Whatever Happened to ... Ragu?

Editor's note: This story was originally published in May 2015.

Ragu started in the kitchen of a home in northwest Rochester during the Depression and grew to become the top-selling spaghetti sauce in the country.

The Lyell Avenue plant once employed more than 300 people. Run for years by the Cantisano family, the Ragu Packing Co. eventually was sold to a national firm, but manufacturing operations remained in Rochester another two decades.

Ralph Cantisano, the longtime company president, started another food company locally after he retired from Ragu. Cantisano Foods also made spaghetti sauce, though nowhere near the volume of Ragu, which remains an industry leader.

Cantisano's parents, Giovanni and Assunta Cantisano, started Ragu as a "cottage industry" in their Avery Street home in 1937. The parents would cook the sauce, and their children, including Ralph, delivered it to neighborhood stores.

The idea "started in desperation — how to put food in six kids' mouths," Ralph Cantisano was quoted as saying in a 1981 Times-Union story.

Ragu literally was a mom-and-pop-and-kids operation in those early days. Ralph Cantisano recalled in a 1982 Democrat and Chronicle story how as a teenager he operated a home canning machine, turning the handle to close the can. "It took 22 turns," he said in the article. "You don't forget things like that."

The family opened a factory at 1680 Lyell Ave. in 1946, and Ralph Cantisano became company president in 1953. The company website states that he "even added the image of a Venetian gondola to the packaging after gaining a little inspiration on the wall of one of his favorite Philadelphia restaurants."

Sales skyrocketed, from $150,000 in 1953 to $22 million in 1969. That was the year the Cantisano family sold the company to Chesebrough-Pond's, a Connecticut conglomerate that took Ragu to even greater riches.

Chesebrough-Pond's marketed Ragu sauce nationally and internationally. Sales quickly topped $100 million annually. Ragu was the first pasta sauce in a jar available in the United Kingdom, according to the company website. The sauce continued to be made at the Lyell Avenue plant, and Ralph Cantisano remained as president.

Ragu eventually had a reported more-than-60 percent share of the spaghetti-sauce business in America. The company fended off challenges by competitors like Hunt-Wesson in the late 1970s and the Campbell Soup Co. in the 1980s by introducing new products like its "Extra Thick and Zesty Sauce," the "Chicken Tonight" line of simmer sauces, and the "Ragu Pizza Quick Sauce," which were made in Rochester.

Ralph Cantisano stepped down as president in 1975. Three years later, he founded Cantisano Foods, which produced Sano spaghetti sauce and grated cheese. As Phil Ebersole wrote in a 1979 Democrat and Chronicle story, "You might say Ralph Cantisano is following in his own footsteps. Or biting the hand he fed."

Cantisano had other business interests at the time, including an office building, an apartment project and a building-management company. But, as Ebersole noted, "none had the flavor and spice of the spaghetti sauce business." ("It was in my blood," Cantisano told him.)

He also started a short-lived restaurant chain called Pasta Chef, whose first restaurant was in Henrietta. As for the dueling pasta sauces, Cantisano said he had no intention of trying to get as big as the company he previously helped make tops in the market.

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"Our goal is to make Sano a household name," he said in the 1982 Democrat and Chronicle article. "I'd like to see us have 15 percent to 29 percent of the market eventually. We're not attempting in any way to say we'll be Number One in the business."

Cantisano Foods opened a factory at 1069 Lyell Ave., just a mile or so east of the Ragu plant his family built. The company acquired the Francesco Rinaldi brand and started bottling Newman's Own brand of sauces and eventually moved the headquarters to Fairport.

The family of Giovanni LiDestri, who had worked at Ragu and managed the new business, bought Cantisano Foods in 2002 and changed the name to LiDestri Foods.

Meanwhile, the Ragu plant on Lyell laid off 100 workers in 1993, and closed for good in 1994. By then, the factory was down to about 135 employees. Sauce production was consolidated to a plant in Kentucky. Ownership of the company has since changed hands.

LiDestri, which followed Cantisano, which followed the mighty Ragu, continues its presence in the Rochester area. Ralph Cantisano was indeed able to follow in his own footsteps and those of his parents who started it all on Avery Street years ago.

Morrell is a Rochester-based freelance writer.