Delancey Street Deli

Delancey Street Deli® Gourmet Foods

Delancey Street Deli® is an exclusive brand owned by Performance Food Group. This gourmet deli brand features a wide portfolio of high quality, cleaner label products to fit the need of any operator wanting to serve a menu of gourmet deli dishes. Delancey Street Deli® includes whole muscle meats, sliced cheeses, rolls, dips, heat-and-serve soups, sandwich spreads and condiments, pickles, relishes, sauerkraut, and gourmet cold prepared salads and other prepared hot foods.

Delancey Street Deli®- The Story Behind the Brand Name

When it comes to delis, Performance Foodservice’s roots go way back to 1885, just a few years before America gave birth to its first deli on Delancey Street in lower Manhattan. Hence our brand name Delancey Street Deli® is a tribute to where the first pastrami sandwich was made, giving birth to America’s first deli.

The birth of the first American deli is an interesting one worth sharing. It started when Reb Sussman, a religious immigrant, knew the kosher way to butcher meat. He opened a tiny shop at 861/2 Delancey Street in New York City. The first week, a Rumanian gentleman stopped by and asked if he could store a rather large trunk in Reb’s cellar. “I’m just going back to Eastern Europe for a few years,” he said. Reb responded, “If I let you store your trunk in my cellar, what will you give me?” The bargaining continued, “If you let me store my trunk in your cellar, I will give you the recipe for pastrami.” Reb Sussman took the trunk and the recipe and began selling chunks of pastrami over the counter. Soon he was selling it by the slice. Then between two pieces of bread. Reb Sussman’s pastrami sandwiches took off. He moved from 861/2 Delancey Street to 88 Delancey Street. Here he had room to put in tables and chairs. Overnight, Sussman Volk’s was no longer a butcher. You could sit there and eat. It was the year 1888, and the New York deli opened, giving birth to America’s first delicatessen.

Introducing the Delancey Street Deli® Brand

We thought it most fitting to pay a nod to Mr. Sussman, and it was three years earlier that our company was founded as Pocahontas Foods, which delivered food to restaurants, grocery stores, and other eateries since its beginning and along the way included delis as they emerged along the American landscape. Performance Foodservice also carries with it a special affection for delis and deli foods as part of our heritage. For it was many decades later that in 1955 a young Italian immigrant Mr. Louis Piancone would open an Italian deli of his own in Bradley Beach, New Jersey, which gave birth to Roma Food and forever changed the pizza and Italian marketplace.