A bittersweet landing
Leona Kozloff and Bob Orsatti have upheld the tradition of their parents, in portrait, to keep Jet’s Food Center going for 85 years.
Jet Orsatti is shown near the entrance to his Bentleyville market in the early 1940s.
Jet Orsatti liked to display holiday spirit in his Bentleyville market, shown here decorated for Christmas in 1936.
Jet Orsatti prepared meats, sausages, salads and other items for sale in his Bentleyville store.
BENTLEYVILLE – Life was a long, non-stop flight for Jet Orsatti.
He was 5 when his family moved from Italy to Bentleyville in 1910. Twelve when he quit school. Then, for 86 years, almost every day was labor day.
Jet, christened Romolo G. Orsatti, moved from mines to movie projector operator to local huckster until, in 1930, he launched a family grocery on Main Street in his hometown. Jet’s Food Center would be his trademark and his legacy.
“My father took care of people in the area and people took care of him. He trusted everybody,” Bob Orsatti said.
He and his sister, Leona Kozloff, assumed ownership of the enterprise upon their dad’s 2004 passing. For nearly 12 years, they practiced his business mantra of caring – and customers returned the love.
That has ended. Jet’s has been grounded.
Leona and Bob have decided to retire, shuttering a facility that has served the Bentleyville area for 85 years. Fish and produce from Pittsburgh’s Strip District have been two of the store’s calling cards from the beginning, along with meats and homemade sausages and salads.
Brother and sister also continued the tradition of care that had been perfected by Jet and his wife, Connie, who managed the front end of the grocery.
The siblings had planned to shut down Labor Day weekend, but didn’t do so until 5 p.m. Friday. They were selling down stock and filling more orders, satisfying longtime customers. Following that mantra.
Bob and Leona are ambivalent about leaving.
“We don’t want to do this, but it’s seven days a week and long hours,” said Bob, who will be 73 and has toiled in the store for more than a half-century. “We still do a great business.”
“This is a huge decision,” said Leona, who declined to reveal her age, saying with a chuckle, “I’m his younger sister.”
Their plans often will revolve around families, who reside nearby. Bob has a son and two grandchildren living 300 yards away, all on Connie Acres Farm near Chippewa Golf Course. Leona has two daughters and four grandchildren split between Mt. Lebanon and Nevillewood.
Parting from loyal customers, though, has been sweet sorrow.
“You ought to hear the complaints,” he said, smiling. “Why are you closing? When? Where do I go for my Christmas hams? People are asking why can’t we be open on weekends, but we can’t because of the perishables.”
Some patrons who have moved from the region returned to Jet’s for personal favorites. “We’ve had people order sausage, come in and take it back to D.C.,” Bob said. “A pastor from Mt. Lebanon, Paul Taylor, comes here for meat.”
Jet’s was, literally, a seven-days-a-week endeavor, starting at 7:30 a.m. Bob arrived around 5 each day to prepare sausages, salads and other items and get the store ready. He and Leona ran the show, which included a mix of full-time and part-time employees.
Bob followed the early-morning tradition of his father, who typically began work at 4, preparing foods he would sell or making the round trip to and from the Strip. “He was a legend in the Strip,” his son said, adding that their store may have been the longest-running business in Pittsburgh’s fabled produce neighborhood.
Jet helped to oversee the grocery, but that was more Connie’s bailiwick.
“She was the key behind my dad,” said Bob, whose parents lived in an apartment elsewhere in the building.
Jet and Connie eventually had four children: Bob, Leona, Ray and Dolores, a retired teacher in Philadelphia. Ray worked at the store for a while, introducing hot wings – a popular item to the end. He eventually moved to New York State and died in a snowmobile accident in the mid-1990s.
Although his formal schooling ended with sixth grade, Jet was quite the self-educator, Bob said. “He read books like you couldn’t believe, asked people questions. I believe he did the electrical and refrigeration here. Dad made his own seasoning. Our homemade sausage is from a recipe he started.”
Jet refused to reveal recipes, but eagerly walked through the store, distributing samples of his culinary handiwork to customers. He worked until his death, at 98, on Jan. 5, 2004.
Sixteen months before that, in late August 2002, Jet was preparing food near the back when a man robbed a teenage clerk at knifepoint. (The suspect was apprehended in Speers shortly afterward.) That was the first robbery in the store’s 72-year history to that point. A second occurred in January.
Jet’s Food Center, however, has had thousands more allies than enemies. Lou Haddad is among the partisans.
His grandparents owned an ice cream shop in the borough for 35 years.
“We purchased all of our produce for the Dairy Delight from Jet’s. Bob made all of our hamburgers,” said Haddad, 36, finance manager at the John Sisson Mercedes-Benz store in South Strabane Township. “We were customers for many, many years.”
He said Dairy Delight and Jet’s were like classrooms to him. “All I knew was small business when I was growing up,” Haddad said. “I learned to count at the cash register at our store. The Orsattis kind of taught me to buy from the local guy.
“It’s so sad to see the mom-and-pop trade leave.”
Bentleyville is among countless towns to experience that. Leona said the borough once had 10 grocery stores, and that Jet’s was considered the largest. Now Giant Eagle, a chain, is the last full-service grocery standing.
Leona and Bob are conflicted between breaking from a business they truly love and entering a more relaxing phase of life. After a struggle, they opted for the latter.
“We had been thinking about it and decided to make the move,” Bob said, before pausing. “But what will I do next week?”
Sleep in.