This profile is in active compilation — some details are awaiting a cited source.

Scimeca’s Retail Market & Deli is a fourth-generation, family-owned Italian grocery and deli in North Kansas City, reviving a Kansas City Italian-sausage lineage that traces to a Sicilian immigrant’s recipe and a 1935 Columbus Park market.

Description

Scimeca’s Retail Market & Deli is a family-owned and -operated Italian grocery store and deli located in a Tudor storefront at 16th and Swift in North Kansas City. It carries fresh and imported meats, cheeses, pasta, sauces, and Italian specialties, and serves a deli menu built around the family’s products — meatball subs, sandwiches, lasagna, salads, and cannoli among them.

The store’s signature is its house-made Italian sausage, made from a recipe passed down across four generations of the Scimeca family. The family is also known for meatballs and award-winning bratwursts, all made with traditional methods. The retail market reopened in July 2020 after a roughly two-decade hiatus, deliberately recreating an “old-school corner grocery” / Little Italy experience.

Hours are generally Monday–Friday 10 a.m.–4 p.m. and Saturday 10 a.m.–2 p.m., closed Sundays. The deli also operates an online retail arm that ships the family’s products nationwide.

Ownership and history

The Scimeca name is one of Kansas City’s enduring Italian-sausage lineages. The story begins with Filippo Scimeca, an immigrant from Palermo, Sicily, who arrived in the U.S. around the turn of the 20th century — by family lore, “with six dollars in his pockets and a sausage recipe for ten pounds.” His son Frank “Chico” Scimeca opened Scimeca’s Market in 1935, after serving in the U.S. Army Air Corps (24th Fighter Central Squadron) in World War II; Chico worked the original store alongside Filippo and brother Louis.

The original grocery began in Columbus Park, was displaced by I-70 construction, and relocated to the Independence Avenue / Paseo area, where it operated for about fifty years before closing around 2002. Meanwhile, the wholesale side — Scimeca’s Italian Sausage Company (1615 E 8th St, Kansas City, MO) — has supplied grocery stores and restaurants across the metro for over 25 years through a USDA-approved facility, run by Chico’s son Phil and grandson Frank, producing roughly 15,000 pounds of still-hand-linked, hydraulic-stuffed sausage per week.

In July 2020, nearly twenty years after the grocery closed, Toni Scimeca Bonadonna — Phil’s daughter and the fourth generation in the family food business — reopened the family deli and retail market in North Kansas City, adding a nationwide online shipping operation. The Scimeca sausage recipe has remained closely guarded and consistent across all four generations.

Tier classification

Tier 1. Scimeca’s is a textbook Tier 1: a genuinely multi-generational, family-owned Kansas City institution whose product and identity are inseparable from the family’s Sicilian-immigrant roots and the city’s Italian heritage. The recipe and name carry a 90-year, four-generation continuity, and the 2020 reopening was an explicit act of reviving that heritage — exactly the “pride and dedication to roots” Tier 1 measures.

See also

  • north-kansas-city
  • scimecas-italian-sausage-co
  • columbus-park-little-italy
  • kc-italian-american-heritage
  • independence-avenue
  • Registry

Sources

  1. Scimeca’s Deli — Our Story — https://scimecasonline.com/story — accessed 2026-05-30
  2. Kansas City Magazine — “A quick dive into three of KC’s historic craft sausage shops” — https://kansascitymag.com/a-quick-dive-into-three-of-kcs-historic-craft-sausage-shops/ — accessed 2026-05-30
  3. Northeast News — “Scimeca’s Deli: Where customers become friends and friends become family” — https://northeastnews.net/pages/scimecas-deli-where-customers-become-friends-and-friends-become-family/ — accessed 2026-05-30
  4. Scimeca’s Deli — homepage — https://scimecasonline.com/ — accessed 2026-05-30

Verification

Drafted 2026-05-30 from web research; 4 sources. Confirmed: 1935 founding by Frank “Chico” Scimeca, Sicilian-immigrant origin (Filippo, Palermo), four-generation lineage, July 2020 NKC reopening, owner Toni Scimeca Bonadonna, address, signature sausage, and the wholesale sister company. Minor ambiguity: family describes a “100-year history” as a round figure (actual market founding 1935 = ~91 years; Filippo’s recipe predates it), and the exact relocation/closure dates of the original grocery (Columbus Park → Independence Ave → ~2002 close) are from secondary accounts and could be tightened.

See also

  • Registry
Categories
  • Locally owned
  • Multi Generation