BATTLE CREEK, Mich. –
“A truly world-class breakroom experience. Bravissimo!” – Breakroom Sophisticate Monthly
“Three stars! If we could give four, we would. I guess no one is stopping us, so four stars it is! Well-deserved!” – Michelin Guide
“I hadn’t experienced a break like that in years. I didn’t want to leave. But they eventually made me.” – Air Force installation building inspector
The reviews are in, and the Defense Logistics Agency Disposition Services site at Aviano Air Base in northern Italy has a bona fide hit on its hands.
“Massimo’s Bistro,” named after Environmental Protection Specialist Massimo Marongiu, held its grand opening in May. The formerly bland breakroom received a total makeover and is looking like the new installation “it” spot that’s trending fast.
Gerald Zich transferred to Italy in 2022. The former small-town Nebraskan said he’d been traveling the world as a soldier and federal employee since 1992 and had seen breakrooms big and small. The agency’s Aviano site breakroom? He called it “lifeless.”
“People and culture are what make an organization great,” Zich said. “Often, we focus so hard on the day-to-day grind that we forget to take care of our people. A break room should be a welcoming place where folks can go to unwind a bit, not a place where one carries the weight of work in with them.”
The team was all in on injecting some character into the space, and settled on a Tuscan-inspired bistro theme that pays homage to colleague Marongiu, whose family operates a pair of restaurants in Livorno, including one started by his father.
“[Massimo] left the family business to work for DLA,” Zich said. “Having enjoyed the food at both establishments myself, I thought what a better way to give back to someone that’s given so much to the organization. This way he is still in the family business, per se, without all the headaches of an actual establishment.”
Zich called Massimo’s Bistro a collective triumph of the entire Aviano team, with all the members providing time, ideas, donations, and money.
“The local nationals at all of our overseas locations are truly treasures and should be celebrated,” Zich said. “Americans come and go, but the local nationals serve as the rocks that keep the sites going.”
Among the many contributors to the breakroom’s reimagining was Property Disposal Specialist Denis Valdevit, an Italian musician and guitar craftsman who loaned custom instruments for display to further add to the room’s ambiance.
The four-year agency veteran began playing as a young teen in the early 90s. A Gibson Les Paul and Charvel Jackson guitar fan, he began fashioning his own electric axes in 2010.
“I come from a family of woodworkers and have always been surrounded by wood and wood tools,” Valdevit said. “Usually, to build a guitar I will work on it for three to four months, depending on the design. I currently only build electric guitars and basses, but one day I would like to make acoustic and classical guitars.”
Early rumors and paparazzi speculation indicate that the Aviano team’s next project may be a warehouse disco dubbed the “Excess Property Party Zone.”