In an ideal sense, the holiday season is meant to bring families closer together over a meal.
But when you grew up in the family of the best known specialty food purveyors in suburban Pittsburgh — McGinnis Sisters — this time of the year the family would get really close, getting food ready for other people’s meals.
“It would be all hands on deck,” and her brother's arms in sauerkraut, Ashley Rose Young said.
She is a PhD, author and nationally acclaimed food historian at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. She also is the daughter of Sharon McGinnis Young, one of the trio of sisters that helped keep Pittsburgh well fed for decades.
Ashley Young will host “Remembering the McGinnis Sisters: Food & Family Stories,” a virtual discussion, at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 14. The event is free and interested attendees can register at heinzhistorycenter.org.
“My mom would get my three older brothers up around midnight,” in the days before Christmas. “They would go into the store to get pies going [and] my brothers, I remember seeing them at like two in the morning with these giant vessels of fresh sauerkraut. They had gloves on that would go up to their shoulders and be digging into that sauerkraut and packaging it in little tight containers for people to buy.”
“I was in like fifth or sixth grade. It'd be two in the morning at the bakery, bagging hundreds and hundreds of buns, and with my mom, and baking cookies, making pepperoni rolls. There was so much excitement and energy. Every holiday season for a lot of people is a time of rest. But that's like the major, major moment in our business to make profits. I loved having my brothers there and my cousins there. There's just this [overwhelming] sense of family.”
The business was started shortly after World War II by her grandparents, Elwood and Rosella McGinnis, and was initially a simple roadside produce stand in the Lafferty Hill neighborhood of Baldwin. Mr. McGinnis would go to the Strip District terminals in the middle of the night and purchase fruits and vegetables to resell. It grew into one market, and then several around the region. They opened their first market in Carrick then moved it to Brentwood, and another followed in Monroeville.
Sharon McGinnis Young and her sisters Bonnie Vello and Noreen Campbell took over the business in 1980.
The sisters were regarded as female trailblazers, whose markets were “ahead of their time” in many respects. They made a point of supporting local agriculture and food products. They offered home delivery in the 1990s and specialties such as organic and gluten-free foods before they became mainstream. The markets became known for high-quality meats — with beef ground in-house — and fish flown in from Boston, often local produce, plus deli and prepared foods made from Grandma McGinnis’ recipes.
“So my brother Patrick is eight years older than me. And my mom used to tell these stories about how she would be driving the produce truck. And she'd be nursing him and holding him in one arm and driving a big stick-shift truck on the other,” she said. “But they were young. They were women. They were making it happen. They were balancing being entrepreneurs and mothers. That story just cracks me up. Of the three sisters, my mom, you know, she, she had a bite to her. She just did not put up with [hooey] from people.”
The last McGinnis Sisters markets closed in February 2018, and Sharon McGinnis Young passed away in September of that year.
“She would just make things happen,” Ms. Young said of her mother.
Dan Gigler: gdgigler@post-gazette.com; @gigs412 on Instagram and Twitter.
First Published: December 14, 2021, 5:09 p.m.
Updated: December 14, 2021, 7:27 p.m.
