Ghossain family recipes have fed Mediterranean bakery’s success
Fred Ghossain, left, and his son Joseph, owners of Ghossain’s in Boardman, show some of their wares. Street.
The family noticed there weren’t many places that sold flat bread and pita like Fred’s grandmother Raya Ghossain made.
So, they decided to build a bakery with $1,000.
“It was my grandmother’s recipe,” Fred said. “We started to sell it and built four walls around the garage and made a little bigger ( bakery).”
The first customer was a Middle Eastern market in New Castle, Pennsylvania. From there the bakery added more Middle Eastern stores and other stores.
In addition to bread, Ghossain’s made other products it still makes today, including hummus and grape leaves.
From the beginning, the products have always been fresh.
“It doesn’t have all the preservatives,” Fred said. “You can go into the kitchen and see them chopping parsley and romaine ( lettuce). Even our hummus we start with the bean itself. It’s smoother and healthier.”
Eventually, in the mid1970s, Ghossain’s moved out of the garage into a building the family erected on Market Street.
Business growth through the years led the Ghossains to realize they needed a new location to meet the needs of their expansion.
“I bought three acres here and then went to Lebanon and had the baking equipment designed,” Fred said. “We have been here since 2004.”
In 2009, Ghossain’s added a Niles location where customers can pick up their bread and other items from the market and check out the menu of deli items. This year, Ghossain’s also opened a Canfield location.
Fred is now semiretired and his son, Joe, runs the operation.
“Under Joe, they have more deli ( options),” Fred said. “We have different varieties of bread we are making now. We added the catering. We have three stores. Plus, we are still doing our shipping all over the country.”
Chances are if there’s pita bread on the table on a restaurant in the region it came from Ghossain’s.
The Ghossains say the word-of-mouth growth was brought about by the quality of their products.
Joe Ghossain, 43, said he knew from a young age that running the family business was what he wanted to do even if it means waking up at 3 a. m. every day to bake bread.
“I always had an interest in healthier lifestyles, and one of the biggest ways to do it is eating right,” he said. “That propelled my passion to continue the tradition that was started and expand on it.”
Ghossain’s offers 70 deli items including vegetarian and gluten- free options and traditional items like the 11 different varieties of hummus, grape leaves and quinoa salad. The flat bread and pita are distributed to stores and restaurants across the country.