CLIFTON HEIGHTS — For months, work trucks have been going in and out of the site of the former Lotsa Pasta restaurant, 412 S. Springfield Road, creating the new home of Scaramuzza’s Pasta Products Inc.
Now in its final construction phase, the soon-to-be new site of the 57-year-old, family-owned business, is scheduled to be up and running, and opening its doors to the public, sometime this fall.
“Business has been booming,” stated owner Bob Scaramuzza, who currently owns the Scaramuzza Pasta Products plant at 20 Ogden St. in Clifton Heights. “If we want to continue to grow our business, we had to move to a larger facility. If all goes as planned, we should be open by late October or early November."
And large it is. The new state-of-the art Scaramuzza’s Pasta Products has a 2,500 square-foot freezer, a huge, climate-controlled kitchen with a ten burner stove and six sinks, drains on the floors for spotless cleanups, all new plumbing, an 800 square-foot store front with black marbled flooring, offices, a media room, ADA certified restrooms, huge loading docks in the back of the building and much more.
Unlike Scaramuzza’s former location on Springfield Road, the new site will have plenty of parking. Luckily, Scaramuzza’s Pasta will also have a lot more room to produce the same homemade pasta and products that has earned it a continually growing customer fan base since 1963 when it first moved to the borough, a year after its founding in West Philadelphia. As the families and generations of those original first customers expanded, so did the business.
Founded by Bob Scaramuzza’s grandmother, Clementine DeLioggo and his mother Mary Scaramuzza, the business is now owned and operated by Bob Scaramuzza, Mary’s son, and his wife Lisa and their two children, Bob and Nicole.
In 2016, Scaramuzza’s Pasta Products closed its walk-in retail store at 435 N. Springfield Road, Clifton Heights, after five decades at the same Delaware County location. Scaramuzza said at the time that the expanding company had simply outgrown the location, even with an addition added on in earlier years. However, the company stayed in Clifton Heights, retaining its wholesale operation at the 3,200 square-foot Ogden Street property. With its products in more than 200 store locations and continually growing, Scaramuzza wanted to purchase a larger site for the frozen pasta wholesale company, to incorporate more modern equipment, more space to increase production, and enough room to reopen a walk-in retail store, much larger than the previous one.
A resident of Springfield and a graduate of Cardinal O’Hara High School, Scaramuzza opted to make the location, only a short distance down Springfield Road, from the site of the former store.
Scaramuzza strolls through the new property like a proud father, pointing out where the equipment will be located to increase efficiency or how an office will be used to make cardboard boxes for the products, or marveling at the technology of the automatic lighting and the security monitors inside and out. While walking through the empty rooms that will soon be filled with shiny stainless steel equipment and commercial-sized bags of flour and vats of cheese, one can almost imagine the smell of tomatoes cooking, that will soon waft from the kitchen.
“The demand keeps growing and in order to expand outside of the tri-state area and the 75 mile radius of Philadelphia where Scaramuzza Products are now carried, we needed to upgrade our factory operation,” Scarauzza shared. “People these days want convenience. Not everyone has the time to stop at a specialty store to pick up just pasta. They want the quality, but they also want the one-stop shopping at a supermarket or other location so we had to evolve with the times and give our customers the option to come in and see us or get our product at another retail location if they desire.”
Scaramuzza Pasta products can already be purchased at hundreds of area locations, including 75 Acme supermarkets, 65 Giant supermarkets, 13 Wegmans, 4 Colonial Village stores, 9 ShopRite stores, Shop N Bag, DiBruno Bros., Guy’s Cold Cuts, Roy Tweedy’s, Luigi & Giovanni’s, Trio’s, and many other stores in the tri-state area and down at the shore.
By having a larger space for production, Scaramuzza said he can increase the wholesale side of the operation, selling to even more stores and commercial businesses. Scaramuzza confided that he heard rumors about people who think his new location will also house a restaurant, since the new site was the location of a former restaurant. He says, “absolutely not.” The expanded facility is strictly to increase wholesale production and re-open the storefront that customers appreciated.
“I get new inquiries for our products all of the time,” Scaramuzza shared. “But I was at a plateau in the business. I either had to expand our operation to keep up with demand and grow, or not. Now, with our new place, we will soon have the key elements in place to keep up with the demand and move forward.”
Still using the original recipe that DeLioggo brought from her hometown of Rosetta in Abruzzo, Italy, Scaramuzza Pasta sells 13 different products through its wholesale business. On an average day, Scaramuzza Pasta makes 1,500 dozen ravioli, 5-600 pounds of spaghetti, 800 pounds of gnocchi and 100 gallons of spaghetti gravy. Additionally, the company ships out 360 packages of stuffed shells in a day. The jumbo ravioli is still the company’s most popular product.
“Our new building will have a 25 foot-long ravioli maker, that I brought here from Italy,” Scaramuzza said. “I couldn’t have something like that in our old building. And the stove will accommodate two 50 gallon kettles at one time so we will be able to make 100 gallons of fresh gravy at a time in our new kitchen.”
Scaramuzza said the very first ravioli off the new machine will go right into the retail store in the front of the business, where, in just a few weeks, customers can walk in to pick up fresh and frozen pasta, cheeses and “everything Italian.”
The proud business owner showed off the original 1963 neon sign that hung at its original storefront location. It’s now hanging in the new location’s lobby, where there will also be vintage spaghetti machines and other items that speak of his family’s earlier history in the business.
Scaramuzza currently employs 19 people, but the number will likely grow by at least half a dozen or more, he said, once the new site is up and running.
“We’re on top of one another over on Ogden Street,” Scaramuzza shared. “It’s going to be a godsend to move into a more spacious site.”
Scaramuzza said the room-sized refrigerator will also be a blessing since the company uses 5-6,000 pounds of ricotta cheese on site each week, and that rises to 10-11,000 in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
“I want everyone in Delaware County and the surrounding area to know that we are coming back and they can walk in to get freshly made ravioli. We targeted to have our new place open in time for the holidays,” Scaramuzza said. “I know customers will like what they see once we’re open. People will be able to stop by our storefront, and pick up fresh pasta and other products, coming straight out of the kitchen. Eventually, we may even offer take out. Our new location will keep the tradition of the Scaramuzza family and products, but will now be able to offer so much more.
“My mother would probably think I was crazy for doing this,” Scaramuzza laughed, as he overlooked the on-site construction crews, busily putting finishing touches on walls and floors.
Scaramuzza said one of the “coolest” moments for him personally came once when his wife Lisa took his late mother shopping at a supermarket and she saw Scaramuzza products on the shelves. His mother knew the product went wholesale, but this was the first time that she herself saw it being sold in another store.
“My mother was overwhelmed,” Scaramuzza stated, smiling at the memory. “She told me how proud she was. If only, she could see it now!”
To get a complete listing of where Scaramuzza Pasta Products can be found, visit www.scaramuzzaspasta.com. To reach Scaramuzza’s Pasta Products Inc., 20 Ogden St., Clifton Heights, call 610-623-8800 or email scaramuzzaspasta@scaramuzzaspasta.com.
