T
heresa Gullo, owner of Gullo’s Fresh Produce and Classic Bake Shop, is a fighter. Since 2011, she and a small team have operated the homestyle restaurant and farm stand that her parents opened in 1970 at 724 E. Flournoy Lucas Rd. in Shreveport.
Spring of 2020 marked the restaurant’s fiftieth year in business, but Gullo was too busy surviving to celebrate. She’d been through too much—including a fire that gutted the restaurant’s kitchen in 2015—to let the pandemic put her out of business. “I knew we were gonna make it when someone came by for curbside pick-up, a regular who’s been coming in here for years,” she said. “I said: ‘Bob, I don’t know if I’m going to make it.’ He said: ‘Aw, yeah, honey, you’re gonna make it. You’re stronger than a garlic milkshake.’” Gullo laughed at the memory, but her eyes sparkled with emotion. It has not been an easy road. She grew up farming Gullo land, which her first-generation Italian immigrant grandparents purchased up and
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SEPTEMBER 2021
| SBMAG.NET
BY CHRIS JAY
“STRONGER THAN A GARLIC MILKSHAKE”
AFTER 51 YEARS IN BUSINESS, GULLO’S FRESH PRODUCE AND CLASSIC BAKE SHOP IS STILL STANDING.
down the Southeast Shreveport riverfront. Much of what is now the southernmost end of East Kings Highway, formerly Hart’s Island Road, once belonged to her grandfather, a truck farmer named Joe Gullo. The original, hand-painted sign for Joe Gullo’s Produce can still be seen at her business. “When I was five or six years old, my grandfather would put all five of us grandkids in the back of his farm truck,” she recalled. “He’d take us to the field, and he’d leave us there to pick produce ‘til lunch. The next morning, he’d head to South Highlands, and the housewives would come out to buy produce from him.” Gullo’s parents, John and Reatha Gullo, began cooking hamburgers and plate lunches to bring in money during the winter months when farming operations ground to a halt.
