Company History

LiDestri Foods, Inc. began in 1975 as Cantisano Foods, founded by Ralph Cantisano, whose family started Ragu Foods. In the beginning, we manufactured cheese. In 1978 we began producing foodservice spaghetti sauce in #10 cans. Business quickly grew and the company moved its plant to Lyell Avenue in Rochester, NY where it started making retail pasta sauces.

Always looking for ways to expand and improve, Cantisano Foods acquired the Francesco Rinaldi retail brand in 1981, which it continues to produce. The following year, we started making sauce for one of the biggest and well-known names in the market, Paul Newman. For the next 10 years, we concentrated on building a strong base and upgraded our facility many times. In 1990, we received USDA approval to produce high content meat and poultry products. Because we were shipping thousands of cases of sauce from NY to the west coast of the United States, we decided to open a production facility in Fresno, CA. This new facility opened in 1991. Three years later our NY facility moved from Rochester, NY to Fairport, NY (a wonderful suburb of Rochester, which is still our home today). In 1996 we added retort capability to our Fairport plant. One year later, we were producing so much product that we ran out of space to store it for the one to two weeks it takes our customers to take delivery and to alleviate the space problem, an automated high-density warehouse (16,000 pallets) was installed.

2002 saw a landmark change in our company: Ralph Cantisano retired and our President and CEO, John LiDestri, who had been Ralph's protegé and partner for 20 years , purchased all outstanding stock of the company and the LiDestri family became the sole owner of the company. The next year, our name changed to LiDestri Foods, Inc. Also in 2003, we added our third glass line in the Fairport plant and began an expansion of the Fairport building. In 2004, we expanded the Fresno facility to accommodate 8 rotary retorts. In 2005, our business and employee base had outgrown Fairport’s footprint and a new building expansion was completed to provide new employee facilities and more office space.

2005 Purchased the Dundee facility.
2006 Commissioned a Dairy/Retort kitchen in Fresno.
2006 Purchased Pennsauken, NJ facility.

Even though our name has changed, we still think of our founder, Ralph Cantisano, every day. He is our inspiration and we will forever be grateful for his vision and his dedication to this company and its employees.