San Giorgio Macaroni, Inc. - A Brief History

In 1914 an elderly Italian macaroni maker in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, anxious to retire and return to his homeland, talked Girolamo Guerrisi into buying his little one-man, hand-operated business. Guerrisi, modestly successful with a small fruit business, decided to "take a chance on it." He was to turn that "chance" into a dynamic pasta company which ranked in the top five among all 125 macaroni and egg noodle producers in the United States.

Born in Reggio Calabria, Italy, in 1890, Guerrisi came to America at the age of 12 and soon became a water boy at a stone quarry in New York. Then he took a job in a Bronx foundry. A few years later he moved to Harrisburg and earned some money as a dish washer.

One Sunday he visited a friend in nearby Lebanon and decided to stay over until Monday to find a job. Though he had little command of English, he was hired by the Keystone Fruit Company to deliver fruit with a horse drawn cart, because, he was told, the horse knew where to make the stops. Some six year later, in 1910, Guerrisi bought the fruit company and soon had 11 salesmen and six delivery trucks.

The tiny pasta business he bought in 1914 and named the Keystone Macaroni Manufacturing Company was located on Sixth Street. It was turning out about 100 pounds, or ten boxes, of macaroni per day. Giorlamo improved the quality of his product and boosted sales with an intensified door to door campaign. Within two years he had acquired some land for expansion in the area of the present plant at North Eighth and Guilford Streets.

In 1921 a new building was constructed at that site, and it was equipped with the latest in pasta manufacturing equipment so that by 1950 the company which once produced 100 pounds of product per day was turning out 400,000 pounds per week. The door to door distribution had long since given way to a more elaborate system covering most of the Eastern Seaboard.

San Giorgio ("Saint George" in English) was one of several brand names being used by Guerrisi. Others included Keyco (a big seller in the South), Fiume, and Cleen-Made (a popular potpie). Other businesses – The Keystone Wholesale Candy Company and the Keystone Chemical Company – were also part of Guerrisi’s holdings in the 1920’s and 1930’s; but, like the fruit business, they were sold as the macaroni company expanded into a major American pasta enterprise.

By the time of Girolamo’s death in 1949, the five Guerrisi sons – Raymond, Robert, Joseph, Henry, and Jerome (there were also five daughters) – were moving into key management positions, and the business kept growing. In order to make greater use of its best known brand name, the company was renamed San Giorgio Macaroni, Inc. in 1955.

Then, in 1960 a tragic fire destroyed 95 percent of the firm’s six-story plant. So the Guerrisis built a new one. Opened in 1961, it was equipped with the ultimate in mechanized processing equipment. Hershey Foods Corporation acquired the firm in 1966, and the pattern of growth continued with the Guerrisi sons remaining in many of the significant roles of leadership.