Pauly Guglielmo, known for his work on the Brother Wease Show, was once asked on air who he’d have lunch with if he could choose anyone, living or dead.
His reply: Giovanni Lidestri, CEO of Lidestri Foods – best known locally for the sprawling manufacturing plant where the smell of tomato sauce wafts in the air as you pass it on Whitney Road in Fairport.
Guglielmo was teased about his answer, but he defended it. Lidestri is an immigrant from Italy who started out working on Ragu’s factory floor. “Now look at him. Look at that story,” he said. “He is the American dream. That’s my hero.”
After that exchange, Guglielmo met Lidestri and they had a brief conversation. “I was so nervous,” he said. “It was the way a teenage girl would be if she was meeting Ryan Gosling.”
He decided to follow up with a note telling Lidestri that it had been an honor for him. Because he knew Lidestri was no longer in charge of day-to-day operations, he wasn’t sure if Lidestri would receive something sent to the plant. So instead, he left a note and a bottle of his own sauce in the mail chute at Lidestri’s East End home.
But as he drove away, it occurred to him that this well-intended gesture could be construed as stalking. He called his wife, Ryann Bouchard-Guglielmo, director of public relations at Dixon Schwabl, and told her what he had done.
“You showed up at his house?” she asked, incredulous. “Yes, that’s bad.”
“I never heard from him again,” Gugliemo said, with a rueful chuckle.
Self-deprecating stories like these have earned Guglielmo legions of fans during his 15-year career in radio, most of it spent as producer and personality on the Brother Wease show.
But now, Guglielmo is making a major change. He is stepping down from his successful radio career to take the helm of his own enterprise — in the same field as his hero’s.
Grandfather’s recipe spawns a business
Growing up in the small town of Conneaut, Ohio, Guglielmo enjoyed visiting his grandparents’ house.
“I was always the first one there for Sunday sauce,” he said. He helped his grandfather in the kitchen, but mostly he liked to sit and talk with him. His love for his grandfather and his Italian heritage led to him studying in Italy as a Rotary exchange student in high school.
While studying psychology at John Carroll University, he got involved in the college radio station. He wanted to play rap music but needed to edit the audio to get rid of the curse words. Those production skills got him his first job as a part-time night guy in Ashtabula, Ohio.
His position grew, and when the station was acquired by Clear Channel Radio, he was offered a transfer to Rochester.
It took him awhile to make friends in Rochester. Homesick, he would make his grandfather’s sauce for a taste of home.
Eventually he came to appreciate the city's arts and food scenes, and that it was “big and small at the same time” — big enough that Bruce Springsteen came to town, but small enough that if you went out to eat, you’d see someone you know.
“I really started to like Rochester,” he said. “I just fell in love with the city. I thought it embraced people for who they were.”
He started looking into making his grandfather’s sauce commercially by going to the Cornell Food Venture Center in Geneva, which validates food safety and stability. He took the process step by step. His first production run was in 2014; his grandfather was able to see the first jar before he died in 2015.
Guglielmo's initial idea was to produce only his grandfather’s sauce, made with Italian sausage. His wife insisted that he also needed a vegetarian version. Guglielmo was skeptical.
“I’ve been eating sauce my entire life. The point is the meat,” he said.
“To this day, the vegetarian marinara is by far our best seller,” he added, laughing.
Sales grew and new products were introduced, inspired by his own cooking for his family. It helped that he was able to talk about the sauce on the radio, and that Bouchard-Guglielmo was savvy with marketing and publicity.
He appreciated the ability to be his own boss, call the shots and see positive results from his ideas. “When it started to work, that did wonders for my personal self-esteem,” he said.
Meanwhile, he became disenchanted with radio, feeling like his ideas were not being heard. He had the chance to host some shows — which had always been his dream — but realized he was having more fun in the sauce business than on the radio.
From radio personality to food manufacturer
At 4:30 a.m. one day earlier this year, Guglielmo was picking up jars from Permac Enterprises in Bergen, which makes his meat sauce. While loading his van, Guglielmo casually asked Tony Perry, the owner, if he had ever thought about selling the business.
Perry, 60, had been approached by interested people in the past but he had never given it much consideration. But this time, the timing — and the person — was right.
“We’ve been doing Pauly’s sauces since 2014,” Perry said. “I see how hard he works. He’s at every festival. He volunteers a lot in the community. He’s nonstop.” They quickly reached a deal.
An auto mechanic by trade, Perry had gotten his start when he decided to package and market his own meat hot sauce. It was originally made by a co-packer, but after a while he wanted to control the process — a benefit he sees for Guglielmo. “There’s nothing better than knowing that when an order comes in, you’re going to be able to fill it,” he said.
The business is currently housed in a tiny space that used to house a pizzeria. For the past two years, Perry has been at work on a new, 5,000-square-foot facility, with another thousand on a second floor. The process took longer than expected and will be completed after the sale of the company.
“It’s a dream come true for me to walk into a situation where a brand new building is involved,” Guglielmo said. “I’m pinching myself, really.”
A competitive advantage is that it is one of only six USDA cannery manufacturing plants in New York state, which enables it to develop shelf-stable products made with meat.
Two key members of Perry’s staff will continue with the company and have a small stake in the company: Jay Perry, Tony’s son, will run manufacturing, and Jamie Lloyd, who was with Perry from the beginning. Tony Perry will work with Guglielmo during the transition. “I’m not moving to Florida or anything,” Perry said. “I’m 15 minutes away.”
Another key player in the deal is Tom Riggio, a veteran businessman in the food and drink industry. He has worked on such products as Pirate’s Booty, Vitamin Water and Bark Thins.
He now works as an advisor and investor, including for Iron Smoke Distillery. He met Guglielmo at a party at Iron Smoke a few years ago, and they became friends. He invested in Guglielmo’s company with a minority ownership stake.
“He’s an insanely bright guy,” Riggio said of Guglielmo. “He’s intensely passionate about what he does. I wouldn’t be doing this unless I had 100% confidence in Pauly. I truly believe in the guy as a person and a businessperson.”
The advent of the coronavirus pandemic came at a precarious phase for the deal. “It scared the heck out of me,” Guglielmo said.
But food manufacturing has been considered essential, and Permac has been extremely busy, Perry said.
Guglielmo plans a name change and rebrand of the company within the next three months, with Bouchard-Guglielmo playing a key role in the process.
He will start out with Permac’s current equipment, including two kettles that produce 35 gallons each. On a good day, the plant can complete 10 runs, or 350 gallons in all.
“In the manufacturing industry, 35 gallons is nothing,” Guglielmo said. Guglielmo plans to double the business within the first year.
His first new client for the plant will be his own sauce business. When his volumes grew, he had moved much of his production to a co-packer that could produce higher volumes at a lower cost per jar. Those numbers alone will represent growth.
He has already helped some entrepreneurs start their own food businesses, and he's looking forward to working with more.
“I can’t even tell you how excited I get about that,” he said. “I love helping people make their dream come true.”
The new facility has plenty of room for growth. He has not calculated the upper limit that the facility could achieve.
Could it be big enough to compete with his hero's company? Guglielmo says no.
“You can get pretty big and still not be big enough for Lidestri,” he said. “Big, but not that big.”
Read more about his sauce: Healthy SpaghettiOs? Guglielmo Sauce of Rochester taps into clean-eating trend for families
Reporter Tracy Schuhmacher focuses on food from many facets. Send story tips to TracyS@Gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter or Instagram as @RahChaChow. Your subscription makes work like this possible.
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