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Mid’s Sauce + Lee Kettles: Protecting the Family Recipe
Posted on June 03, 2026
Meet Mid’s True Sicilian Pasta Sauce, founded by Mideo (“Mid”) Octavio in the late 1930s, when so many people were clamoring for the sauce he served at the family restaurant, that he started selling it in jars for 5 cents.
Fast forward several decades, and Mid’s was in need of upgrading its old and unreliable mixing equipment to preserve the quality of their family sauce recipes, and to meet growing demand.
Enter Lee Industries and our completely customizable vessels, and the rest is history. Listen as Eric Ricketts, Director of Operations at Mid’s, tells the story of how Lee kettles support their sauce-making process with dependable performance, safe operation and the agitation consistency needed to help deliver the same rich, slow-simmered quality Mid’s grandmother first created back in the old country.
Equipment Details
- Mid’s uses two 1,100-gallon Lee kettles for traditional sauce production and two 525-gallon Lee kettles for protein and particulate-added sauces.
- Lee engineered large-capacity kettles that tilt, helping Mid’s meet its production needs while supporting cleaning, handling and workflow.
- Insulated kettle design helps reduce burn risk for operators during production.
- Consistent inclined, double-motion agitation helps Mid’s maintain product quality and batch-to-batch consistency.
- Mid’s highlights Lee’s customer service, maintenance support, responsiveness and engineer-driven customization capabilities.
- Lee kettles are described by the Mid’s team as heavy-duty, reliable and well- suited for their sauce-making operation.
For more details about the inclined, double-motion agitation used by Mids, download this Mixing Guide.
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