In The Cradle of Industry and Liberty

neighborhood. The increased production capacity
that the larger building afforded allowed the
business to continue its sales expansion. During
the early years, the company would deliver its
Philly Steaks directly to operators using a small
fleet of trucks. The deliveries, however, could
not keep pace with demand and local, independent
distributors started buying product
from the company for resale to their customers.
Once again, the founders were faced with a
capacity problem. They not only needed more
manufacturing and storage space, they needed
a facility that could accommodate the larger
and more frequent number of trucks coming to
pick-up orders.
In 1986, Karamatsoukas and Kontodemos
moved the company to a much larger facility
a mile away, on the corner of North Howard
and West Venango Street. The property had
all of the prerequisites to enable growth for
years to come and grow it did. Around that
time period, Karamatsoukas and Kontodemos
hired James Trivelis as the company’s first
general manager. Trivelis, who would go on
to become president of the Original Philly
Cheesesteak Co., was a rising star in the
corporate world and used this experience to
implement a rapid growth strategy, which set
the stage for the company to go from a local
presence, to a regional player and finally to a
national force in the Philly Steak category.
Meanwhile, in nearby Aston, Pennsylvania,
entrepreneur Stavros “Steve” Kalisperis
operated Mama Maria’s Stromboli, a USDAinspected
food processing plant. A Greek
immigrant, Kalisperis opened Mama Maria’s
after having spent many years operating a
successful pizza restaurant renowned for its
excellent stromboli. Seeking to capitalize on
this specialty, Kalisperis started the company
to manufacture frozen strombolis for retail
sale in grocery stores throughout the area.
But as fate would have it, Kalisperis’ Italian-
American product would be usurped by a
Greek American relationship.
Kalisperis and Karamatsoukas were
acquainted at church and developed a friendship
through the many social activities of the
Greek American community in the area. The
Original Philly Cheesesteak Co. continued to
grow and Karamatsoukas, an engineer by degree
and innovator by nature, wanted to explore the
possibility of adding fully-cooked Philly Steaks
to his company’s burgeoning product line.
He asked Kalisperis if he could use Mama
Maria’s restaurant-style ovens to test his idea
and prepare fully-cooked, Philly Steak samples
Kalisperis was happy to oblige. The test was
a success and the friendly gesture soon developed
into a partnership between Kalisperis
and Karamatsoukas—Philadelphia Pre-Cooked
Steak Co. was founded by the two in 1991.
@
Authentic Original Philly Cheesesteak.
PARTNERS IN BUILDING PHILADELPHIA
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