Castinetti Realty Group bio box
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2025 Best of Business Awards
Best of Business 2025: Best Ownership
Photo I Castinetti Realty Group
Castinetti Realty Group regularly hosts food drives for both people and animals. Owner Andrea Castinetti (fourth from left) founded the Central Mass Pet Pantry in Shrewsbury.
Best Woman-owned Business
Winner: Castinetti Realty Group
Just before the Great Recession, Andrea Castinetti owned her dream home and finally felt as though she was reaping the fruits of her labor she had spent a lifetime sowing. She began her entrepreneurial career at 19 after buying the gym she was working at for $10,000, and she had moved on to owning a suite of thriving tanning salons.
But then came the country’s financial crisis of 2008, and Castinetti was forced to sell her home and file for bankruptcy.
“When you're younger, you don't always understand how things work,” she said. “People don't realize how quickly things can change.”
With this lived experience in mind, Castinetti sold her tanning salons and opened her Shrewsbury-based Castinetti Realty Group in 2017. Today, she works to educate her clients to ensure they don’t find themselves in the same situations Castinetti did all those years ago.
She doesn’t categorize her past experiences as embarrassments or failures, but instead as learning experiences she’s turned into opportunities to connect with her clients.
“I have no problem sharing the good, bad, and the ugly,” she said. “That makes you much more relatable.”
This relatability lends itself to trust, a.k.a, the most crucial aspect of real estate for Castinetti.
“The most important part is letting someone see that you're a human on the other side of the transaction. This is your story. This is how you're going to help,” she said.
Castinetti Realty offers a plethora of seller, buyer, and specialized services from stagings to pre-listing marketing to inspection management. Serving a range of customers, the brokerage represents apartments for rent under $2,000 to homes for sale upward of $2 million.
Having worked at a number of businesses with an every-man-for-himself mentality, Castinetti knew she wanted to leave that ethos behind when opening her own brokerage. With 39 agents, she hires employees who are ready, willing, and able to support their co-workers and who understand the importance of giving back, the latter of which is a pillar of Castinetti’s work in real estate.
In addition to its yearly food and toy drives, Castinetti Realty donates a portion of each of its commissions to a local charity in the client’s name. In 2024, Castinetti donated $30,000 to charities from just her commissions alone.
"That's what our business is built on, and that's our tagline: ‘Giving back one sale at a time,’” she said.
Mica Kanner-Mascolo is a staff writer at Worcester Business Journal, who primarily covers the healthcare and diversity, equity, and inclusion industries.
Best Minority-owned Business
Winner: Bri’s Sweet Treats, in Worcester and Rochdale
Bri's Sweet Treats main retail location is in the Worcester Public Market.
Notable runners-up: Cleartech Group, in Leominster; Good Earth Holistic Kitchen, in Hudson
Bri’s Sweet Treats blends flavors with confections like giant peanut butter cups and freeze-dried treats to create handcrafted candy. The business offers corporate gifting, team-building truffle-making classes, and custom event packages. Its partnerships include AC Hotel Worcester, The Sugar Factory with locations at Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut and Boston’s Faneuil Hall, and the MGM Grand Casino in Springfield.
Website: www.shopbrissweettreats.com
Top executive: Briana Azier, owner and founder
Founded: 2021
Employees: 7
Best New Business
Winner: Wrap Hero, in Shrewsbury
Notable runners-up: Elizabeth Jones Law Group, in Worcester; The Fresh Monkee, in Westborough
Wrap Hero works with clients to create vehicle wraps and graphics tailored to their brand’s identity. The company values quality, creativity, and customer satisfaction by using materials and equipment ensuring durability and effective design. With a focus on innovation and personalized service, Wrap Hero’s aims to make vehicles into mobile advertisements that stand out from competition.
Website: www.mywraphero.com
Top executive: Jon Farnsworth, owner
Founded: 2024
Employees: 4
Best Family-owned Business
Winner: R.H. White Construction, in Auburn
The groundbreaking for Eversource Energy’s first-in-the-nation geothermal energy network in Framingham. R.H. White served as the general contractor on the project that broke ground in June 2023.
Notable runners-up: Coghlin Cos., in Westborough; Oriol Health Care, in Holden
Website: www.rhwhite.com
Top executive: David White, chairman
Founded: 1923
Employees: 500
Best Employee-owned Business
Winner: Mass Commercial Cleaning*, in Sturbridge
Mass Commercial Cleaning
Notable runners-up: Weston and Sampson, in Worcester; Pagano Media, in Worcester
Mass Commercial Cleaning offers cleaning services and provides a trusted partnership with clients based on continuous improvement and measurable results. This allows MCC to compete on quality rather than price, positioning it as a premium service provider and creating an employee-ownership culture where profits are shared with cleaners.
Website: masscommercialcleaning.com
Top executive: President Katerina Cai
Founded: 1989
Employees: 125
Click here to read all of the 2025 Best of Business winner profiles.
*denotes repeat winner
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