Louisa Food Products Inc

General information

Louisa Foods was founded in 1964 by John Baldetti and his father, Ferdinando. Ferdinando owned Garavelli’s, a popular restaurant in St. Louis for over 60 years. One of the more popular items at the restaurant was ravioli. The Company was founded with the intention of producing “homemade quality” ravioli for restaurants to serve their customers. The ravioli would be based on the recipe prepared at home by John’s mother, Luisa, after whom the Company was named.

To make products that were truly “homemade quality” would require high quality, fresh ingredients. Then, these ingredients would have to be prepared and cooked, just prior to stuffing into pasta, using methods that would lead to great taste and texture. Parmesan and romano cheese would have to be freshly grated. This intense attention devoted to filling preparation was, and still is, necessary to produce “homemade quality”.

Louisa Foods is now run by the third generation of the Baldetti family and a fine group of non-family managers. Since its early beginning, many new products have been added, including breaded (toasted) ravioli, cannelloni/manicotti, and tortellini/tortelloni. Along with these new products, Louisa Foods has expanded its plant, updated its equipment, added a microbiological lab, and added appropriate management staff and employee training systems. All of these changes have been made to help the Company continue to meet its goal of delivering superior value in frozen filled pasta.

Louisa Foods is happy to report that despite all of the changes, we still use as many fresh, high quality ingredients as possible and we still apply cooking methods we believe are necessary to produce “homemade quality” filled pasta products. Adhering to these basic principles has resulted in healthy and sustained growth for the Company.