The History of DelGrosso Pasta Sauce

In 1911, Marianna Pulcino immigrated to America from Italy and brought her pasta sauce recipe with her. After settling in Altoona, Pennsylvania, she established Mom’s Café and began serving classic Italian dishes. While working as a waitress there, her daughter, Mafalda, met her future husband, a young railroader named Ferdinand DelGrosso. The two married, and in 1943, they opened a restaurant on 17th Street and called it DelGrosso’s Café. Using Marianna’s original sauce recipe, they began serving what became known as the “best spaghetti dinner in town.” When Fred noticed that customers had repeatedly offered to pay extra to take home a portion of the sauce, he realized that commercially manufacturing pasta sauce would make sense. In 1946, he and Mafalda sold the restaurant and purchased the nearby Bland’s Amusement Park. Using the park kitchen, the husband-and-wife team began making batches of pasta sauce, and then Fred and his friends would go out and sell them. Over time, DelGrosso pasta sauce caught on and became popular enough to reach supermarket shelves all across the country. In 2006, a special line of pasta sauces called La Famiglia DelGrosso was released; each recipe was created by a different family member as a celebration of the company’s heritage. Notably, the company is America’s oldest major family-owned pasta sauce manufacturer and markets their popular products under the slogan, “The Finest Sauce Made.”