Remember this rhyme next time you crave Italian cuisine:
“Lucchesi’s Is now in freezer cases.”
Owner Michael Robilio says he’ll continue to make fresh pasta, meat sauce, marinara, and other items and sell them at his store, Lucchesi’s Ravioli and Pasta Co., at 540 South Mendenhall Road in Mendenhall Commons. But now his popular items are also available at selected retail stores, including Superlo Foods at 4744 Spottswood Avenue, High Point Grocery, South Point Grocery, and Cordelia’s Market.
His products include spaghetti and meatballs, chicken spaghetti, chili and tamales, meatball and marinara, meat lasagna, along with buffalo chicken, pepperoni, and supreme flatbread pizzas.
The frozen Italian cuisine also will be available in Oxford, New Albany, and Olive Branch, Mississippi, Robilio says. He’s partnering in this new business, Lucchesi’s Worldwide, with Sam Lucchesi, Darrell Horn, Mike Gabrielleschi, Wes Kraker, and Al Stukenborg.
He also used to sell frozen items, made in-house, at his store as well as in other stores. But the United States Department of Agriculture said the products had to be made in “an official USDA kitchen,” he says. “Which we are now.”
They’re now working out of Lucchesi’s Worldwide Kitchen, a commercial kitchen in Memphis.
“We have new labels, new packaging … more professional. We’re doing it all the right way.”
Robilio actually had the idea once before to begin selling frozen Lucchesi’s products to stores large-scale. “I thought about it. Five years ago, I leased a building out at Bellbrook near Corky’s and St. Claire Foods.”
“We had drawings done by FourFront Design [previously Fleming Architects]. I was ready to go.”
But Covid hit and Robilio got busier with the demand for his frozen to-go food items. “Our shelves went up 30 percent during Covid. We were doing so much business out of that little store, I realized I couldn’t do them both without someone else.”
He’s getting rid of his Bellbrook building to concentrate on the new business. “My five years is up in August.”
Robilio acquired the recipes when he bought his business from Vince and Pat Lucchesi in 1999. He added other recipes, including Ashley’s Chicken Spaghetti, which came from his wife, Ashley Boggs Robilio. It’s made with their homemade spaghetti, but it includes mushrooms, seasonings, and cooked chicken.
In a May 2022 “Classic Dining” column in Memphis Magazine, Robilio talks about the beginnings of the business, which was started by the Lucchesi’s in 1990. “It was just takeout with fresh lasagna and a couple of meals, like ravioli,” he says. “They always made the ravioli, the pasta, and the sauce from scratch. We still do. We have not changed one of those recipes.”
Robilio bought Lucchesi’s when he decided to change businesses. “I wanted to sell my grocery store. I used to own Robilio’s Big Star, but I wanted to get out of the business and I did not want to work for anybody.”
He and a group of investors bought it. “At one time we had two stores and three franchises, but that was very hard to do. We learned our lesson that going that fast, like a lot of people do, is not necessarily the best way to grow.”
They “more than doubled the business” at their Mendenhall Commons store after they closed their other locations, he says.
Sam Lucchesi, who is not related to Vince and Pat Lucchesi, says he and his father-in-law, Darrell Horn, came to Robilio and asked, “Are you interested in selling the store?”
Robilio said he wasn’t, so they said, “Are you interested in a distribution deal?” He said, “Yeah, I was trying to do that before. We both had that idea of growing Lucchesi’s beyond the Memphis area to be able to reach more customers.”
And, Lucchesi says, “The idea is to continue to grow the Lucchesi brand and get it out to as many grocery stores as possible.”
