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History of Thin 'n Trim and Old Neighborhood Foods

In 1914 the Demakes family owned a small neighborhood grocery store in Lynn, Massachusetts. In the back room, Grandma Demakes had the world’s best recipe for homemade Greek sausage. In fact, folks in these parts couldn’t get enough of it. It was made under the label of Holiday Brand meats.

By the 1920s, early each morning, the couple’s four sons would take the trolley to all parts of Greater Boston and call on grocery stores and other food outlets to write orders for their mother’s sausage. By 8 AM they were back home where each order was filled. After school, the boys returned home, picked up the boxes of sausage, and delivered them by trolley to their customers.

The Depression caused the Demakes family to look for creative ways to grow their business. They added hot dogs to their line and sold them to vendors in Revere Beach and other places where they were a big hit. For seventy years their business recipe for success was that simple.

Along the way, the company became a manufacturer of cooked roast beef, corned beef, and pastrami items, and those items today are the signature products in the deli line.

Attempting to increase awareness and appeal among retail consumers, the OLD NEIGHBORHOOD label, with upscale graphics depicting a traditional turn of the century street scene, was introduced in 1984. Its success was so immediate, that the company's name was changed to OLD NEIGHBORHOOD FOODS.

To keep pace with the increased demand for "healthier" meat products, the THIN ‘N TRIM low-fat, low-sodium deli line was introduced in 1988. These products are significantly lower in fat and sodium, and contain no MSG. No other manufacturer has found a way to minimize fat and sodium while maintaining real deli texture and taste!

In the mid 90s, the company developed the capability of high volume, high quality preslicing of cold cuts in “Zip-Pak”™ packages for retail and foodservice accounts. We now sell these products from Maine to Florida.

Today the plant that produces and ships hundreds of thousands of pounds of deli meat each week is located on the very grounds of the family grocery store where the company first began. The founders would not recognize the new stainless steel equipment and the white brick preparation rooms. But they would recognize the taste. Ninety years since the Demakes clan made the first sausage using an old family recipe, the very same recipe influences everything made today: Old world quality and taste.