A Burlap Sack & A Dream: Giuseppe Basile’s Story

In 2025, Catania Oils is celebrating 125 years of family, resilience, and remarkable growth. To honor this legacy, we’re launching a blog series that explores the lives and leadership of the people who shaped our company from 1900 to today. Each post will spotlight a different chapter in our story and feature our 125th anniversary video: a short documentary blending interviews with the Basile family, footage from our current plant, and over a century of family and company photos brought to life with AI animation. It’s a celebration of where we’ve been, and where we’re headed.

Born in 1877 in San Pier Niceto, Sicily, where olive oil is as essential to life as water, Giuseppe Basile grew up in a family that had made and sold olive oil for generations. When he emigrated to Boston around the turn of the 20^th century, he brought several barrels of olive oil with plans to continue the family business in America.

Unfortunately, Giuseppe and his wife, Anna, had a difficult journey ahead of them. The ship they traveled on, the SS Italia, sailed through violent storms. The storm didn’t just toss their ship, it dashed their hopes. All the barrels of olive oil were ruined, leaving Giuseppe and Anna with only chestnuts and olives to sell for seed money to start their business.

Once Giuseppe settled in Boston, he founded his company, originally called Basile Packing. He started out selling olive oil door-to-door in the Italian neighborhoods of Lynn, Salem, Beverly, and East Boston.

That early work depended on two things: first, his physical strength, as he carried up to 12 metal 1-gallon cans of oil at a time in a burlap sack. He traveled by streetcar, bus, train, ferry, and foot to reach his customers. When full, the sack weighed around 100 pounds, and ergonomics weren’t exactly a thing back then.

Second, early sales hinged on Giuseppe’s ability to build relationships with the people buying his oil. Although he barely spoke English, he made it a point to get to know his customers personally, remembering not just their names, but where they came from and the stories they shared. If he didn’t know someone’s name, he would often default to calling them “Joe,” an Americanization of his own name, as if to say “We’re not so different, you and I.” Where language failed, his kind, calm character shone through.

Over time, Giuseppe’s hard work grew Basile Packing from a door-to-door business, to a small storefront in Boston’s North End, and later to a larger location in the West End. By the time Giuseppe was in his mid-50s, the physical labor from the early days of his business had taken their toll. He needed to start slowing down, and his ambitious sons Carmen, Joseph, and Frank stepped up to continue the business as he retired. Sadly, he died of a heart attack at the age of 64.

Giuseppe’s legacy lives on in every bottle we produce. Though Basile Packing has grown into the Catania Oils of today, we carry forward the values he lived by: that hard work matters, that relationships are everything, and that family is the strongest foundation. His story reminds us that even when the journey is tough, grit and kindness go a long way, and we’re proud to keep that spirit alive in everything we do.

Giuseppe’s story is just the beginning. In our next post, we’ll meet his son Joseph. Join us as we explore how Joseph’s resilience and eye for opportunity helped shape the next chapter of Catania Oils.