Franklin Pichardo

By the end of the night, he is the one they remember.

He learned the trade inside the Tabacalera A. Fuente in Santiago, spent fifteen years on a single shape, and has spent every year since at other people’s celebrations — a table, a chaveta, and a room that slowly drifts toward him. He still says he has never worked a day.

Check availability The Opus X years

Franklin Pichardo handing a rolled cigar to a guest at an event

His table set up outdoors under a marquee, with an Arturo Fuente box open on it

Franklin Pichardo seated at a long table with rows of finished cigars in front of him

Santiago, Dominican Republic

He calls the Fuente factory his house. In January, the family opened the door.

In January he posted from the main conference room of the Tabacalera A. Fuente, received by the third generation of the family, and reached for the word he has always used: “Standing inside my house, the legendary Tabacalera A. Fuente.” He learned to roll in those rooms. He still goes back, and they still receive him.

TheOpusXRoom
His words for it. The same benches where Carlos Fuente Sr. built the cigar the industry still measures itself against — and where Franklin learned to roll. He still goes back, and they still receive him.
CarlitoFuenteJr.isthemanhecallshismentor
He has written it in those words for years. In 2024 they locked him inside the J.C. Newman factory in Tampa for two days to blend the cigars for Carlito’s seventieth birthday.

The craft

Ten seconds of his hands makes the rest of this page redundant.

No sound, no edit. The chaveta is the only tool on the table.

The chaveta

The board

The leaf

Where the table has stood

The shop is in Bethlehem. The calendar is a map.

More than 150 events, in more than twenty states, and a Hublot night that took him across a border to Canada. The workshop travels with him.

Hands over an open humidor of cigars, with the press and the board beside it

150+

Events worked

Since he started traveling with the workshop.

20+

States

And the list is still growing.

1995

The year he learned

Inside the Fuente factory in Santiago.

Bethlehem · Allentown · Easton · Lancaster · Scranton · Philadelphia · Newark · Cherry Hill · New York · Long Island · Saratoga · Albany · Boston · Detroit · Bloomfield · Troy · Cleveland · Indianapolis · Las Vegas · Miami · Tampa · Houston · Portland · Beckley · Brigham City · Racine · Manchester · Washington DC · Canada

Every Friday since 2018

He invented a Friday in Bethlehem, and eight years later it is still Friday.

Fuente Friday started at his own counter — he puts it in writing that he is “the original creator of the Fuente Friday’s in Bethlehem and probably in the State of Pennsylvania” — and it has run every week since. Same day, same table, forty people or four.

The part planners ask about

The best thing anyone can say about a night is that they booked him again.

Franklin rolling under an open-sided marquee, in a panama hat — Cleveland, July 2026

His table indoors, lit purple, with the boxes and the cigars laid out — Two rooms, one Saturday

An event either goes well or it does not repeat, so the only real verdict is the second phone call. In July he flew to Cleveland for a client who has had him at their events for more than ten years, and wrote about it the way he writes about everything: “the trust, loyalty, and friendship we’ve built together.”

In May he worked New Jersey and Pennsylvania on the same day. Both hosts had the date months earlier — which is how a Saturday in this trade actually works.

When the evening has a job to do

Some nights have to raise money. Those are the ones he gets called for.

A benefit is the hardest room in the business: it has to fill, hold, and open wallets, all inside the same four hours. He has spent a good part of twenty-five years in that room.

A two hundred thousand dollar check from the Celani Family Foundation to the Cigar Family Foundation — Cars & Cigars, Detroit. That evening left $200,000 with the Cigar Family Foundation.

Detroit,fouryearsrunning
Cars & Cigars brought him back four years in a row, and the room grew every time.
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Hublot and Fuente, one room, and a night that passed a million dollars. He rolled at the table all evening.
Albany,threeJunesinarow
A leukemia benefit on the porch of a private house, and they have had him back every June since. Forty guests instead of four hundred, and the table goes up exactly the same way.

200+ reviews

They all reach for the same word.

Family. Eight of them reach for it, eight years apart, written by people who had known him for an hour.

Franklin sat down with my wife and I and enjoyed a cigar with us. He treated us like family and gave us hugs on our way out. Papo is the real deal with a heart of gold and a sense of humor that can make anyone laugh.
Robert Kinnane

Yes, I am a humble cigar roller — but with a little more style, experience, and elegance. When clients request my services, they are not just hiring someone to roll cigars… Every cigar I roll tells a story. Every guest I meet becomes part of the experience.

Franklin A. PichardoThe Legendary Cigar Roller