Agostino Foods, a company whose roots date back to 1916, has remained successful by reinventing itself several times over the past 108 years.
The company was founded when Sicilian immigrant Agostino Passanante opened a small butcher shop/grocery store in Bristol, PA that his three sons, Burt, Gus and John operated after Agostino’s death.
After World War II, the retail grocery business was rapidly shifting to a self-service model and the three brothers considered leaving the food industry for potential real estate opportunities in the burgeoning Delaware Valley Market.
Instead they entered the restaurant and hotel supply business, selling meat products to commercial ships and other institutions.
Through a contact from California, they learned of a new industry that was growing rapidly in other parts of the country – the home freezer business.
The Passanantes were more than intrigued. They built a facility in Bristol where they sold freezer and frozen meat products directly to consumers.
“My father and uncles were very instinctive people. They recognized the untapped potential of home delivering frozen foods – which was booming after the war – and witnessed the explosive growth of communities like Levittown, PA and other surrounding towns in Bucks County,” said A.J. Passanante, CEO of Agostino Foods.
A.J. entered the business in 1972 and continued to help grow the home freezer business which continued until the company sold it in 2010.
At that time, the dedicated direct to consumer home freezer business was evolving and helped by A.J’s son John, sought a new direction which would focused on a business-to-business model.
Our stock and trade were as butchers,” John Passanante noted. “ We needed to find a niche in which we could use the quality of our meat products to spearhead our shift and open up new doors in both the foodservice segment and private label meat packing customers.”
The company’s focus centered on promoting its meat products to distributors that Agostino Foods had dealt with in another generation (Sysco, US Foods) and well as working with high-profile chefs (including Emeril Lagasse and Todd English) to promote the Agostino brand.
Those businesses continue to be key components to the success of Agostino Foods which today operates from a 33,000 square foot headquarters office in the Fallsington section of Bristol Borough.
With A.J. overseeing the company, John began to explore other opportunities to expand the firm’s growth.
In 2019, John Passanante became intrigued with a small but growing interest in a French cooking method called sous vide, in which food – especially meat and fish – is prepared by vacuum sealing and water immersion. The style was familiar to some high-end chefs, but virtually unknown to many other restaurants, retailers and consumers.
After conducting nearly two years of research, Agostino Foods made a large investment in purchasing the specialized equipment needed to prepare items using the sous vide process.
While they had the contacts and relationships with their foodservice customers, adding grocery retailers to their customer lists meant a move into uncharted territory.
“I was very fortunate to have gone to high school with Jim McCaffrey IV (co-owner of McCaffrey’s Markets). As COVID hit and labor staffing became a big issue, I approached Jim to see if there was interest in using some sous vide items in his commissary.” John Passanante recalled. “After he and his team visited our facility and they tasted our products, they recognized the many benefits that sous vide would bring to their operation.”
The man responsible for overseeing manufacturing and distribution is Matt Beadle, chief operating officer, who joined Agostino in 2022, after a 25-year career in manufacturing and maintenance including seven years with Seneca Foods.
Currently, Agostino has about 15 sous vide SKUs available including its best sellers pork carnitas, Jamaican jerk chicken thighs, beef pot roast, beef brisket and grilled boneless chicken breasts.
We asked Beadle to explain the preparation process for pork carnitas.
“We do the meat trimming and portioning in-house. We also create our own marinade. We then place the product into a 250-pound tumbler to mix the ingredients and from there we put the product into a vacuum-sealed pouch machine. It then goes into a 600-pound sous vide tank. After cooking is completed, the carnitas are chilled. At that point, the carnitas are essentially a product that can be frozen or reheated.”
Beadle added that he, too, sees tremendous potential for sous vide growth.
“With so much attention on food safety, this is a much more simple and clean process,” he explained. “We also have the potential to customize products to suit a retailer’s need. As more and more retailers expand their prepared food offerings, sous vide will play an important role in that development.”
“Our next step is to educate and promote the advantages of sous vide,” said John Passanante. “Whether its trade shows, seminars, sampling or other types of marketing, the process needs more exposure. When the retailers feel comfortable with the benefits of sous vide, we are ready to serve them.”
“In the next five years, we believe that Agostino Foods will be serving a variety of retailers east of the Mississippi,” A.J. Passanante stated. “We have confidence in the sous vide process as well as in our strong customer service reputation that’s been our hallmark for four generations.”
