Chris Cavallari and Gary Golec

Founder Joseph Serio left Sicily in 1902 to come to America and work for his stepfather and his cousin, Joseph LoBello, in the Boston Fruit Store on Main Street. After six months in the Boston Fruit Store, he bought a couple of crates of strawberries from his cousin and went out on his own. He constructed a cart and pulled it up and down the streets, selling the entire load. That marked the day he began his own fruit and vegetable business.

Later, he purchased the gray house at State and Center Streets and made it his home and business center. In 1916, he bought a seven-acre truck farm in the meadowlands behind Bridge Street. Here, he raised his own fresh vegetables. Mrs. Cavallari recalled that “Pa really pushed himself by working the farm early in the morning, peddling his produce all day, and farming again at night by the light of the moon. He literally molded the business with the strength of his hands.” In 1922, he married Maria DeLisi of Providence, R.I., and they made their home in the gray house. She became not only a wife, but a lifelong business partner. In 1925, Joseph Serio bought his first Ford truck for $800, had a few driving lessons from the salesman, and he was on his own. In 1935, he suffered a heart attack that curtailed his activities. The children pitched in more and more, and daughter Josephine opened a vegetable stand at the side of their house that proved to be the embryo of the first Serio store that opened in 1943, the year sons Cosimo and Lester went into the service. When they returned, family talks centered around building a new store. It would be the full realization of Joseph Serio’s dream. In 1950, that dream became a reality when the D.A. Sullivan Construction Co. completed the present store” (The Morning Union, December 12, 1984).

Serio’s Market closed in 2017.