Joe Faro, founder and CEO of Tuscan Brands, was at a conference in Chicago when he overheard a group of investors talking about a potential acquisition of Buitoni Food Company, the Italian food brand founded in Tuscany in 1827. Faro knew the company had hit a rough patch, and he thought he might be the person to revitalize a brand that had once been synonymous with culinary craftsmanship.
“I’m not a genius,” Faro says. “But I am a pasta maker.”
In September, Faro announced that he and his partners were buying Buitoni. The move not only represents an expansion of Tuscan Brands’ manufacturing arm, but it’s also a full-circle moment for Faro—even if that circle does take a bit of explaining.
Faro founded Joseph’s Gourmet Pasta & Sauces in 1991, using a business plan he wrote as a student at the University of New Hampshire. He actually sold that company to Buitoni in 2006, when Buitoni was a part of Nestle Prepared Foods. Buitoni and Joseph’s were each eventually spun off in separate private equity deals, and so when The Artisan Chef Manufacturing Co.—one of 31 companies owned by Tuscan Brands, and a partnership between Faro and Sal’s Pizza CEO Sal Lupoli—purchased Buitoni, the deal did not actually include Joseph’s.
Faro explains he loves to visualize new businesses.
Joe Faro has been developing his brand since 1991.
In short: Faro bought the company that bought his old company, but that company doesn’t own his old company anymore.
“When I walked back into the Buitoni factory, many of the folks had been there for 25 years,” Faro says. “They were like: This can’t be happening. Not that guy from Lawrence again.”
Faro worked for Nestle for two and a half years after it bought his company, and then he briefly retired, but he was under 40 at the time, and he soon grew restless. In 2010, he founded Tuscan Brands and opened the first Tuscan Kitchen restaurant location in Salem, New Hampshire. Today, the company operates restaurants in Burlington and the Boston Seaport, as well as a catering arm. In 2015, Tuscan Brands purchased the 170-acre Rockingham Park property in Salem, New Hampshire, transforming it into Tuscan Village, a mixed-use lifestyle destination that includes Tuscan Market, a retail outlet that sells prepared foods and imported Italian products, and also offers cooking classes. And in 2019, Faro returned to his food manufacturing roots with the founding of The Artisan Chef Manufacturing Co..
“I love to visualize new businesses,” Faro says. “I love to visualize concepts and then bring them to fruition.”
In all, Tuscan Brands now employs 3,000 people in hospitality, food manufacturing, and real estate development, and Faro has plans to double the size of Buitoni. But this sweeping scale and frenetic growth are balanced by the old-world care that he brings to his food. Faro’s parents were immigrants from Sicily, and he started Joseph’s in the attic of his family’s Haverhill bakery. Tuscan Brands imports Italian 00 flour, prized for its extremely fine texture, and Faro vows to bring that artisanal ethic back to Buitoni, while keeping the company’s historic branding.
“Buitoni kind of became a commercial pasta maker, so it really lost its authentic Italian, artisanal roots,” Faro says. “But we don’t have to recreate anything, because if you go back to what these guys were doing in 1929 and 1935…the branding is amazing. Very vintage, very authentic, artisanal. Very Italian. We’re bringing that back, and then in the package will be the pasta that everyone knows from Tuscan Village and Tuscan Market.”
As Faro integrates Buitoni with his existing businesses, he has one eye on the past and one on the future. He plans to draw on imagery from vintage Buitoni posters for murals at Tuscan Village, for instance. “If you Google vintage Italian posters, half of them are Buitoni,” he says. Faro is also in the process of developing a special “reserva” Buitoni line made up of high-end, small-batch products to be sold at Tuscan Market. Two of his children now work for Tuscan Brands, and Faro eventually plans to open a culinary center in Italy.
“What I’m most excited about is the people inside of our company and the way they’re growing, and I’m excited to surround my two boys with these beautiful people,” Faro says. “They are the future.”