A Bit About Our Family History
For over 20 years, we've been providing our customers with the freshest possible fruit and vegetables, meat and seafood, bakery items and more. We like to feel that our philosophy of superior quality at supermarket prices has resulted in some of the most loyal customers around – people we know by name because they are the most important part of our market place community.
Michael-Angelo's: Steeped in Tradition, Committed To Excellence
For almost half a century, the Pugliese family has been dedicated to a simple, but enduring principle - we will provide our customers with unrivalled quality, freshness and variety at reasonable prices.
Our story begins in 1954, when Angelo Pugliese left his home in Calabria, Italy with his parents, Emilio and Rosina, and his three brothers, to settle in Toronto's bustling east end. Shortly after his arrival, at the age of 15, Angelo began his career in the grocery trade - as a delivery boy for one of Danforth Avenue's many thriving fruit and vegetable retailers.
For the next decade, in a succession of jobs with a variety of local grocers, Angelo worked hard, saved his money, and learned the business. In 1967, he got his chance to put the lessons he had learned into action when he owned and operated Sunkist Fruit Market, a popular local landmark since 1929.
Under Angelo's direction, the Danforth store enhanced its already solid reputation for quality, freshness and value. "Success requires one thing -knowing that your customers come first," he said. "First, you earn their trust and their respect. Then, you will earn their business."
The Danforth store grew and prospered with the neighbourhood, and in time, Angelo was ready to expand his operations beyond the city of Toronto. A second store was opened in 1972, in Markham, then a small, but rapidly growing town on the outskirts of Toronto - and the family formula for success found a warm welcome in the suburbs.
By 1985, Angelo was ready to expand again, this time to Mississauga. But in this case, growth would not be limited to the opening of a new store. Instead, it would include the expansion of the business itself - with the opening of a full service, state-of-the-art supermarket complex situated on a six-acre parcel of land just off the Erin Mills Parkway.
Angelo's simple, but compelling, formula for success once again proved to be a winner with customers, and a second supermarket was opened in Markham in 1988.
In 1995, after a corporate re-organization, Angelo decided to pass the reigns of the family business to a new generation, led by his son Michael, and his daughters RoseAnn and Sandra, all of whom had been learning the grocery trade from childhood. To mark this rite of passage, a new name for the Mississauga-based operations was chosen: Michael-Angelo's, 'A Market Place with Family Tradition.'
With the opening of the state-of-the-art grocery and retail complex at the intersection of Highway 7 and Woodbine Avenue in Markham in 2005, an exciting, new chapter has begun. In one step, Michael-Angelo's has more than doubled its retail capacity, and the town of Markham has welcomed a major new commercial enterprise to the community.
"The Markham facility represents a major move forward for our family and for the company," Michael says. "We have broadened our reach, expanded our offering, and that means we can now serve our customers even better than before."
But as Michael-Angelo's continues to grow and change with the times, there is one thing that will never change, the Pugliese family's commitment to the values that have served them well for half a century. We will provide our customers with only the very best. That's the Michael-Angelo's promise.