How DelGrosso Foods Doubled a 78-Year-Old Family Business in Just Two Years | Manufacturing Series

Anthony Codispoti: Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codispoti and today’s guest is Michael Delgrosso, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at Delgrosso Foods. This family-owned company founded in 1947 can actually trace its roots back to the traditions started by Mariana Puccino.

Puccino. They are widely known for producing premium sauces and holding the proud title of America’s first family of pasta sauce. With a commitment to quality they offer a range of pasta sauces, pizza sauces, and organic options, all rooted in authentic family recipes. Additionally, they have a huge private label business where they produce products for over half of America’s top 20 grocers and many other popular brands.

In total they have over 300 recipes. As an interesting bonus we will get to hear about an amusement park that plays a key role in the company’s history. Now Michael began his career in the family business at age 10, later graduated from the U.S.

Naval Academy and served as a naval officer. More recently Michael along with several other family members and hundreds of dedicated employees have guided the brand’s growth internationally. Away from Delgrosso Foods he has served as a director on corporate and non-profit boards and has appeared on the Food Network and NBC’s Today Show. With a background in management, consulting, and global marketing Michael brings a unique perspective on leadership and innovation. Now before we get into all that good stuff today’s episode is brought to you by my company, AdBac Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our innovative programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies contact us today at adbackbenefits.com. Now back to our guest today, the Chief Sales and Marketing Officer of Delgrosso Foods, Michael Delgrosso. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Michael Delgrosso: Anthony thanks for having me as your guest.

Anthony Codispoti: So Michael your family’s sauce making legacy stretches back over a century starting with and I slipped up on the name in the intro which makes me a bad Italian, Mariana Puccino. Good job and her recipe. What stories can you tell us about those early days and how it eventually led to the formation of this company in 1947?

Michael Delgrosso: Oh my it’s a unique story and when you think pasta sauce you might think a restaurant sure that makes sense but you’re not going to probably think of a railroad or in an amusement park right?

So how does this all come together and it is a fascinating story. So yeah you mentioned my great-grandmother Mariana Puccino. She came from the region of Lazio about 70 miles southeast of Rome.

She and her husband but she gets all the credit because she had the recipe. So they came over in the early 1900s settled in Altoona, Pennsylvania. So Altoona is in the central part of the state a big bustling railroading center at the time and a lot of immigrants were flooding into that area to make a better life for themselves. Well my great-grandmother she knew how to cook so she established a place called Mom’s Cafe in Altoona on Walton Avenue where she started not only making great meals but I also only in about last 10 years learned that she was actually making beer in the basement during prohibition.

So that’s pretty cool too. But Mariana had several children and among them was a girl named Mafalda. Mafalda was my grandmother and we effectively know her as Grandma Murph. Now Murph was waiting tables for her mom at that cafe one day and a handsome young railroador named Ferdinand Del Grosso was traveling with a friend that day.

They made a wrong turn when they were looking for another place to eat but they saw this cafe and they said well let’s just go in here. That chance encounter was the spark that really created a love story that extends to today. Fred and Murph met that day, fell in love and eventually they created their own cafe Del Grosso’s Cafe in Altoona and my grandfather noticed that that original recipe from his mother-in-law Mariana was beloved. People thought of them as the best spaghetti in dinner in town and people were even asking if they could pay a little extra to take home some sauce with them. So he had this idea, gosh maybe we can can this product in certain grocery stores and that might make a lot of sense to you and me. But back then canning and selling in a grocery store prepared sauce was pretty rare and in fact it was only in the early 1940s that Raghu and Chef Boyardee, the first big national brands of spaghetti sauce, even started up.

Anthony Codispoti: This was kind of a cutting-edge idea at the time.

Michael Delgrosso: It was, it really was and he didn’t have the means though to implement it at the time. So this is where the story takes an interesting twist. So 1946, my grandfather’s driving down the road from Altoona just 11 miles north and stopped at a little town called Tipton where Bland’s Park was set up. This is old family-owned amusement park that had an old wooden carousel, a few other rides and attractions, a roller skating rink in the back of the amusement park. He noticed a fore sale sign on this amusement park.

Now my grandfather had never operated an amusement park, had never had no experience, but on after a two-hour conversation and a handshake with the owner, he agreed to buy this amusement park.

Anthony Codispoti: What did he have in mind?

Michael Delgrosso: I don’t know what he had in mind initially, but it took about two weeks for my grandmother to even speak to him again after he told her the news. But I guess what he had in mind was what he did. He moved the entire family from Altoona into this tiny house in the back end of the amusement park. So if you go into Del Grosso’s park today and you see a little house by the park stage, has five rooms in it, that was the original house that they lived in. So my father, all of his six brothers and sisters grew up in this five-room house with one bathroom. There wasn’t even a kitchen.

My grandmother had to do all the cooking for the family in the park kitchen. So 1947 is the first year they actually started operating the park and he had the employees from before, but now he had this, the family he could help out. But it was also that next year in 1947, where he said, well, hey, this little garage that’s right behind the house, we could turn that into a factory and start canning the sauce.

So with the help of some friends, he got things up and running and everything was done by hand. So you have these romanticized pictures of what an old sauce factory might look like. Well, that’s pretty much what you got. So you had big kettles. I actually have one of the old paddles. It’s about three and a half feet long.

I have an old and paddle in my garage as a souvenir from the 1950s. This was even after about 10 years after they got started. So they would have to stir that. But think about this. You think of the machines they have these days to fill jars or cans. Well, back then you would have the can, you would ladle out the sauce, fill up the can, and then you’d have to set the lid on, put it in a clamp and you’d have to hand seal.

So you’re cranking 21 revolutions just to seal a single can. So you can imagine as the company was growing, how just laborious that became. So that took them through the late 40s, the 50s, through the 60s.

And by the time the the mid 70s came around, they were really struggling to keep up with demand. So this was a Pennsylvania brand. It was a, what do we call, what we would call today, a value tier brand. So a great quality product, natural ingredients and so forth.

It was a tomato paste based product, but very inexpensive. So this would compete if you want to call it that against the ragus of the world back then. But by the late 70s, it was clear that if they wanted to grow, they were going to have to expand. So right across the road from the amusement park was some land that they owned and spent back then, and I don’t even know what the amount was back in 1978 that they put down for this. I was only eight years old at the time, but they started building the plant. And now this new plant was modern. It could run much faster volumes. It was much more automated. And they eventually were able to run glass jars too.

Anthony Codispoti: Just to center up for a second. So up until the 70s, it wasn’t still all like hand done. Like there had been some automations introduced along the way.

Michael Delgrosso: Yeah. So, you know, there was a, I have a picture from the late 50s where there’s like a small conveyor belt, right? And there was a lever you’d pulled it would fill up the can. So you weren’t ladling it by hand.

And I don’t know what point they got an automatic, you know, sealer for the lids of the cans, right? So yes, little by little, small investments buying used equipment, whatever they could throw together, you

Anthony Codispoti: know, they, this was all taking place on the grounds of the amusement park, all the amusement park.

Michael Delgrosso: And so, you know, the, you can imagine there’s people up there enjoying the amusement park and coming through the park is a forklift with a palette of spaghetti sauce, putting it in another building to store it, right? So it was, it was really something, you know, and it was, you know, maybe talk about what it was like when I was a kid working at the park, but, you know, it was, it was just really step by step, little by little.

So by the time the 70s, late 70s came out, really built that new plant, you know, that was a new era for us. And I remember as a kid, we had just had an agreement with a family friend who introduced us to the NFL legend Franco Harris, right? A lot of people know him from the Immaculate Reception. And so we developed a friendship with Franco. He was actually our spokesperson. He did some TV commercials for us in Pennsylvania, and he would come to visit the amusement park when I was a kid. And I thought I was just the coolest kid, you know, walking around with Franco at the amusement park.

So some great memories of those days too. So the problem came though, in the early mid 80s, the bills were coming in for this plant. It was a big capital outlay. But the growth just wasn’t there. The sales weren’t there. So, you know, my scramble, we sold a bunch of other assets, some farmland that my grandfather had purchased before, sold a restaurant that they owned, and so forth to try to save the business.

But there was really no getting around the fact that we needed more volume. And at that time, in the early mid 80s, there was some brand new concept that had just arrived from Europe. And that was called private label, right? Store brand. And at first, my grandfather was actually pretty resistant to the idea of making product for other people for, you know, for their label. But it really saved the business.

And I’ll give you the specific example. Back in the mid 80s, the biggest grocer in America was AMP, the great AMPT company. They had over 3,000 locations, and they put out a bid to different suppliers, including us, saying, hey, provide some formulas, provide some pricing, and we’re going to award business to somebody who ever has the best combination. So we came up with this, you know, a different set of recipes and, you know, something we thought would really resonate with our customers. And we got the business. And that volume was just enough to keep us above water, keep us, you know, paying the bills, get us a little bit more scale. And then later that decade in the 80s, we had, you know, another one or two private label companies. And by the time you get to the late 90s and 2000, we had grown pretty substantially.

So we’re making a lot of product for a lot of people, almost a third of the top 20 grocers at the time for private label, and a couple very small regional brands as well. And that actually, that culminated in an award, a national award from the Small Business Administration for Small Business of the Year. My grandmother and a couple of my uncles got to go down to the White House and receive that award. And it was a really special time. So that was that was the year 2000.

Anthony Codispoti: That’s really cool. A couple of things I want to unpack there. I mean, what a great chance meeting between Grandma Murph and it was your grandpa, your great grandpa, missing

Michael Delgrosso: my grandfather and my grandma who, you know, started Dope Rousseau Foods.

Anthony Codispoti: Yeah. Grandma Murph was your grandmother, not your great grandma. Okay. Yeah. Just this chance meeting that turned into, you know, a marriage and, you know, building a family and building a business together. So the first product was like a really good value product, right? Yes.

He said, you know, if you would call it that kind of competes with a with a rag goo, like great ingredients, you know, affordable for the working family. But you guys were making a lot of investments. And you had to change. You had to adapt.

You know, you needed more automations. But with that investment, Matt, you had to really generate a lot more sales. And it kind of wasn’t happening until you guys stumbled upon the idea of private label up until that point, Michael, where would people have found the Del Grosso product? Was it just yes, regionally in grocery stores?

Michael Delgrosso: That’s brand is still mainly a regional product. It’s Pennsylvania. I call Pennsylvania plus, right? You got some Eastern Ohio, a little bit of Northern Maryland, you know, a couple of nibbles of upstate New York and so forth. But it is still a regional brand, but one of the most popular brands. In fact, the Pennsylvania Chamber of Commerce was doing a sort of a March madness, but Pennsylvania products edition, which I think it either just ended or is about to end.

But they started out with 64 iconic Pennsylvania brands. We made it to the eight, the final eight. And we were beat we were beat by the sheets MTO. So sheets is a very popular convenience store on the East Coast. And yeah, we were pretty honored to lose to them. So yeah, it’s a staple of many Pennsylvania households.

Anthony Codispoti: That’s great. And as a kid, you get to meet and hang out a little bit with Franco Harris. I mean, and as being a Pennsylvania, you had to have been a Steelers fan, right? So this is just like the idol of idols at that time.

Michael Delgrosso: Yeah, that’s exactly right. It was pretty cool. And, you know, for a lot of our younger listeners, they probably don’t recognize the A and P name, but they used to be just this enormous grocery store chain. And so this was really your first foray into private label, which now is commonplace.

Lots of store brands to be found pretty much everywhere you shop. But at the time, this was new. And you said this idea actually kind of came from Europe. Yeah, you know, it was adopted in Europe. And I don’t know the full history, but it probably was in place there for at least a decade before it took hold in the US. And A and P was a leader in starting up this whole store brand idea.

Anthony Codispoti: And I mean, interesting to think like, what would the Del Grosso track record or history have been had that not come to fruition? But here we are today. Thankfully, it did. And it was like a great not only was it like great revenue for you guys to kind of get your footing under you, but it was a great proof of concept. Like, hey, this can really work. And we can be good at this.

Michael Delgrosso: Yeah, you know, there are brands, there are manufacturers, and sometimes those are the same thing, but not always. And it really solidified us as, you know, we’ve had to make sauce making sauce at scale, we are getting good at, but this really took us to another level.

Anthony Codispoti: And I have to ask, like, what’s what’s the state of the amusement park? Is it still open? When did it close? Like, what’s what’s going on?

Michael Delgrosso: Yeah, so the amusement park still operates Del Grosso’s park in Laguna Splash. You say what’s Laguna Splash? Well, that opened about I want to say eight, nine years ago. And that is America’s only Italian themed water park, Anthony.

Anthony Codispoti: So if you can imagine, have I not heard of

Michael Delgrosso: this floating down the lazy river past, you know, Italian bridges and wine jugs that will score water, and you’ll eventually float around the curve to you past the leaning tower pizza with water coming down from it, or is it gone to the others?

Oh, it’s great. And then we have the best amusement park food in America. There are a lot of adults who never step foot in a ride, but come weekly for our amusement park. We have a lot of Italian specialties and amusement park itself.

There are lots of typical amusement park fare. But my Aunt Marianne always says we do everything the hard way. So much of it is done by hand. Our steak sandwiches, you know, are sliced by hand. We have this potato salad recipe my great, my grandmother developed, you know, decades ago. And we’ll sell, you know, a couple thousand pounds of this stuff over a weekend. It’s just so popular. But all that is, you know, the potatoes are boiled and peeled by hand and everything. But it’s, we do so much work with so much love and care, but it’s the family wouldn’t have it any other way.

Anthony Codispoti: And so is it still a single manufacturing facility? And is it at that same property?

Michael Delgrosso: Yeah, so, you know, there’s, you know, a recent development, I say recent two years ago, we did open a second plant, you know, and that’s kind of part of the story of our evolution. So, you know, I think we can talk about that because I’ll go into that in a bit more detail. But yeah, that has really changed. If private label changed our business, this has changed it just as much.

Anthony Codispoti: So, let’s put a pin in that and come back. I want to hear more about that. But now I want to hear about, well, I guess you’re sort of double entree into the family business because I understand you first started working there when you were 10 years old. Let’s talk about that. What was that like? What were you doing?

Michael Delgrosso: That’s right. You know, imagine you go to work as a kid and every day is a family reunion, right? Your parents are there. At least my mom was there every day.

My dad was kind of back and forth between the sauce plant and the park. But I would see my aunts, my uncles, you know, I was one of 23 grandchildren. I would see almost all of my cousins on a daily basis when the park was open during the summer. So, we all had different jobs, you know, the older cousins, you know, my cousin Scott, my cousin Carl, they got to run the rides, you know, my older brothers, you know, they did their thing, my sisters, my older cousins, they would often work in the food stands and so forth. So, as a 10-year-old, I was qualified to pick up litter and run errands, right?

Wipe off tables, those kind of things. And I’ll tell you what, it was great. My only regret is that I blew every quarter I ever made in the arcade on the pinball machine. So, I always think I could either have a lot of money had I invested in the right company back then or great pinball skills.

Well, like, you know, decades old stock that might be worth a lot today. So, it was a fun time. And then, as I got older, you know, jumped around to different places. But my favorite was a ride that we used to have called Space Odyssey.

You get on there, get on the microphone and talk to people and ask them if they wanted to go faster. And, you know, it was just great having, you play music and the control of all the lights kind of like an indoor disco place. So, it was a great time growing up, spend the time with my family, making great friends and blowing my money in the arcade.

Anthony Codispoti: You checked all the boxes as a kid. I love it. And so cool that you got to have those experiences with your cousins every summer. Yeah. So, you worked there, you know, from 10 years old, kind of growing up. And then you went off and you kind of did your own thing for a while. Yeah.

I’m curious, like, was that intentional? Hey, I want to get away from the family business. I want to make my own name. Was it more of like a, I’m going to go do this so I can learn some skills? And I know that I want to come back or just kind of just flowing with life and you weren’t really sure.

Michael Delgrosso: Yeah. So, you know, one of the things that I really credit my father with and a lot of my family members was that, hey, this is a small business. We got a big family. There’s not enough room for everybody, right? Make sure you chart your own way.

And I think I was probably in that direction anyway. My oldest brother, Dan, enlisted in the Navy. I was pretty fascinated by that life. At the same time, I knew I wanted to go to college. I was also had my eye on throwing the javelin in college.

It was something I did pretty well at high school. So I was recruited by some different schools. And I ended up eventually getting accepted to the Naval Academy with a couple missteps, you know, between high school and two years later when I finally got admitted, it took me a couple years to get in. But that’s where I ended up four years by the Severn River in the Chesapeake Bay.

It was a great experience, super hard. I chose an economics major, but they still make you take all of these engineering courses and science courses. And I’ll be honest, I did really well in economics and a lot of my electives. And I really struggled in electrical engineering and physics and architecture or what was it?

Naval architecture, systems engineering, all those things were much more difficult. But it was a great, great experience for me. And of course, that leads to time as a Navy officer, which I was looking forward to, and I served mainly in San Diego. And then I got into industry after that, after my obligation was done. I actually didn’t even get to serve my full obligation due to a medical discharge. So yeah, so I got out of the Navy just a little bit sooner than I thought, but got a job working. There’s some of these companies that specialize in placing junior military officers in the civilian world. So one of them I signed up with and got me a good opportunity at a manufacturing company in Michigan. This was part of the whole Michigan supply chain. They made anti-lock brake systems. And one of the reasons I liked the idea of going to Michigan was that I know University of Michigan had one of the best MBA programs in the country at the time.

And they still do. And on a side note, I was thrilled when you interviewed the co-founder of Zingerman’s, Zingerman’s Deli and Arbor because I had many meals by Zingerman’s, which is great. So yeah, that’s kind of the path that I took initially, you know, Naval Academy and the early industry. But with you go back to your question, did I ever think I’d come back to the family business? And the answer was no, no way. Not that I respected it. I loved it.

In fact, even during the short periods I had in the summer, during summer leave from the Naval Academy, I would work at the park for, you know, even three or four weeks, you know, run the roller coaster, run Space Odyssey, whatever it was. Great affinity, very proud, very happy that, you know, they were still surviving after all these years.

Anthony Codispoti: That’s really cool. And so what were some of the, you know, post-navy discharge that you were doing? Yeah. And then sort of weave us back to how you got back to Del Grosso’s.

Michael Delgrosso: Yeah, yeah. I’ll touch on this briefly. You know, had a couple stints I mentioned I went to work in the automotive industry, started out in a manufacturing plant. I was basically a team leader is what they called it.

I guess they figured if you’re, if you can lead a bunch of enlisted men on a ship, you can, you know, lead a shift, a factory shift. And that was interesting. Learned a lot, learned what I didn’t know. At the same time I started doing my MBA classes at Michigan at night.

So that was kind of, you know, long, made for long days and long weeks, you know, working during the day, and then going to school at night. Ended up getting promoted down to our corporate office in Lavonia, Michigan. And there I did account management. So we did, I did some program management first, then account management, which is my last job I had, which was, you know, certain products that we sold to, whether it was GM Ford or, you know, whatever car company, you know, I was responsible for a piece of that. So that was interesting.

The automotive world is, you know, there are people who spend their entire careers there. I thought it was fascinating. But I knew that’s not what I, that’s not what I wanted to do long term. I was, you know, going to business school at night, and I had known about management consulting. And that really appealed to me, just solving problems, coming up with solutions for companies, whether a strategy, operations and so forth. So when I finished my degree, I ended up going to work for a company called Accenture in their Chicago office. And, you know, it’s interesting, you know, you think you’re going to have this, you know, life that’s going to go a certain way, right? I’m going to be with a consulting firm, retire, you know, maybe in my late fifties, you know, very comfortably.

And that’s going to be how it goes. Well, there was something that your younger listeners might not remember or maybe they’ve heard about called the dot com bubble, right? I graduated from Michigan in 2000, right when this thing was happening. So I was in the strategy practice for Accenture.

And early that I, my first project was in Germany, working with Lufthansa Air Cargo, helping them solve some of their problems over there, which is really interesting. It came back and it was clear the work was starting to dry up. And they had a round of layoffs, then another round of layoffs.

And then by the time the third round of layoffs, some of us were looking at each other right before all this left, right? So I was able to get a head start and start looking for other work. Found work with a company called Booze Allen Hamilton in their government practice in McLean, Virginia. And then later, I also worked in the government practice for Deloitte Consulting. So a lot of government projects, you know, work in whether it was like with government agencies or you know, solving process problems, you know, organizational structure problems, etc. It was interesting.

Frankly, I like the commercial side a lot better. But coming back to the family business, what happened was in 19, I’m sorry, 2005, we were expecting our first child, our only child, who’s now 19 years old, her name’s Sophia. But we were expecting baby. And I happened to be home for Easter. And my dad said, Hey, did you know that so and so is going to retire from their job? Guy named Ralph, he was running our private label sales. And I saw that’s interesting.

I didn’t know that. And he said, you know, we don’t know who we’re going to fill the place. And do you think you’d be interested? And I said, I never in a million years thought about that. So he said, well, why don’t you talk to your uncles who are really running the company at that time? And so I did. And for whatever reason, they saw on me, you know, maybe it was my consulting work, maybe it was, you know, some other attributes, I’m not sure. But they said, you know, yeah, we’d like you to come aboard.

What do you think? And I’ll be honest, coming from, you know, cities like Chicago and downtown DC and my Navy work in San Diego, coming back to Little Tipton, you know, that was going to be a big lifestyle change. But I talked about it with my wife, who was also from the the area originally. And we thought it would be nice to, you know, to raise a child around, you know, two sets of families. And I thought also to myself, Oh, gosh, you know, maybe there’s something I can do to help bring this sauce business to the next level.

Anthony Codispoti: And so it’s still incredibly interesting to me that it kind of took you by surprise. Wow, hadn’t really, really, truly hadn’t thought about coming, you know, back to the family business. And I guess, you know, it just been framed well, you know, from your family early on, hey, small business, big family, we don’t have space for everybody, you guys kind of, you know, have to do your own thing. So as you think about those experiences that you got from, you know, the few years of consulting that you did there, maybe just pick one thing. What’s what’s one thing that you learned there that you were able to bring into a very different environment in the family business?

Michael Delgrosso: Yeah, you know, we were we were so focused on being good manufacturers in this regional brand, that, you know, you don’t have a lot of inputs other than what kind of comes across your best, right? So what do you hear from suppliers? You know, what do you hear from maybe some of your customers, but a much more global view is not coming to you automatically, right?

We weren’t paying for like syndicated data to understand, you know, what were their trends in the marketplace. And in fact, honestly, a lot of things in pasta sauce are traditional, right? You’re not always chasing the latest trend. You know, there are some major trends that happen over time very slowly, like size reduction and so forth and ingredients.

But, you know, some of these bright shiny things, you know, they’re not really a factor like they are saying the tech space or, you know, other other industries. So, you know, I would say in terms of just what I brought to the company was just a broader understanding of, you know, a strategic viewpoint. Where do we need to position ourselves? What assets can we bring to bear? What are we good at? And where can where is the market headed and where can we best position it? So honestly, it was nothing brilliant, but it was just a different perspective.

Anthony Codispoti: And so, as I understand, part of that different perspective was coming up with a new brand, a higher end brand La Familia de Grosso.

Michael Delgrosso: Yeah, so, you know, that was an interesting, I’ll never forget, it was a December, early December of, it was about two months after I had arrived. And I had this big presentation, I was so nervous, right? Because, you know, we had this beloved brand, this regional brand that we had been making at that point for, what, over 50 years, almost 60 years.

And, you know, it was, you know, I knew it was going to be a challenge. So, I basically, I tried to share as much data as I could, and saying, like, look, here is, you know, look at some of these brands, and look at the retails, right? These were $7, $8, $9 jars of sauce on the shelf. And I knew that that was going to be a mind shift from, you know, our dollar, dollar 50 sauce, right?

You know, 10 for 10 on special, you know, dollar 50 every day kind of thing. So, I guess I brought enough data and brought enough facts with me, and maybe a little bit of passion that they said, yeah, sure, go ahead, if you think you can make this work. And I just, I just went to town. I really loved, it was probably one of the most fun processes I’ve ever been involved with is creating this brand. Work with a really skilled designer who also had some great ideas. And this is kind of fun because one of the things I do annually now is I lecture to colleges, whether it’s, you know, Penn State pretty much every year and some other schools across Pennsylvania. But we do a case study.

And I kind of present like, okay, we decided in this direction, and I kind of throw it back to the students. Okay, what should this brand be? What should the packaging look like? What should the label read?

What should we call it? Et cetera, et cetera. And one of the things I do is I show them all of the brands in the specialty or the premium space back then, you know, what they look like. And I show all these pictures because what I actually did in fact is after I got the green light, the first thing I did is I went back to DC, which is the last place I had lived, that had, you know, lots of grocery stores, lots of specialty offerings. And I bought $600 worth of spaghetti sauce of every brand, every high end brand I could find. And I brought it back.

And I put it on this big, we have in our lab, we have all these counters and I had it, everything laid out with the pricing in front what I paid for it and so forth. And it was a big eye opener for everybody. But the thing that allowed me to do was seeing all these brands, what were, what was their approach to branding? So most people know about Reo’s, right, that iconic Harlem restaurant, right, that you can’t get into unless you know somebody, right? You know, Reo’s and a few others had this, you know, we’re a famous restaurant, buy our sauce, right? You had a whole bunch of brands with a person’s face, like a person, a single person, whether it was like, oh, this is my grandma, or this is my mom, or this is like a little peasant girl, or this is, you know, some fictitious woman, or it could be like males, it was like this famous chef, or this is my grandfather, or so forth. There were a lot of those that had a single person’s picture on it. And then there were, there was another sort of category, it just like trying to make it look beautiful, right, with, you know, pictures of like a Italian countryside, maybe it was kind of like artistic and maybe a little bit like modern looking, but not really storytelling, just sort of like, here’s a beautiful jar.

So I put these in front of the students and I said, these are these three categories. And I said, here’s a question you have to ask yourself, should we imitate one of these? Should we do a slight different take, or should we try to be completely different? Should we have a look that when the customer goes down the aisle, they say, that stands out, that is completely different than everybody else.

So the students will often give me some, you know, great ideas, they’ll say, well, maybe you should put a horse on it for the amusement park, maybe you should, you know, put a carousel or something, you know, a lot of really fun ideas. What we ended up going with was what we are, the story that we can tell that nobody else can say, which is we’re America’s oldest family owned sauce maker. Nothing says that better than a multi-generational family picture. So when you look at La Familia Del Grosso, which is the brand that we came out with, you’ll see a family picture on it. But there’s another element to it that is unique, because you don’t just have a marinara or a basil or an arbiata or so forth. You have Aunt Marianne’s Sunday Marinara, that’s the name on it. You have Uncle Fred’s Firework Sauce, right? So we’re telling these stories about the family members. So I’ll give you an example, Uncle Fred’s Firework Sauce. Fred was my father, you turn the side of the jar, there’s a little portrait of Fred. And there’s a short story talking about each person, their sauce, and the tradition or occasion when it was served. So in my dad’s case, every 4th of July, we have a big firework show at the amusement park, right?

We call it Summer Thunder. And my dad would make a special recipe. He would get zucchini from his garden, get some garlic. He’d put some crushed red pepper flakes and white pepper in there. And then they would create this slightly spicy sauce and the whole fireworks crew and the whole family loved it. And they started calling it Uncle Fred’s Fireworks Sauce, right? So you take these family traditions, put them in a jar, and you introduce this and you share it with the world.

And that was the idea of family traditions never tasted so good, right? That, you know, you’re not just connecting with a flavor. You’re connecting with a family and a specific person who created that. So that was the line that we came out with, with the blessing of the family. And then I had to figure out how to sell it, which was we could have an entire hour of conversation about, you know, getting your product into grocery stores around the country.

But that in and of itself was a big, big learning experience. Because most of the channels, many of the channels, I should say, are not the same as some of the local grocers that we were, we are already in with our original line.

Anthony Codispoti: Okay, so it wasn’t like you guys had leverage because of the original brand having the relationships, having the sort of the main cachet. You guys had to kind of figure out sort of a different distribution model because the players are a little bit different.

Michael Delgrosso: So I don’t want to dismiss this. There was some overlap. So, you know, the three larger chains in, you know, that were based in Pennsylvania, yes, that definitely helped, right? They gave me an early look.

Some of them were the first to bring us in. So that was very helpful. The other really key piece, though, was our private label relationships, right?

Not always, but sometimes it did allow me to get a foot in the door. So if you look at, well, can’t name them, but a large retailer in the Southeast, for instance, you know, we were doing their private label for several years and they granted me an appointment. I have no doubt because we were the private label producer. And I said, this is a brand that I think would do real well here. And they’re one of our biggest customers to this day with the brand. So that all did help. But most of it, I did have to figure out, you know, on my own because, you know, there were these distributors that carry only natural and specialty products.

We had no relationship with them. So if I wanted to do business with, you know, you know, ChainX, Y or Z in, you know, Michigan or California or New England, I had to learn the system and understand all these, you know, funny charges. Sometimes you get all of the slotting fees that you have to pay and how they don’t, you know, there’s a lot of things that you think you have a preconception of how they should work.

And then you find out how they actually do work. And it’s tough. So, yeah, I get a lot of people always referred to me as like, oh, you should talk to Michael. You know, he’s been through all this and people with new brands and new ideas. And, you know, it’s a big eye-opener for a lot of people. And I talk about some of the expenses that are involved in doing business with not just the distributors, but some of the chains in general. So, you know, but it was a great experience. A lot of trade shows, a lot of cold calls, a lot of, you know, chance encounters. So, yeah, it definitely was a process.

Anthony Codispoti: And so what’s different about the product itself?

Michael Delgrosso: That’s a good question. Right. So what, you know, how do you differentiate a, you know, a seven, eight dollar jar of sauce in a word, tomatoes. There are other things, but the most important cost factor in a jar of sauce is the type of tomatoes you use. So tomato paste, you can get cheap tomato paste. You can get like better quality tomato paste, right?

There’s a range. But tomato paste tends to be inexpensive. Diced tomatoes. There’s crushed tomatoes. There’s ground tomatoes. There are heirloom tomatoes. There are pear tomatoes from California. There are whole plum tomatoes from California, like from the San Marzano region that people are familiar with.

So these all have a wide range. And those San Marzano style tomatoes are on the priciest side of the equation. So you use that, you use all other premium ingredients to go along with that. And yeah, that’s, that’s where you’re typically getting your, you know, seven, eight, nine dollar jar of sauce. Now I will say there are some, whether they’re celebrity brands or just other people putting, you know, six, seven dollar price tag on something with tomato paste, diced tomatoes.

I’m not sure where that comes from. But yeah, on a high end product, like, you know, some of the brands that you may know of or ours, La Familia Del Grosso. Yeah, you’re getting these, this really light fresh flavor from these, these whole plum tomatoes from Italy.

Anthony Codispoti: Okay, that was going to be my question. I mean, you’re talking about more expensive tomatoes, but clearly they must have a different flavor profile.

Michael Delgrosso: And that’s what you’re after. Yeah, they do. They’re naturally sweet so that you, we don’t add any sugar to those recipes. And, you know, it’s not just the tomatoes themselves, but it’s getting them here, right? You buy tomato paste from California arrives on a 3000 pound tote, like almost like a crate looking thing on a rail car. That’s a lot more efficient than a little number 10 can that you can hold in your hand that’s coming on a boat from Italy, right? I mean, those transportation costs add a lot too.

But it is considered the best tomato in the world. And we know when you’re going after that premium customer, that’s what they’re expecting. So yeah, that’s what we did. And it’s a lot of fun.

Anthony Codispoti: So you came in kind of one of the first things you did is worked on the La Familia Del Grosso brand, the premium brand that you guys are running with now. And then was it once you created the brand that you sort of shifted into this other role of like being in charge of sort of the whole sales direction of the company?

Michael Delgrosso: Yeah, so what happened was, you know, initially I was responsible for private label and this, right? And I kind of had created something that I didn’t realize would take up so much time. So luckily, we had just kind of added the blue and application for a job that didn’t exist from a young woman named Terry Fubio. And Terry now is our vice president of private label sales doing a better job than I ever could have. She’s so detail oriented.

She takes care of our customers so well. And that left me free to put most of my time and effort into growing this specialty brand, as well as marketing for overall for the company. So marketing for our original Del Grosso brand, we have a partnership with Penn State, the Penn State Red Zone. So you go to a Penn State game, you’ll see a big jar of our original Del Grosso tip over and fill up the screen with sauce. You know, when Penn State gets in the red zone, you know, we have things like that. We have events, you know, different parts of the state that we do. So I wear both hats.

I think most sane people would divide that into at least a couple people. But I guess, you know, I don’t mind having weekend after weekend, eating up by special events and trade shows and, you know, wine and food festivals around the country. So I kind of do a little bit of everything.

Anthony Codispoti: Say more about some of those things you just mentioned, like the different festivals and whatnot, because I’m always curious, you know, kind of the growth strategies that different companies find have worked best for them.

Michael Delgrosso: Yeah. So, you know, if you think of this, going back to these, these case studies, I give the college students. I actually, after we’ve created the brand, I say to them, all right, let’s identify our target customer.

So I take them through a whole exercise, and we basically come up with this kind of rich foodie mom, you know, profile for the new sauce, right? You know, and I say, okay, what are you going to do to get brand awareness with this target customer? And how are you going to induce trial?

Okay, how are you going to gain trial with this customer? So they come up with all kinds of great ideas. I love when college students, you know, put their brains together. And, you know, some of them are things we’ve done.

Some of the things we haven’t, but most of them do think of this idea of wine and food festivals, which is something we lashed on to pretty early. And there’s a couple reasons for that. Number one, your target customer is there, right? If you’re going to go to an event where someone is paying $150 a ticket to sample food and wine, yeah, there’s probably, there’s a good chance they’re in that target customer of someone who’s going to pay $8 for a jar of sauce. The other thing though, too, is I think we get far more mileage out of an event like that than any normal brand because what is our brand La Familia? The picture La Familia.

I’m Michael Del Grosso. This is La Familia Del Grosso, right? You’re part of the family. I’m part of the family.

So when somebody comes up to a wine and food festival, we don’t just give them a sample and have them walk away. We’re like, hi guys, you know, we’re the Del Grosso’s. I’m Michael. That’s my sister. That’s my cousin and so forth, right? And it just, you can see the wheels turning up.

Wait a minute. This is a real company, right? And we have, you know, all the portraits of the family members, Uncle Fred’s, Fireworks’ Aunt Mary Ann’s, Marinara, Aunt Linda’s, Alfred, you know, on and on. Like, all these are all real people, right? In the story.

So it becomes real to them and then they taste the product. Now they have a connection. And I know that people, other brands, use these types of events to create a connection, but that’s our unique connection that nobody else can really do on that big of a scale. So I’ll give you an example of the South Beach Wine and Food Festival. That’s the biggest show we do each year. We’ll serve almost 5,000 people over the course of a few days. And those are just super valuable connections that it’s really hard to do through a marketing campaign, through even a digital campaign. No, it’s pricey. It’s, you know, it’s a lot of people.

You’re flying. It’s expensive to get people down there to sponsor this whole thing. But again, it’s what can you do that’s number one effective and position yourself in a way that other brands can’t. So that’s who we are. We’re a family still making sauce after 78 years. These are our family recipes. And so, you know, this is who we are. This is what we’ve got.

Anthony Codispoti: I’m curious, when you do one of those events, like in South Beach that you were mentioning, can you see an uptick in sales in that region in the days or weeks afterwards? Or do you not look at it like that? It’s more like the long play of building the brand and just kind of establishing yourselves more and more.

Michael Delgrosso: Yeah, you know, old advertising used to say you need to make an impression eight times on people, you know, for it to have an effect, right? I don’t know if we need that many, especially when we have such a powerful one on one. But it does say that it is a thing that happens over time, right? It is a process.

It’s not one and done. I used to have these simplistic equations that I would use if we can reach X number of people and retain, you know, this fraction of them and they buy, you know, we should see these kind of sales. Gosh, I was so I didn’t know what I was talking about. I tried to take an educated guess, but

Anthony Codispoti: you’re bringing in your management consulting experience.

Michael Delgrosso: I was trying to do these case studies, you know, that they they throw you in the interviews. But yeah, it wasn’t exactly relevant. So, you know, there are things you can do. You can track coupon redemption.

If you’re handing out coupons, you can obviously watch for trends over time. But there are so many other dynamics that are playing that are, you know, that are coming into it as well. But I want to go back, Anthony, and talk about one of the interesting side effects that happened once we created this brand. So I mentioned, you know, a lot of these shows and a lot of more trade shows we were going to. So in the first couple of years, you know, we’re out trying to get this product out into the marketplace, right? Before that, we did one major show a year.

It was called the private label show, pre LMA show in Chicago. And that’s where a lot of people looking for packers will come. You’d have discussions and then the show would be over, right?

Sometimes we would get contacted sort of out of the blue by either a retailer or brand who wanted something done. But that was pretty rare. Well, because I’m now at the Fancy Food Show, actually they used to have three Fancy Food Shows, you know, they still have one in New York. They still have one in the West Coast.

They used to have one in Chicago, right? Natural Products Expo West, Natural Products Expo East, various distributor trade shows. So, you know, in our peak, you know, take going back 10 years, 12, 15 years ago, you know, I was doing probably one trade show a month. I mean, it was really a lot. But an interesting thing started to happen. We were more visible. So there was a very large company that everybody’s heard of that came to us at one of these shows.

It was actually in Chicago, and it was me. And they said, do you guys pack this kind of product? And I said, yeah, we do. And, okay, we’re searching for another copacker. We’d like to, you know, just, you know, we’re gathering some information.

Okay, let’s bring in, let’s have you come to our factory. Well, they eventually did. And that led to our single biggest contract we’ve ever had with a big brand, right? And what this brand brought into us, though, was a level of expertise because they had a whole team, because they have supplier, they have probably dozens if not 100 suppliers around the country that they, you know, this management manufacturing team works with. So they were able to say, hey, this part of your process, we’d like you to do this, we’d like you to have an x ray here, not just here, we’d like you to have x, y. So they really elevated our process, they have not only gave us more volume, but they gave us more expertise, right?

Well, that creates a virtuous cycle now, because now you’ve got attention from other people who maybe thought you were too small for them. So I guess the point is coming out with this brand, yes, it was good margins, good sales for its time. But what really happened is it got us a lot of attention.

So you start to fast forward now throughout the next 15 years, right? Not only did our volume in our red sauce increase, but we started getting a lot of interest in other products, which we couldn’t make, unfortunately, at the time. So the big thing in red sauce and tomatoes is they’re acidic, right?

They have a low pH. And the process you use is something called hot fill and hold. As long as you fill a jar at a certain temperature, a little over 190 degrees and hold it for a short period of time, right? And so, you know, you can fill a jar in a jar and slowly cool it. Bacteria won’t grow in that jar. It’s a safe product.

Okay. So there’s a lot of people who do that in North America, right? A lot of sauce makers, salsa makers, other types of acidic products. I’m not going to say it’s easy, but it’s not super technical. As long as you have the basics and you control for these different points, you can do it. So then it’s a matter of can you create product that number one is a good formulation? Can you do it consistently?

Can you do it on time and all those other things that any business has to do? But then there’s another type of sauce that needs something called a retort process. So the big question we always get is can you make Alfredo?

Will you make an Alfredo? And this is a massive investment, right? Because if you think of all the parts you need to make a red sauce factory, right? You need all those.

Plus, you need this extra really big technical, expensive part in the middle. And it’s called a retort. What’s a retort? So the way I describe it is when you’re making red sauce, you have to cook the sauce once. You cook it in a kettle, which we use kettles. There are other ways to do it, but we think kettle cooking is more authentic and tastes better. Cook it in a kettle. You fill the jar you’re done.

God, I mean, that’s simplistic, right? In a retort process, you have to cook the product twice. You cook it in the kettle. You fill the jar, cap the jar. And then after that jar is filled and capped, you have to cook it again for a long period of time, often like 30 to 40 minutes. So if you’ve ever kind of walked into somebody’s canning like your grandma, I mean, my mom still cans each year, she cans peaches, right?

And you’ll see a big, broiling, you know, pot of that on the stove, you know, she has these jars with the lids, you know, cooking there. That’s what they’re doing. They’re basically they’re retorting.

Anthony Codispoti: And I think you’re real quick, Michael, why do you have to do this sort of second cooking process? Yeah, so for the bacteria or is it because okay, that’s exactly right. So even if you fill it, and you’re, you know, everything’s sterile at the time, right, bacteria will grow.

So you have to continue cooking an Alfredo or a queso dip or, you know, so many other types of products, you have to continue cooking that to kill any bacteria that could grow, then it becomes shelf stable. So what does a retort look like? Imagine a big stainless steel torpedo tube, okay, the hatch opens and racks and racks and racks of this product go in, right, the hatch closes, it fills up basically a hot water bath, and the whole, the whole system rotates. So the product is turning upside down, and it’s no way to speed, but the little air bubble at the top of the jar is basically acting as a as a ladle, or, you know, a spoon, it’s stirring and stirring.

Anthony Codispoti: All the sauce inside gets evenly heated.

Michael Delgrosso: That’s exactly good point, because if you if you hold it steady, you might have scorching on the outside and it’s not cooked evenly, you’re exactly right. Once that’s done, it comes back out and then it kind of resumes a normal, you know, labeling and tray packing and so forth process. So why did I go into all that? Because we’ve been, we’ve had that request for so, so many years, but was never, I don’t want to say safe enough, but you know, it’s a risky investment, right. So we had a couple big companies come to us and give us a volume commitments.

This was about four almost four years ago. And as a board, you know, it was a big discussion, you know, this is going to be a $70 million project, which I will tell you for a company our size was massive. This was, you know, even for our size, probably as big as it was to build that original plant back in the 1970s. Now you could argue that the risk was lower because we had some commitment, so it sure was, but still that kind of money was a lot of cash up front.

Anthony Codispoti: It is. It is. So, you know, work with our good great banking partners and so forth and got this up and running. That was two years ago, Anthony. I will tell you what’s happened in the last so we are now 78 years old as a company for a 78 year old company to double in size. Within the space of two years is almost unheard of.

But that’s what’s happened. So what’s interesting is while the brand that, you know, I helped create and piloted while that got us a lot of attention and the marketplace and it certainly helped us, you know, especially in the key period with, you know, good margins, better financial positioning and so forth. It’s been what’s happened since then, the increased private label business, additional co packing and then culminating in this most recent expansion, the biggest in our history, of course.

And it’s dramatic to say the least. You know, you go from, gosh, you know, 8090 employees to now 185 over the course of two years. And you have a second plant now the second plant is just down the road. So only six miles down the road. So everything’s still relatively local.

But I just say it’s a dramatic transformation. Still family run. My uncle Joe is still our CEO. My cousin Matt is still our CEO. My cousin Joey still does the tomato purchasing and he’s moving into different parts.

You know, I’m still doing this. But we have so many talent people and we have for decades. And there are there are some, you know, father, some people in between them, you know, they’ve maybe worked for 50, 60 years, you know, between the two of them. So we have a lot of longevity, a lot of technical people. But, you know, of course, you’re bringing a lot of new people when you’re expanding that much. So how’s that going to go?

Right? You hear all these horror stories about, you know, younger people don’t want to work and so forth. And sure, you have some turnover, you have some challenges. But what this team has done with this new plant has been nothing short of remarkable.

And my cousin Matt, our CEO, was really the one who kind of stood this up and got it running and where it is today. So, you know, it’s been dramatic. And interestingly, at a time when we’re on the branded side, not the original Del Grosso brand, but on the specialty side, you know, we’re now facing you know, I’m sure you’ve heard of Reo’s, right?

Yeah. So they have been number one in that space for a long time in the high end space. They’re just now number one period. If you look at the dollar sales of any pasta sauce in America, Reo’s is number one. It’s no wonder, Campbell’s paid $2.7 billion for them two years ago, right? So they’ve been known by Campbell’s, you know, after they went through their private equity, you know, ownership phase. So then and then you see other people, they’re like, well, gosh, look at that, you know, $2.7 billion, if I can get a fraction of that.

So you have a lot of people really scrambling, you know, you have kind of Reo’s 2.0 in a company called Carbone, right, a famous restaurant in New York, and they have other locations around the country. You know, they’re kind of following the same model and spending, you know, just big, big money. So, you know, it’s interesting, there are several, you know, there are probably 100 brands in the high end, and we’re one of them, you know, we’re probably in the top 10, but, you know, we’re just one of many. And we’re all kind of feeling the squeeze of these big spends by these much bigger brands.

So that’s been interesting. And you have to say, well, you know, thankfully, we have this, you know, massive growth on the private label and co packing part of our business now. It was always, it’s always been there for the last since the 80s, but now it’s, you know, so substantial that, you know, the worry is more just about making sure every business unit is profitable in its own right, right.

You’re not asking one part to carry the business entirely. So that’s, it’s an interesting place where we are, because overall growth in the company is never been better. But that specialty brand, you know, I am now like fighting like crazy, you know, to stay make sure we’re staying relevant, staying on shelves, you know, and stay noticed.

Anthony Codispoti: That’s tremendous growth. I mean, a business that’s over 70 years old family owned business. And like you said, just in the last two years, doubled in size is almost unheard of.

And I’m sure there are a lot of people listening and they’re like, wow, like tremendous, like amazing. But we all know what life is, right. Life comes with struggles and ups and downs and bumps in the road. I’d be curious to kind of take a little side road here and hear about a serious challenge that you’ve overcome somewhere along the way. Yeah, how’d you get through it?

Michael Delgrosso: Yeah, you know, it’s been interesting, you know, starting out in this brand, you know, there were so many things that I say I had to figure out myself, but I did ask around a lot, you know, because I had to learn very quickly. And I found myself at the beginning thinking like, gosh, you know, I’m never going to get this off the ground. This is, this is a nice idea. But holy smokes, what am I, what am I thinking? I don’t have all these relationships.

I don’t have these broker and distributor relationships. And there were some times early on where I’m thinking, what in the world did I even do this for? This is a, this is a failed experiment, you know. But I think there’s just a matter of you have to give it time. And luckily, we did have an early enough successes with some of our big customers that have stayed with us that that had, you know, it, it, it, it saw itself to fruition. And oddly, I’m now back with the situation I just described as like a new challenge and new, you know, I’m not going to call it a failure by any stretch, but like a massive challenge, right? So what lessons did I learn from the first time? You know, what lessons can I draw from other experiences I have to kind of get through this time with our brand, knowing that the company is doing great. But, you know, you still care about this brand, you want it to do well. And you have these massive brands that are just spending like crazy, and kind of sucking all the air out of the room for, for many of the other brands.

You know, on a personal side, you know, to draw something from my life there, it’s relevant to business as well. You know, I, about eight years ago, I got into the sport of triathlon. And many people who know triathlete know that, you know, this takes a lot of time effort, you know, on a typical, you know, time period, you know, you’re maybe training 8, 10, 12 hours a week, you know, some, some weeks, you know, maybe up to 15, 16 hours. So it’s a lot of time and effort. So you get to a race and, you know, you want it to go well. Well, I have had not one, but two really bad accidents.

Neither one of them my fault. The first one was about three years ago, I was at a triathlon down in North Carolina. And on triathlon bikes, they’re shaped a little funny on the handlebars. You have these aero bars that stick out.

You put your elbows down, you’re kind of hunched down and you’re arrow position. Halfway through the bike, my left aero bar just snapped, snapped right off and lost control. And I remember just something going to slow motion. And I remember waking up in an ambulance. I was unconscious, according to my garment, which was tracking the whole thing.

I was unconscious for about 12 minutes and had a pretty bad concussion and so forth. But nothing major long term, which is great. Well, fast forward a year and a half. This time my wife was at the race with me because of the situation before. I’m on the bike again, passing by an aid station. And the guy in front of me was trying to stay out of the way of somebody else. He ended up running over a traffic cone. Now he sailed right through the cone, right?

It was fine. But it popped up and ran right into my wheel. And I took a spill again. And this one I flipped over the handlebars and I immediately knew something was wrong. Turns out in the hospital they told me I had six fractured ribs and a collapsed lung.

So that resolved itself only a couple weeks later when the lung collapsed again back home when I finally got home and they had to put a chest tube in me. That was demoralizing. I’m not going to lie. And I thought I’d maybe never doing traveling again. And the other thing that happened though was when I got kind of down in the dumps, I let all my healthy habits slip.

I was like, whether it’s eating well or just moving and so forth, you know, put on a bunch of weight and so forth. And, you know, I kind of got through the initial injury phase, but left realizing like, okay, I realize you were upset, you were challenged, but you didn’t do everything you could. So it’s when things aren’t going your way. Are you going to just fold and just let yourself go? Say, oh, there’s nothing I can do. This didn’t work out for me. Or are you going to say, I’m going to do what I can do?

You know, I can’t remember who had the quote, but it was, nobody makes a greater mistake than the person who does nothing because they could only do a little. And I think that applies to honestly, you know, the challenges we’re facing right now with making sure our brand stays relevant, stays on shelves is that, you know, you got to do what you can. You got to be innovative. You got to think of ways that you smarter that you can, you know, you can do what these big brands can’t.

Right. So kind of some of the basics you do and generating interest that way. So, yeah, those are a couple, couple instances that were very painful physically and otherwise that I had to get through and how it relates to business.

Anthony Codispoti: Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that. I can imagine I mean, you have one big spill, you’re unconscious for 12 minutes, concussion. That’s a big deal in itself. You still get back up on the bike, you still get back into the, you know, the triathlon. And I can, you know, as I hear you talk about, I can sense the passion there. There was a big part of who you were, what you enjoyed doing, it gave you another sense of drive and purpose aside from, you know, your work and your family. And now, you know, with the second spill, it was like, Wow, this feels like probably felt like part of your identity had been taken from you. And like, this was a big part of who I was and what I did and why I got out of bed in the morning.

And now that’s gone. And so, yeah, you fell into a slump, right. And eventually you found a way to pick yourself up, dust yourself off. And what was it you said, I’m going to do what I can. Yeah. And nobody makes a bigger mistake than the people who do nothing. I think those are strong words to live by. What’s your physical health like today, Michael?

Michael Delgrosso: Yeah. So, you know, other than some, you know, recent respiratory infection stuff that’s unrelated to those accidents, you know, I’m back training now, looking at some triathlons this summer and maybe a big one down in Daytona in December. So that’s exciting. And just got a new gravel bike, you know, for all these mountain roads we have around here. So that’ll be fun to do some riding with my wife on the weekends with that.

Anthony Codispoti: I was going to ask, how does your wife feel about you getting back into it?

Michael Delgrosso: I think if I told her I was never going to do triathlon again, she would not mind, but she understands its place in my heart. And I think she’ll always want to try to be there when I’m racing when she can.

Anthony Codispoti: That’s a good partner that you found there, Michael. So I’ve just got one more question for you, Michael. But before I ask it, I want to do two things. First of all, I want to invite all our listeners here to hit the follow button on their favorite podcast app. So you can continue to get more great interviews like we’ve had today with Michael Delgrosso. Also going to let people know the best way to get in touch with you or the brand. What would that be, Michael? Sure.

Michael Delgrosso: You know, our brand, you can visit our website, of course, DelgrossoSauce.com, or you can visit all of our companies, Amusement Park and our sauce factory and so forth, by going to Delgrosso’s.com. And then Instagram and Facebook, you can type in Delgrosso Dish, right? They get a lot of good recipes and some fun stuff there.

Me personally, Michael Delgrosso and LinkedIn is probably the best way to track me down if you have any questions or any thoughts you want to share. I’d be happy to entertain that. That’s great.

Anthony Codispoti: Last question for you, Michael. Obviously, we’ve heard about a lot of exciting changes just in the last two years. As you look forward in the next two to three years coming, what are the big changes in the future that you’re really excited about?

Michael Delgrosso: Yeah, you know, I think the fact that we were able to do what we accomplished in the last two years has given us a lot of encouragement that we can do big things.

Now, the last thing we wanted to do is, you know, two years from now make another massive, you know, new factory investment or something like that. So I think what has given us success is everyday consistency and operating with integrity. And those are very much our family values. Always being there for our customers, doing what we can just day after day, doing the boring stuff really well. Because let’s face it, making anything, even if it’s something as delicious as spaghetti sauce, it’s not glamorous, right?

It’s not, you know, getting all this attention like, you know, tech companies or finance or, you know, some of the other things that people follow on social media, right? So I look forward to us leveraging that reputation, our newfound capacity and expertise in this new factory. And again, just slowly advancing that as we’ve done, you know, it’s funny people say about triathlon, like, what’s the key?

You know, what’s, you know, what are the secrets and so forth? It’s just consistency. It’s day in and day out. It’s not doing the big hero sessions that you can post on Instagram and look like, look what I did.

I did a 12 hour, you know, session of this or, you know, seven hour bike ride today. I mean, those are fine, but it’s really what makes the difference is small things every single day. What makes a difference in business, whether it’s sauce making or anything else is doing the small things extremely well every day, taking care of your customers, making sure that you’re delivering on your promises. And yeah, so that we have that awesome foundation, amazing people working in our organization on our team. And I’m really excited about what the future holds.

Anthony Codispoti: You know, and I think I want to point something out here that may have gotten a little bit overlooked in you telling your story. The fact that some of your customers kept coming to you and asking you to get into this new line of work that they knew was completely different from what you were already doing. And they knew that it was going to take a giant investment.

Rather than going to people who were well established in the space and taking their business to them. I suspect says a lot about what they saw in the quality of the work that you guys do.

Michael Delgrosso: Yeah, I think that’s a nice compliment. And I think that’s fair to say, you know, are the family leadership, you know, the people in there every day, whether in the quality people in the lab people right, you know, taking orders people communicating with the customers, even down to people in accounting and in every other specialty we have, like these are people who care immensely about what they do. And, you know, I think of people say, Well, what’s it like, you know, the family side of it. And I said, you know, it’s funny because my, my aunt Linda who’s retired, she brings food in for the employees my uncle Joe, Saturday when you know, often it’s not uncommon for him to be making food for the employees and he’s the CEO of the company. Right.

And he’ll often be making food for people working on Saturday or so. So it’s, it’s all those things that really just mean so much and make a difference in the end. So I think that has translated I think that has translated people feeling like they’re part of something bigger. And we’re really lucky. We’re really lucky to have the people we have.

Anthony Codispoti: Michael, I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with all of us today. I really appreciate it.

Michael Delgrosso: Well, it’s been a pleasure. It’s been enjoyable. Thanks for your podcast. It’s been able to listen to many episodes and you’re getting good content out there and a lot of good lessons that we can all learn.

Anthony Codispoti: I appreciate those kind words, Michael. Thank you, folks. That’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today. .