Our Story

It started in a bakery.

Joe Faro grew up in his father's bakery in Haverhill. Before school, after school, weekends. His parents came over from Italy and settled in Lawrence, and there wasn't much difference between the family and the family business.

The other place he learned to cook was his grandmother's kitchen. Nonna Carmela's Sunday dinners took eight hours to make and three hours to eat, and nobody ever complained about the math. That's still how we think about food around here.

Senior year at UNH, Joe wrote a business plan for a fresh pasta company. It was for a class. He came in second. He graduated into a recession in 1991 and built it anyway. Fifteen banks said no before one said yes, and he started in his parents' attic. The pasta wasn't good enough at first, so he took kitchen jobs to teach himself to cook, then sold it the hard way: walking in the back door of every restaurant kitchen he could find with a box under his arm, driving it around in a station wagon with a sleeping bag thrown over the cases to keep them cold.

Eventually the chefs started calling him back. Joseph's Gourmet Pasta became the largest specialty pasta and sauce maker in the country. In 2006, he sold it to Buitoni.

Then Joe came back to the table.

Eighteen years of making food other people served, and Joe wanted to serve it himself. In 2010 he opened the first Tuscan Kitchen in Salem, New Hampshire, with its own bakery, its own butcher, and its own pasta room, because that's the only way he knew how to do it.

One restaurant turned into Tuscan Market, Toscana, Tuscan Sea Grill, Sorella, a catering company, a cooking school, and a whole lot of Sunday dinners.

Then in 2016 he bought a racetrack. Rockingham Park had been running horses in Salem since 1906, and when it closed, Joe bought all 170 acres. His reasoning was one sentence: Salem doesn't have a downtown. So he built one. Tuscan Village, 3.8 million square feet to live, work, stay, and play.

And in 2024, his manufacturing company in Lawrence bought Buitoni. The same company that bought his first business back in 2006. Joe says he's not a genius, he's a pasta maker. But walking back into that factory as the owner is hard to put into words.

Now there's a third generation.

Joe's two sons grew up the same way he did. Around the business, in the business, no shortcuts.

Joe Jr. started as a busboy in our dining rooms, worked his way up to manager, and now runs regional sales for Artisan Chef Manufacturing, sitting across the table from buyers at Walmart, Sam's Club, and Trader Joe's.

Max is our director of construction and development. If you've walked into a new Tuscan restaurant, an apartment at the Village, or our fulfillment center, he had a hand in getting it built.

Neither one reports to their father. Both earned their spot the same way he did, by showing up and proving it.

Three generations now, from a bakery counter in Haverhill to whatever's next. Same family, same food, same reason we do it.