(gentle music) - I'm Norm Silverstein.

Thanks for joining us.

We're in good company today with Giovanni John LiDestri.

Born in Italy, John came to Upstate New York as a teenager, working hard to become a successful entrepreneur and fulfilling what many consider the classic American Dream.

Rooted in hard work and integrity, John's history in the Rochester area runs deep with family ties to businesses like Hickey Freeman and Ragu that help build our region.

Today LiDestri Foods is a very successful company, providing an economic boost to the entire area.

It remains a family-owned business that continues to put the wellbeing of their employees and the wider community first.

We are pleased to welcome John here today to talk about his amazing journey and to share the meaning he has found through his success and strong community ties.

John, thank you for joining me today.

- It's an honor and pleasure to be here.

- It's great to have you.

John, you really are the true American story.

You came over from Sicily as a teenager, and you became a successful entrepreneur and now a leader of the business community.

But where did it all start?

Where did you grow up?

- Well, this year marks the 60th anniversary of us coming to the States as a family.

I am the youngest of four siblings.

And we came to Geneva, New York because my uncle was there.

We were in Tusa, which is spelled T-U-S-A, in the province of Messina in Sicily.

My mom was more of the matriarch of the family.

She felt that we would've a better future if we tried to come to the United States, and that's exactly what happened.

And through some friends, my mom and my two sisters, they early were seamstresses.

They got connected to and found out that there was plenty of work here at Hickey Freeman, so we moved from Geneva to Rochester.

So we had come here in September, and by December actually, we had moved over to Rochester.

- Well, I understand that when you first came to Geneva, you were pretty popular.

You were the new kid from Italy.

Cute.

Was that part of the culture shock of moving?

- Yeah, it was actually a fun experience because when I, so I went to St. Francis School, was I think in the seventh grade.

I was like somebody novel in not a lot of immigrants, I think, going to Geneva at that time.

And so had all kinds of, especially girls, for some reason, that would come over to the house and invite me to go to the movies and offer to pay for me and all of this, So I thought I died and went to heaven in some ways.

So when we came to Rochester, though, things reversed a little bit, was I went to St. Michael's Grammar School and sort of nobody really, I was not, I think there might have been a lot more people here, immigrants, that the kids, they never really, did not get the same reception for whatever good reason that I got in Geneva.

- Well, your family did okay thanks to Hickey Freeman.

I think you were starting to tell us about that.

- Yeah, my mom and my sisters, they got pretty much hired on the spot, so we had an income right off the bat when we got here.

And again, we were very frugal about, you know, we would go to the public market at the time.

I remember walking to the public market with my dad and my mom, and we would just, you know, for very little money, you could go and get all kinds of fruits and vegetables and food.

And I remember after school, I was the only one not working, so I would be preparing, peeling potatoes or whatever, at three o'clock or after school so that when the family would come home from work, that we would be, supper.

Not that I would cook, but it would be prepped, if you will.

- Was that where you first got an interest in food?

Because we have a great public market here, still considered one of the best in the country.

- Yeah, it was always interesting to me because I like to eat.

(both chuckling) It's one of my challenges, isn't it?

- John, a lot of people don't know that Ragu started here in Rochester and created a lot of jobs and helped a lot of people just like you who were looking for work.

Can you tell us a little bit about the history of Ragu and Rochester?

- Sure, so the family started the business actually in 1936.

And during the war, during World War II, they were told to make rations for the war effort.

And then in 1955, they just struggled as a very small, little company through the '50s until they went and instead of putting the sauce in cans, they started putting it in glass in 1957.

That is when really the things started to really take hold.

Ralph Cantisano, who was the, he was one of the middle sons, kind of became the president of and the leader of the company as the father and mother were getting 90 years.

And so out of the many, many regional pasta sauce companies that were all over the place, in especially the Northeast, Ragu broke out, out of the crowd, if you will, and again, between 1960 and 1970, at an explosive exponential growth, which put 'em, which put 'em the head of the pack and became the national brand at that time.

In 1968, Ralph Cantisano was my mentor and my surrogate father, if you will.

He offered me a job on the C shift because they put a second production shift down, I said, and he says, "Giovanni."

He said, "I really need somebody I can trust on the C shift," which was the sanitation shift where we would clean the kettles and clean the floors and all of that, and we accomplished all of that.

So I did that for about three years and learned pretty much every facet of the business.

- And Ralph was also very important because didn't he offer you a position with his cheese company to try to turn it around, and he felt that you were someone who was a mover and shaker and could help?

- Yeah, yeah, so that was the next chapter.

So in 1975, after the company was sold, and I was there, I mean, Ragu grew exponentially all those years.

And then when the new company came over, they put all kinds of structure in and this and that, but I was like a fish outta water at that point because we never, you know, we're add all the structure, although, I was open-minded enough to say, "Wow."

I said, "I'm gonna learn a lot here.

These folks are from this big company, and I'm sure I can learn a lot from them."

Unfortunately, I was very disappointed after very shortly, I mean like a year after into this.

And I said, "I'm not really sure that these people know what they're doing," in the sense of, because the growth kind of stopped in some ways or leveled off a bit and a lot of the bureaucracy that set in.

I really didn't feel that I learned a lot from that experience.

So I was kind of ready to move on because I was in a corporate world that I was not really comfortable in.

And so luckily enough, Ralph, another long story around it, but we wound up reconnecting.

He called me and, yes, he was struggling with this new company that he had started which was an offshoot of Ragu, and the only reason why he went into it was to try to save some jobs of the people that were there.

I recall the time he calls me, pretty much a cold call.

He said, "Well, listen, I know that you and I talked about possibly rejoining me."

I said, "I think I've got this company," which I knew, I knew what they were doing.

He said, "I was wondering if you wanted to talk about joining us, joining me."

And I remember very distinctly that I said, "Ralph, the answer is yes."

And it took us about a year and a half to kinda get things stabilized and lose the kind of money that they were losing, and that was it.

And so we got it to the point where it was, where it was stop losing money, but it was not making any money.

So a couple of years after that, after two years of this, I said, "Ralph, I'll stay with you forever," but I said, "I just don't see this business model working.

Why don't we go back and do something that we really know how to do, like make spaghetti sauce, on a food service level?"

Because he didn't want necessarily to go against his baby, which was Ragu.

- So was it your idea or was it Ralph's to make- - Ah, no, no, it was my, it was my idea, although, he was thinking about it as well.

He said, "Yeah, in fact," he says, "I've been thinking about it myself."

He said, "So, how much you want?"

I said, "Well."

I said, "Gimme $75,000, and I will," you know, but I already, before I talked to him, I already had had looked at some used kettles, some used equipment and all of that.

I figured that we could, you know, we had the building where we were doing the cheese, and we had the boiler, we had a forklift, so I figured it was $75,000 at the time, which is, I said, "We can probably get started."

And that's exactly, he says, "Okay, 75,000, not a penny more."

I said, "Okay, you got it," which is really crazy because in today's world, here it is many, many years later, I understand, but to put up a line today is a multimillion dollar.

I'm talking about $20 million to put up even a mid-sized line.

So to come up, to get back into the business for $75,000 I thought was a pretty good deal.

- It sounds like it.

And how long was it before you found the niches that you're in now?

Making sauces for Wegmans and sauces for Paul Newman and many, many other different products that we see, but we don't really know our LiDestri Food.

- Our first big break was the connection with Paul Newman, where we started making Newman's Own spaghetti sauce and then salsa.

So that's been a great relationship that we had.

I had personal relationship with Paul Newman.

I put him in the same level as Ralph, just a wonderful, wonderful person and human being.

And so it was, it was the kind of thing that just grew organically within, we set the world on fire, but it was like steady as you go kinda thing.

And then we wound up opening up a plant in California because of Paul Newman, because they didn't want to ship the stuff because a lot of the stuff really became popular in California, in the West, because of his name.

And then so we opened up a small plant there, and then over the years we have gotten into the beverage business and other things to kinda diversify our efforts and all of that.

So we have grown exponentially over the last maybe 20 years, more so than the first 20, but we now have about 1,500 employees in four different locations.

And yeah, we do a lot of work for in the beverage side and also in install in our core business, which is spaghetti sauce and salsa.

I mean, we do Tostitos for example.

We do White Claw, which is the new spiked seltzer that is really trending and all of that.

So we do a multitude of things.

I think that somebody that figured out there's something north of 15 million people a day put something in their mouth that we produce.

- Wow.

I mean, I love Tostitos.

Do you have a favorite that, (chuckles) a favorite food that you go into a store and you go, "We make that"?

- Yeah, well, I think one of 'em is, going back, we have a great relationship with Wegmans.

So we make their basting oil, which I think it's a very, very popular, very popular product that they have, or their fresh orange juice.

We have some new technology that we introduced about four, five years ago called high pressure processing.

So we have tried to diversify, and we have.

That doesn't mean that it's been smooth.

We have had some hiccups here and there and all of that, but that's part of the fun in some ways.

- John, you have a successful business and you have done products for Paul Newman, for Wegmans, for so many others.

Hasn't another state or another city tried to lure you away?

And if so, what keeps you here?

- Well, we do have a plant, a pretty sophisticated plant in Pennsauken, New Jersey.

We have one in Fresno, California, but our core business is here.

Rochester is always had, what has been amazing is the work ethic.

I think it was the foundations with the big companies that were here and all of the successes that the Rochester region has had.

And because of the investment which run into the, frankly, the hundreds of millions of dollars now, if you put everything together, everything is very, very expensive.

These new lines cost, like I said, literally millions and millions of dollars.

So it's not that you can just pick up and move, but on the other hand, we wanna be here because Rochester is where we all started.

Rochester has been my home.

And the other thing is that Rochester has got this great infrastructure, water, sewage treatment plants, and everything, everything that a manufacturing enterprise like ours needs.

- You also have one of the coolest houses in Rochester, right on East Avenue next to The Little Theatre.

It's a house that was really designed for entertaining, and maybe you could tell us a little bit about that.

- Well, yeah, so we were living in Victor, and me and my dear wife, Dr. Cindy, we would be coming be it to the RPO or to Little, or to the concerts or whatever, or restaurants downtown, and we would be finding ourself driving back to Victor on many occasions, and we just decided that it would be a cool thing to move downtown 10 years ago.

We kind of were one of the first people to try to come back downtown and make something out of that.

And so we started looking around for a house or a place, we thought we wanted to be right in the center, and we could never really find anything that was opportunistic or that really suited us, and so we decided to build something.

And this was a recording studio, although, in the beginning on this spot was a tire store for Hallman Chevrolet back in the '50s.

And one thing led to the other and wound up building something that we really absolutely enjoy.

Yes, we built it to really entertain.

And that's, yeah, it's a pretty cool space that we really enjoy being here.

- Yeah, I don't know if you have kept track of how many receptions you've had at that house, but it has made a huge difference for so many organizations.

And you mentioned your wife.

She's been such a wonderful addition to the Rochester area.

And I have to admit, she was my past board chair, but I know she's doing a lot of work with Bill Valenti and Trillium right now.

People just really appreciate how much you've opened your home and really opened your hearts to the community.

It's something I hope you really appreciate and understand.

- Well, I appreciate it, but really it's the thanks go to all of the organizations that we try to support because as they say, it's better to give than to receive.

And we absolutely love it.

I mean, we build it to entertain.

We build it to be a very special place.

So if there is anything that we could do, I mean, for us, it's an absolute delight and pleasure to be able to do that.

So thanks are not needed because we are not doing anything except just doing what we love to do.

- Well, this really is a family affair.

You've got John, Jr. and Stefani as co-CEOs of the company, and, of course, your wife, Dr. Cindy, and her daughter Dylan working in the wellness area.

It looks like there's gonna be a future here for a long time with LiDestri, and I think I speak for a lot of people in the community when we say we'd like to keep it that way.

But it does make me wonder, are you ever gonna stop working (chuckles)?

- (laughing) Well, yeah.

We spend most of our time in Florida now.

Well, we are fortunate enough that a lot of people come and visit us during the winter.

No, I don't know that, again, that I will work forever, so whatever I do now, I do on the phone or whatever.

So I try to keep an eye from a distance, and I'm trying to give Stefani and John all the runway that they need to do with the company, to grow the company, to keep it solvent, to take care of the employees, like we always try to be engaged with the community.

- Well, John, I think I speak for a lot of us when I say thank you for all you've done for this community, and same to your wife, Cindy.

And also thank you for watching.

You can also watch this episode and past shows online at wxxxi.org.

And we'll see you next time on "Norm & Company."

(gentle music) (bells resonating) (electronic tones resonating)