Rosa and Nicola Fusca began in Southern Italy in the 1950 producing and processing foods grown on their farm and then selling them at their own little grocery.

They came over to the United States in the 1960s and soon ventured into the restaurant business in the 1970s. The first restaurant was established in Etna.

One might wonder about the restaurants name, "Mama Rosa's." Rosa would cook the same food for restaurant patrons as she did her own family. Because of her extremely friendly personality, patrons came to call her Mama.

Rosa's children worked in the family business completing any necessary job. The youngest of the family, Nicholas, began doing dishes and some food preparation at age 11 after school and weekends. Nicholas was always at Rosa's side learning all of the family original recipes.

In 1979, Nicola expanded his business by buying another location, a residential area of Butler behind the Butler County Community College. It was a quaint little tavern called Schlatz Bar that he built into a family restaurant.

Fresh out of high school at the age of 17, Nicholas started to cook and manage the kitchen in the Butler restaurant. Rosa continued to travel back and forth between the restaurants to make sauce and meatballs. She would brag that she could roll 20 pounds of meatballs in just 15 minutes!

Harold Friedman, owner of Friedman's Supermarkets, frequently ate dinner at the Butler Mama Rosa's Restaurant. He would discuss business with the young Fusca and often left with an extra container of sauce.

One day while Nicholas was watching Rosa can fresh tomatoes from her garden, he came up with the idea to can tomato sauce. Knowing that other people were buying containers of sauce from the restaurant, he would ask Mr. Friedman to sell the sauce at his stores.

The sauce is made the old-fashioned way — first with sautéed fresh vegetables prepared in olive oil and then cooked in a kettle. The sauce is hot-packed in reusable mason jars with no sugar added.

Never warehoused, the sauces are made fresh and sold daily. The sauce is naturally sweet from the high quality tomatoes used in the sauce preparation.

Because no artificial ingredients are added and the sauce is naturally sweet from the high quality tomatoes utilized, the sauce is sold in health food stores like DeWalt's health store in Butler.