Back in 1889, the automobile had barely been invented, and the airplane was still a gleam in the Wright brothers’ eyes. Yet, Italian immigrant Vincent Formusa had the foresight to found a company to meet his paesani’s growing demand for food products from their homeland. And so, V. Formusa Co. was launched at 710 W. Grand Ave. in Chicago.

A century and a quarter later, the company turns out a wide array of Italian specialty food products at their modern plant at 2150 Oxford Road in Des Plaines, packaging them in distinctive red and yellow Marconi Foods bottles and shipping them across the country.