Jasper Sanfilippo of Barrington Hills does everything in a big way. Consider this.
He took John B. Sanfilippo and Son Inc., headquartered in Elk Grove Village, from sales of $320,000 in 1963 to its present sales in excess of $200 million. It’s now the second largest nut processor in the world, serving more than 70 supermarket chains.
Then there’s his private side, the collecting. But collecting is far too soft a term for what he does; it’s more like a crusade to preserve music machines of the past. Those who know Sanfilippo and this type of collecting say no one in the nation is doing as much as he is to preserve this obscure art form of the past.
As for the business, Sanfilippo gives credit to “lots of family, lots of hard work and lots of luck.”
Insiders, though, say Jasper is behind the company’s success.
“I feel Jasper is the backbone of the company and always has been. In the last 29 years, he’s made it grow where it’s at. He has key people working with him, but it wouldn’t be there without Jasper,” said Ann Karacik, Jasper’s sister, who has worked at the company “all her life.”
Chief executive officer Jasper Sanfilippo said he shares the corporate throne with brother-in-law Matt Valentine, married to Jasper’s sister Mary.
“It’s always been a two-man team with Jasper. We’ve always had a close relationship and helped each other over the tough roads,” said Valentine, who started with the company in 1962 as a driver and worked his way up through the ranks.
“Jasper is the second largest nut packer in the world. It’s his quality. He is, without a doubt, the finest processor there is. It’s his makeup,” said Dominick DiMatteo Jr., chairman of the board of Dominick’s Finer Foods Inc. Dominick’s began its association with John B. Sanfilippo and Son more than 20 years ago. Today the nut company packs Dominick’s private label, and Dominick’s stores also stock Evon’s Nuts, Sanfilippo’s own label.
“He wants to do everything right in the best way, and it’s displayed in his collection of fine things,” DiMatteo said. “His home is something out of a fairy tale; to do all these things and share them with others, that’s what makes him the man he is. He is a fine man with a fine family and a good person to have doing things (for Dominick’s) because he does them right.”
Sanfilippo, say acquaintances, is unpretentious, amicable, meticulous about details in both his professional and private life, and shy about personal kudos. In fact, it’s tough to get him to talk about himself.
Yet ask him about automatic musical instruments, and therein lies his true passion. Sanfilippo has amassed an unparalleled private collection, according to experts.
Sanfilippo is recognized as one of a handful of the major players in the world of automatic musical instrument collectors’, according to experts. And insiders acknowledge that the sum total of his machines has been viewed by more people than has any other private collection.
According to experts, the public is generally unfamiliar with these relics from the 1900s. For many, they say, the closest facsimile has been and is the House on the Rock, a gigantic emporium with music machines, carousels, a huge circus collection, and thousands of other P.T. Barnum-scale novelties that are commercially entertaining.
“We’re entertaining people. We’re not a museum,” said Arthur Donaldson, owner of the House on the Rock, near Spring Green, Wis.
“Of the items Jasper has in his collection, they’re the finest I’ve seen through my travels around the world,” Donaldson said. “Jasper has authentic machines and restores them to the precise mechanical degree that they operated at when they were new. We have some like Jasper’s that run as they were.
“Here, because of the frequency at which many of ours are played and the subsequent high level of maintenance, many have been adapted to run by computers,” said Donalson. “Anything we do new is on computers, so the sound can be different than when the machine was first built.”
“In my opinion, Jasper has the largest private and most comprehensive collection in the world of automatic musical instruments-music boxes, orchestrions, coin pianos, band organs and theater organs,” said Tim Trager, a recognized authority and collector who has been instrumental in procuring a large number of Jasper’s acquisitions.
“I’ve helped him find everything from tower bells from a large Catholic Church in Chicago to the most fantastic steam-powered Salon Carousel, 100 feet wide, 40 feet tall.”
“We take music really for granted today. In the late 1800s, they didn’t have speakers, amplifiers, radio or phonographs to speak of that could put out any decent kind of music,” Sanfilippo said. “They started building outstanding music machines to play the actual instrument off of a roll pneumatically.”
But Sanfilippo’s collection isn’t limited to music machines. It also includes 70 steam engines; 200 mechanical music machine instruments-orchestrions and nickelodeons-that weigh 800 to 7,000 pounds each; 125 penny arcade machines; 30 outside-horn phonographs; 30 upright slot machines; 25 music boxes; a full-size 1881 locomotive; three vintage 1920s Rolls-Royces; and miscellaneous Americana from the late 1800s to early 1900s.
“Jasper has the finest collection ever owned by anyone,” said Mel Septon, president of the Automatic Musical Collectors’ Association, an international hobbyist organization of which both Jasper and wife Marian are members.
“Having the instruments in the hands of someone like Jasper Sanfilippo, they are restored perfectly, well maintained, and he shares them with a great many people,” added Septon. “I can’t think of a better place for a rare instrument to be,”
According to Sanfilippo, his affinity for mechanical things began with his first steam engine, a rudimentary model he built in high school.
In 1976, two years after Jasper and Marian built their current home on a 46-acre estate in Barrington Hills, his hobby turned toward music machines.
The first machine that Sanfilippo had restored was a 78-key Bruder Band Organ. The work was done by John Hovancek of Dodgeville, Wis., one of the skilled artisans whom Sanfilippo trusts with his restorations.
“Jasper brought me what essentially was a pile of lumber with thousands of pieces and one-of-a-kind pieces that were missing, with holes that you had to find out what was missing,” Hovancek said.
Hovancek works virtually full time just on Sanfilippo’s restorations, finishing maybe two pieces a year. Each of those projects, which may extend over more than one year, can take 2,000 to 3,000 hours.
Because authenticity is important to Sanfilippo, restoration can be lengthy and costly. Often restoration costs can approach or exceed the actual purchase price. For example, one machine cost Sanfilippo $60,000; restoration ran $55,000.
Although 50 to 60 of his 200 mechanical music machines are fully functional, the balance are in various stages of restoration. Sanfilippo estimated that he spends $300,000 to $400,000 a year in restoration and an additional $6,000 to $7,000 annually for maintenance of his music machines.
“Singlehandedly, he is bringing back an era that should have been publicly preserved. He has been the first to put it together in its proper setting and restore them so magnificently,” Trager said.
A collector, not a hoarder, Sanfilippo shares. He and his wife host many social events at their home, and that’s when the show begins.
“The warmth and graciousness of Marian and Jasper is so special,” said Jo Anne Larson, former chairwoman of the Barrington Area Arts Council’s Music in the Home Series. “They were so gracious when we asked to use their home. Sometimes, in general, if a person becomes a collector, there could be a tendency to become protective of the acquisitions and, so to speak, close the door, except to relatives and close acquaintances.
“But the Sanfilippos are atypical in that regard,” Larson added. “You can see it in the way Jasper’s face lights up when he’s demonstrating his automatic music instruments and talks about the wonderful history associated with them.”
While the Sanfilippo home is exquisite with all of its antiques, it is not grandiose. It has a warm, friendly ambiance because of the family that lives there, according to Marlene Lawton, a designer from LML Interiors in Lake Zurich who worked with Marian on recent decorating changes.
The Sanfilippo home, though, was bursting at the seams with music machines two years ago when Jasper began planning what he modestly calls his music room-a 20,000-square-foot addition that is nearing completion. Marian now can breathe a sigh of relief that doors and windows that were once barricaded by these machines are now accessible.
“I don’t know if she shared the same passion I have for them (music machines), but she told me she likes the machines and likes the people involved in the collecting,” Sanfilippo said.
“When the children were younger and living at home, they helped move these machines and often asked, `Why can’t Daddy just collect stamps or coins?’ ” she said.
Although not yet complete, the music room already is drawing praise from everyone who sees it-from construction workers to music buffs.
“No matter how well prepared you think you are, you’re not prepared at all for what you’re going to see,” Septon said.
“I have been lucky enough to have traveled the world over in the last 30 years. But you’d have to look far and wide to find another privately owned music room of the magnitude and beauty that can compare to that which is being built in Barrington Hills,” said Lyn Larsen in a phone interview from Phoenix. Larsen is one of four or five full-time concert theater organists in the country. She has performed at the request of the Sanfilippos on a theater organ in their home on a number of occasions.
The architecture of the music room is French Second Empire (circa 1840-1870). The multilevel structure rises to a height of 75 feet, according to Sanfilippo, who is acting as general contractor and monitors the project daily with the blueprints he helped draft.
While much of the Sanfilippo’s collection will be showcased in this cavernous exhibit hall, scheduled for completion in late September, a theater organ that some say is the largest in the world will hold center stage once it is completed next spring. The new organ is being constructed from both original parts and newly designed parts.
“This is the largest theater pipe organ that has been designed and built. The console is a pattern from scratch, duplicating the proportion and look of Wurlitzer while enlarging it another 10 to 15 percent just to control this monster,” Larsen said.
And what do the neighbors along this usually undisturbed rural street think about the construction noise and vehicles pulling in and out of the Sanfilippo’s property? Well, when it’s Jasper Sanfilippo, it’s okay with them.
“He’s a wonderful neighbor. I can’t think of anyone around here or whom he has done business with who would ever have a complaint,” said Leo Cardelli, who with wife Ida lives nearby. “I think he’s totally dedicated to this sideline and that someday he will need to build a museum. He feels he owes it to the people of Chicago to share his collection, with youngsters and adults who have no idea of the contributions of these Chicago (music) companies.”
There are tentative plans to erect a museum in two to three years because the collection is becoming so substantial and because Sanfilippo said he likes “the idea of people seeing these because they enjoy it so much and especially because typically a lot of people have never heard of them.”
“It would be selfish not to share them with others,” said Jim Sanfilippo, Jasper’s 30-year-old son.
Jasper and Marian, who have been married 36 years, have five children: John, 32; Jim; Jeff, 28; Lisa, 27; and Jasper Jr., 24. All work at the company.
In addition to Jasper and Marian’s children, Mary and Matt Valentine’s sons, Jim and Mike, and Ann Karacik’s children, Roseanne and Greg, work there also.
“In a lot of family-owned companies, the string gets broken, and there’s all kinds of friction, but there is none here. In fact, they’re closer. We treat them all the same, whether it’s my son or my nephew, and they are at the same level of pay depending on how long they’ve been with the company,” Jasper Sanfilippo said.
The company is large enough that each family member can do his own thing while contributing to the whole, according to Sanfilippo.
“The food industry is an interesting business,” Sanfilippo said. “It’s a product of Mother Nature that changes all the time, and that’s a challenge. It’s a challenge to manufacture and process because technology is changing every day, and it is a very competitive business so we’re constantly challenged to be imaginative and creative.”
“The vision of these two men (Jasper Sanfilippo and Matt Valentine), the entrepreneurial spirit, helped the company get started, and the company grew from a great mix of highly talented professionals mixed among and with family members. It’s a great mix of teamwork and spirit you don’t find in most companies today,” said Larry Ray, executive vice president and chief financial officer for John B. Sanfilippo and Son.
Although the company went public on December 3, 1991, the family has retained 70 percent of the stock in the company, founded by Sanfilippo’s father and grandfather in 1922.
Born 61 years ago in Chicago to John B. and Rosalie Sanfilippo, Jasper is their only son. There are three daughters, Rose Laketa, Ann Karacik and Mary Valentine.
“The whole family would work in the factory, and sometimes my dad would bring home pecans to be shelled. It was tough times, during the 1930s. When I was about 13 or 14, my dad had `Son’ added to the name of the company,” Sanfilippo said.
When John B. Sanfilippo died in 1963, the company diversified beyond pecans.
“It was obvious then that we couldn’t depend on just one nut. We had to diversify,” Sanfilippo said. “A lot of the success we’ve had is because of our ability to build some of our own equipment and do cost-saving things in the company.”
The company has several plant facilities, including its 330,000-square-foot headquarters in Elk Grove Village, a peanut-shelling plant in Bainbridge, Ga., a plant in Los Angeles, two plants that process nuts in San Antonio, Tex., one in Des Plaines, and one being built in Garysburgh, N.C.
The largest segment of its business, 50 percent, is private-label packing (it is the largest private-label packer in the country) and co-packing (producing, packing or both for another company); 20 percent is industrial, meaning work for bakeries and restaurants; and 30 percent is generated under the Evon’s brand.
“We bought the Evon’s brand name in 1974. It was the catalyst that propelled our growth,” Sanfilippo said. “Now not only did we have a full line of nuts and were diversified in all varieties of nuts but we now opened up a whole new marketing segment. We used to be only wholesale before that time, but after we bought Evon’s brand, it gave us a foothold into the supermarket and consumer-product end of the business.”
The company employs almost 1,000, has a product line of more than 3,000 items, and a customer master list topping 10,000. While profit margins on sales are traditionally low in the food industry, return on investments is high, according to Sanfilippo.
“I think probably one of the most important aspects of my philosophy on doing business is to provide tremendous service to the customers. It’s rubbed off substantially on our people and our employees, and it’s probably been the one single-most reason we’re successful today: quality and service,” Sanfilippo said.
“If you’re going to do something,” he said, “do it the best you can.”
