Walking the aisle at pretty much any grocery store along the East Coast where Italian specialty products are sold, a shopper will likely recognize the red and yellow labels of Pastene. If you’ve ever eaten a sub from Papa Gino’s—or any number of restaurants from Florida to Maine—it may have been served on a roll from Piantedosi bakery. And when the nationally trusted Wirecutter reviews a contraption with the one specific job of stirring natural peanut butter, Teddie Peanut Butter fans certainly notice its distinctive green label being used in the tests.

What Edible Boston readers may not realize is that these and many more well-established brands in the food world are all rooted right here. Whether in manufacturing or distribution, industrious Bostonians are responsible for getting some of the most recognizable and trusted products to grocery store shelves and restaurant operators.

What does it take to build a business that transcends “local” by building a legacy in Boston? These businesses tell stories about where Boston started and where it’s going.

PASTENE
Mark Tosi’s fourth cousin many times removed, Luigi Pastene, first rolled his pushcart full of produce through the North End in the mid-1800s. He was entrepreneurially targeting immigrants like himself, missing the flavors of home, and using his connections back in Europe to supply them with fresh tomatoes, olive oil and more. “It’s sort of the classic Italian story,” Tosi says (and one I covered in "Local Importers Bring Home a World of Flavors" for EB’s Fall 2023 issue).

Today, Pastene is a 150-year-old importing business, headquartered in Canton, which specializes in dried pasta and specialty products from Italy. “We have some people [in Italy] that have helped us produce for over 100 years,” says Tosi, Pastene’s president and co-owner, who comprises the family-owned company’s fifth generation along with his brother, CEO Chris.

Tosi doesn’t think his great-great-grandfather—nor even Luigi’s son, Pietro Pastene, who formally established the business in 1874—could comprehend the company today. Pastene offers more than 100 products, ranging from certified-D.O.P. San Marzano tomatoes, similar to what his relatives would have sourced, to gluten-free pasta and pickled pepperoncini.

“People are now using pepperoncini brine in their martinis and then using the sliced pepperoncini to garnish,” Tosi says, with mild bewilderment himself. “The consumer is better educated than they’ve ever been because of the internet and food networks.” Pastene has kept pace by coming out with new products, he says.

To honor its 150th anniversary, the company updated its logo this year for the first time in decades. The new mark simply removes black shadowing around the letters, and updates the fonts—the logo is iconic, after all. But “where we had room,” Tosi says, “we’re letting people know that we’re 150 years old.”

FOOD-PAK EXPRESS
Staying relevant to a new consumer generation is also driving a rebrand of products made by an original Chinatown food manufacturer.

Gary Wong and his family have started many businesses since the 1970s. Wong came to Boston as a teenager and learned to make wheat noodles by working at Ho Toy Noodle, which dates to 1970 in Chinatown and still produces in Stoughton. Other brands have come and gone, but the Wongs’ best-known label is Sun Hing Noodle, founded in 1977, which makes rice and wheat noodle products including lo mein, rice noodles, egg roll wrappers, wonton skins and frozen dumplings. Healthy Soy is another brand, which makes tofu products. As of this year, both those two labels are now under the brand name ABC Food Corp.

Wong and his family also expanded into importing and distribution with Food-Pak Express, a store in the Newmarket area of Roxbury. “We’re a membership- based wholesaler, almost like Costco or BJ’s, but geared toward the trade only,” explains Stephanie Lin, Wong’s oldest daughter. “Most of our clientele are Asian restaurants, and a couple of markets. We try to be a one-stop shop” for food products, paper goods and even restaurant equipment. “Bubble tea is a big trend right now,” she notes about the changing wants of their customers.

The new brand name for their house products, ABC stands for “American-born Chinese.” “We want to keep the Chinese within us, but at the same time you can’t be too specific,” Lin says. “As a new generation, we want to appeal to the masses versus just a particular section of the cuisine. A lot of the customers now are like myself and my siblings,” she says. “We are American-born. We want to keep the heritage, but at the same time, how do we make it hip?”

COSTA FRUIT & PRODUCE
In the second generation of Costa Fruit & Produce, Manuel Costa Jr. has worked for decades to make the living sustainable.

His father, Manny Sr., was raised in the Azores but established his produce business in Boston in the 1950s. At first, Costa Jr. wanted nothing to do with the industry. “I saw my father get up at 12:30am every morning and head down to the market to buy produce,” he says. Despite other interests, Costa was inclined toward business, so he began working at the company in the mid-1970s. “In those days, for lack of a better term, it was so primitive that there were so many ways you could introduce new ways of doing things,” Costa says.

Today, New England’s leading produce distributor employs upward of 200 people in Charlestown. Costa Produce also operates buying offices in agricultural hubs on the east and west coasts. It’s certified by the Sustainable Business Network as a leader in Massachusetts, based on criteria assessing the company’s waste management, trucking fleet management and production practices, as well as its promotion of local foods. All of this happened under Costa Jr.’s leadership; his father passed away in 1981.

Costa’s children don’t plan to join the company, but its local roots will be no less deep if and when he decides to retire. “We're developing younger people now,” Costa says, as well as benefiting from dedicated longevity of key employees, including a vice president, salespeople and a bookkeeper who have all marked 40 years with the company. “Business has come light years from where it was way back then.”

MARSHMALLOW FLUFF
The fourth generation of Durkee-Mower, the Lynnbased company that produces Marshmallow Fluff, is poised to take over operations. President Jon Durkee’s oldest son, Andrew, 32, is in line to be the company’s next head of sales. Jeff is the assistant treasurer, and, like his older brothers—and his father and grandfather before them—William is learning the ropes on the factory floor.

But what will happen after the eventual transition is an open question. (If Jon is anything like his father, Donald, the family has some time to decide; Donald worked until he was 94 years old, retiring after Durkee-Mower’s centennial year of 2020.) “It’s very difficult for a small, one-product company to compete,” Jon says. Fluff’s nearly 100-year-old factory is “the biggest it’s gonna get, so we really can’t do any other products here.”

Durkee-Mower gets by just fine, to be sure. “The famous American marshmallow spread,” as Fluff’s export labels read, has devoted fans all over the world and as far west as Chicago, Andrew says. Fluff has few direct competitors, but environmental instability presents production challenges. Two recent examples are a drought affecting corn syrup shipping routes, and an avian flu impacting the cost of eggs.

The next generation is in the fold to understand “how things are being run,” Jon says, and what challenges the company faces. “If we ever got to the point where we didn’t feel like we were competitive anymore, I could see [selling or merging with another company] happening in the future,” he says.

What, then, of the annual Fluff Festival? The Somerville tradition transcends Durkee-Mower. Recently celebrating its 20th year, Fluff Fest has the president’s blessing, but Jon Durkee says he would only ever attend it anonymously. “It appears that people really enjoy going and having a good time, and that’s what it’s all about,” he says. “That’s the legacy of Fluff right there. It reminds you of childhood.”

TEDDIE NATURAL PEANUT BUTTER
The conspicuously green label of Teddie Beer, a fall release from Night Shift Brewing, is no fluke. At nearly 100 years old, Teddie Natural Peanut Butter is “very careful with the brand,” says Jamie Hintlian, CEO of the Leavitt Corporation, which produces it. “It has to be the right partnership.”

The charity component of the Night Shift collaboration led to a “yes” when Teddie’s Everett neighbor asked to borrow the brand for a peanut butter porter, Hintlian says. Teddie chose one of its main philanthropic partners, the Greater Boston Food Bank, to donate $1 to from every four-pack of the beer sold. Hintlian’s brother, Mark, who retired as Teddie CEO in March, serves on the board at GBFB, and over a partnership of more than 30 years, Teddie has donated hundreds of thousands of pounds of peanut butter to the hunger-relief organization.

Being a good corporate citizen, promoting health and wellness and giving back to the community are the company’s pillars, Hintlian says, beyond making top-shelf natural peanut butter. Teddie is an official sponsor of Best Buddies International with every jar bearing its logo. The organization supports people with intellectual disabilities, including Jamie’s son, James, who has Down Syndrome and has been involved with Buddies for decades.

The family business is in its fourth generation: James and his cousin Alex, Mark’s son, both work for Teddie. But Hintlian only joined the company a handful of years ago, after retiring as a partner from a career in management consulting. “I like to tell people that it took me all that time to finally become qualified to come in and actually make a difference,” Jamie says.

PIANTEDOSI BAKING COMPANY
In 1916, Joe Piantedosi’s grandfather began building a business delivering bread to fellow Italians in Everett. Salvatore Piantedosi bought a wagon, a blind horse (because he couldn’t afford a fully abled one) and daily fresh bread from bakers in the North End, then made the four-mile trek back to what was then considered “the country,” says Piantedosi, the company’s third-generation executive vice president of sales and marketing.

Today, the company produces goods in-house at its Malden bakery, and manages its own packaging and delivery fleet. Primarily a wholesaler to restaurants since the 1980s, Piantedosi has grown its retail business out of necessity since the pandemic, Joe says. “You really need to grow and expand, especially to make room for them,” he says, referring to his son, Jared, 25, the company’s first media/marketing specialist; and Jared’s three cousins, Arthur, Carmen and Adam, who together comprise a fourth generation of leadership-in-training.

Arthur, 31, the director of business process and operational compliance, has worked at the factory officially for eight years, but he has known many key employees for his entire life. Some, like Frank, Piantedosi’s 40- year chief engineer, are Italian immigrants. More and more employees these days come from South America or Asia. For generations, immigrant families have gone to work together at the Malden bakery, thanks in part to its convenient location on the MBTA’s Orange Line. “We have so many parents and children, brothers and sisters, people that have met their spouses here,” Arthur says.

For the second year, Piantedosi has offered English language lessons for full-time staff through a grant from the Massachusetts Workforce Training Fund Program. The program supports employee retention and is a competitive benefit the company can offer, Arthur adds. “We want to give them the trajectory in-house to grow.”

While it’s Arthur’s goal to get to a fifth generation of family leadership, “it’s also a sense of pride for me that it’s a family business, not just from the Piantedosi standpoint,” he says.

This story appeared in the Winter 2025 issue.