DANVERS — The owner of the DiLuigi Sausage Co. said despite a slow economy, he thinks business will be brisk when he opens a new Italian-style butcher shop along Route 1 at the end of this month.
"People have got to eat," said DiLuigi Inc.'s president, Louis DiLuigi Jr. He is banking on consumers paying a little more for quality when the 5,500-square-foot retail store opens July 30.
"You can't sell good product for cheap money," DiLuigi said, "but you can sell good product for a respectable price."
Members of the DiLuigi family and their employees were busy this week setting up DiLuigi's Butcher Shop, which is opening in a town that already sports two other large butcher shops: the Butchery on North Street and McKinnon's on Holten Street.
This is the first retail store for the family business, which used to operate a neighborhood butcher shop in East Boston before the company went strictly wholesale, processing sausage and meats for major retailers up and down the East Coast.
"One thing I want to impress is our passion," said butcher shop manager Nick DeBernardo, who said the strict U.S. Department of Agriculture's cleanliness standards in place at the company's nearby meat processing plant will also apply in the retail store.
The shop also increases visibility along Route 1 for the 41 Pope's Lane company. DiLuigi's has been operating in Danvers since May 2001, but it used to be hidden behind the former home of the Baert Marine's powerboat dealership, which has since moved to Middleton. The butcher shop is opening at the former boat dealer's location.
The company grew out of an East Boston butcher shop on Chelsea Street run by "Papa" Louis DiLuigi Sr., who started the business in the 1950s.
Louis Jr., 54, of Boxford, took over and has since expanded the business into a wholesaler of 200 varieties of meat products.
"My father is really the fireplug," said plant manager Rob Capezzuto, 37, of Danvers, Louis DiLuigi Jr.'s stepson, "the energy behind it."
Capezzuto is not the only third-generation member of the family to work in the business. His brother, Chris Capezzuto, 36, works in transportation, and his stepsister, Trisha DiLuigi, 26, is the office manager.
Operating a traditional butcher shop, Louis DiLuigi said, is in his blood, as he started working with his father when he was 11. DiLuigi left the family business for a time and learned the ropes working for a local supermarket chain and another sausage processor. He then came back to work for his father and opened the first meat-processing plant in East Boston in 1986.
"People looked at me like I had 25 heads," he said. He caught a break by developing a Chinese-style pork sausage, a family treat he started selling in stores.
However, it took a week to convince U.S. Department of Agriculture regulators in Washington, D.C., to allow the new category of meat product to be sold.
"That product put me in every supermarket in New England," DiLuigi said.
The company eventually outgrew its East Boston plant and moved to Danvers seven years ago. It has since grown to 250 employees, Capezzuto said, from the 65 it employed at the time of the move. It also expanded the plant by 10,000 square feet.
The company's rapid expansion has even aided the Shady Oaks trailer park on Route 1, allowing it to hook into sewers on Pope's Lane in return for an easement to accommodate the new sewer line. The company bought some of the trailer park's land for its expansion.
Louis DiLuigi said the new shop will offer Italian deli, cheeses, balsamic vinegars, sausages, choice cuts of beef, pasta, fresh bread, rotisserie chickens and other foods.
"I'm excited," he said of the store's opening. "I'm doing 100 mph. I'm lit up."
