Our family business is built on lessons learned in the family kitchen long ago: Keep it simple. Make good food. Treat people right.
Growing up, every Sunday was special. Mom made Sunday Sauce—enough for all three meals: Breakfast, with homemade meatballs and bread. Dinner (after church), with pasta, sausage, and more meatballs. And for supper? Pizza pie.
Life was good. And Papa Joe’s one-acre backyard garden made it delicious. Brothers Anthony and Bobby Musacchio sold fresh vegetables from a red wagon to neighbors. They can still smell the homegrown basil drying under the rear window of Dad’s car.
Later, big brother Joe went to work for Uncle Paul Basilio’s Italian sausage company, one of several such companies that sprang up in and around Syracuse, New York, to serve the booming post-war population.
Texas beckons
In the mid-Seventies, their cousin Big John moved to Flower Mound, Texas, and discovered that the Lone Star State was an Italian-sausage desert. He begged Joe to send him the sausage he craved from back home.
Sensing an opportunity, Joe moved to Texas and founded Syracuse’s Sausage Company, specializing in authentic Italian sausage and meatballs. Before long, Anthony and Bobby joined him, and the company grew.
The brothers’ first big account was with Texas supermarket chain Tom Thumb, which led to their first big break: a certain Tom Thumb customer who loved Syracuse’s Sausage so much more than other brands, he wanted to serve them in his restaurants. That customer was Norman Brinker, the legendary pioneer of the whole casual-dining, chain-restaurant concept.
Growing to serve
That greater demand led Syracuse’s Sausage to move into a larger facility in Ponder, Texas. Joe left to pursue other interests, and Anthony and Bobby joined forces with another leading family of food-service innovators, the Rosenthals, founders of Standard Meat Company (among other companies).
Today, Syracuse Sausage serves national restaurant chains, major grocery stores, and other food-service firms. And it’s still a family business. Anthony and Bobby Musacchio continue to make great-tasting sausages and meatballs from authentic recipes and pure, simple ingredients. The kind of food that came out of Mom’s kitchen all those years ago.
BROTHERS & OTHERS:THE SYRACUSE SAUSAGE FAMILY
At this family business, we treat everyone like family, no matter their last name. We all work with a passion for making good food that brings people together to share good times.