my dad loves to say the word ‘no’. To customers his favorite word is ‘yes’ but for me it’s ‘no’. I think that’s also what we love about working together: we spend so much time together, we drive each other all crazy but at the end of the day it gives us all an opportunity to do what we’re good at.

GOOD FOOD: What is the most popular product at the Williamsburg location?

SETTEPANI: Our chocolate mousse is very popular, our cannolis filled to order and our bread.

GOOD FOOD: Where do you see the Settepani brand going in the future?

SETTEPANI: I came back into the business during the pandemic to grow it and to help make Settepani’s more of a household name. My dream is for us to be synonymous with Italian pastries or Italian dessert in New York.