Ragu started in a Rochester kitchen and became America’s top spaghetti sauce

Ragu started in the kitchen of a home in northwest Rochester during the Depression and grew to become the top-selling spaghetti sauce in the country.

The Lyell Avenue plant once employed more than 300 people. Run for years by the Cantisano family, the Ragu Packing Co. eventually was sold to a national firm, but manufacturing operations remained in Rochester another two decades.

Ralph Cantisano, the longtime company president, started another food company locally after he retired from Ragu. Cantisano Foods also made spaghetti sauce, though nowhere near the volume of Ragu, which remains an industry leader.

Cantisano's parents, Giovanni and Assunta Cantisano, started Ragu as a "cottage industry" in their Avery Street home in 1937. The parents would cook the sauce, and their children, inclu