I stood in front of this entire wall of pasta sauce looking for something that was actually still family owned

I stood in front of this entire wall of pasta sauce looking for something that was actually still family owned — not just a family name or an old “family recipe” sitting on a label owned by a giant publicly traded corporation.

Botticelli was the one that caught my attention. It was founded in 2002 by Joseph Asaro and his son Salvatore, and the company says it remains family owned today. It is still a much smaller independent food company compared with most of the household names surrounding it. (Botticelli Foods)

There is an interesting exception here, though: RAGÚ and Bertolli. Both are owned by Mizkan, which is absolutely a huge international corporation with operations around the world. But Mizkan is privately held and family owned, with a history stretching back more than 200 years. So while RAGÚ and Bertolli are definitely “big corporate” brands in scale, their parent company is not publicly traded. (RAGÚ)

So the shelf is a little more complicated than “family owned vs. corporate owned.”

Botticelli = smaller, independently family-owned company.

RAGÚ and Bertolli = owned by a massive multinational corporation, but that corporation itself is privately held and family owned.

Prego and several of the other familiar brands on this wall belong to large publicly traded food companies.

I thought that was pretty interesting. Sometimes the ownership behind a grocery-store label is very different from what the front of the jar makes you assume.

#FamilyOwned #PastaSauce #GroceryStoreFinds #FoodFacts #Botticelli #Ragu #Bertolli