A local food manufacturer made a big play by partnering with Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills on a new product.
Pellicano Specialty Foods, which makes sauces and dressings, started producing three new sauces for football season: a mild chicken wing sauce, a barbecue sauce and a hot sauce. Each was tested and approved by quarterback Josh Allen, and all profits for the $3.99, 12-ounce bottles go to the Patricia Allen Fund at Oishei Children’s Hospital.
“He wanted to do a sauce line with the proceeds going to the Patricia Allen Fund,” Pellicano’s CEO Anthony Habib said of Allen. “They felt like working with someone local was the best-case scenario.”
After a Bills victory Nov. 8, 2020, fans learned Allen had played after just losing his grandmother, Patricia Allen. They began donating in $17 increments to the hospital, surpassing $1 million by the end of 2020. The Patricia Allen Fund was then developed to provide support to the pediatric critical care team.
Habib, who purchased the company from Mario Pellicano about four years ago, said those conversations started over the summer. In six weeks, Pellicano had developed the sauces, which hit the shelves exclusively at Wegmans the last week of August, he said.
All three sauces feature the Bills Mafia logo and an image of Josh Allen.
“It’s been a great line so far,” Habib said. “We worked mostly with Josh Allen’s representatives, and as long as the money went to charity, that’s all they cared about. His sole goal was putting as much money into charity as he could.”
This week, Habib will offer the Patricia Allen Fund the first check with proceeds from the sauce. It’s for $100,000.
“It’s pretty amazing that we were able to do that in such a short amount of time,” he said. “We’ve had amazing support from the Bills fans and the Bills Mafia. Wegmans has been very supportive of this as well.”
The sauces will be available at Wegmans during this football season and could return every year, depending on the partnership, Habib said.
“It was easy for us to want to support this whole cause,” Habib said.
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