Ravioli real estate empire sold: Lucca Ravioli Co. owners leave SF’s Mission

The owners of Lucca Ravioli Co. have completed the sale of their three buildings on the corner of 22nd and Valencia streets for a shade above $7 million, marking the first time since 1925 that the family that started Lucca Ravioli Co. will no longer be in the Mission District. 

“It’s been a journey,” said Lucca Ravioli Co. owner Michael Feno when reached by phone. 

Feno’s three buildings, sitting on a single block, were sold at separate times throughout the spring and summer to three separate buyers. The three buildings and their land were assessed at a total of $713,584. 

The building out of which Lucca Ravioli had operated for nearly a century, was sold for $1.7 million to an Edward and Virginia Plant III, Jaqueline Moskowitz, and the Woodberry Revocable Trust. The deed transferred on April 30, the day Lucca sold its last box of ravioli.

The six-unit apartment building next door at 1102-1110 Valencia St. was sold in July to Battlett Streets Apartment LLC and Valencia Ventures LLC for $3.125 million. And the three-unit apartment next door at 1114-1118 Valencia sold in May to Terrilyn Wong, Hanson Li, and the HTMC LI 2018 Family Trust for $2.2 million. 

All told, Feno and his family made $10 million, after he had sold an adjacent parking lot for $3 million in August 2018. The lot is slated to become a five-story building with 18 housing units. 

Feno, who is 64, said the decision to cash out came two years ago, when he assessed the costs of what he characterized as an inevitable remodel of the store. He said the costs would have “tremendously changed the business” and predicted prices would have skyrocketed to make up for the expenses. “What am I gonna do — charge $40 a box for raviolis?” he said. 

The sale was the conclusion of a family journey that began with Feno’s great uncle, Francesco Stanghellini, who opened Lucca on the corner of Valencia and 22nd streets in 1925. By Feno’s telling, Stanghellini’s son John (Feno’s uncle) came back from the war “full of energy,” took over the business from Francesco, and eventually spun off a packing business, Lucca Packing Co., in South San Francisco. That prompted the younger Stanghellini to sell the ravioli business to Feno’s father in 1967. 

But Feno’s father “didn’t like real estate,” Feno said. “My uncle John offered it to him for a song and my father kept saying ‘no.’”  

The buildings eventually passed out of the family — sold to an attorney who, over the years, “over-leveraged” himself amid the growing inflation in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, according to Feno. 

That’s when a real estate agent told Feno’s father he’d be a “fool” to decline buying the property. “My father finally broke down and bought the real estate,” Feno said. Real estate agents can get real estate leads as well.

And it ended up paying off. Feno is now able to retire. Although he said he’s still “winding down Lucca” because of “business complications,” he’s spending most of his time on a 1.7-acre “hobby” farm in Sebastopol, where he grows fruits and vegetables.