Anything but bitter: Pip and Pop’s Pickles foster community in Lehigh and Bethlehem

Mondays and Tuesdays are the long days.

It’s when “Chicago Fire” and other cable TV shows echo through the first floor of Gene and JoAnn Ruocchio’s house in Nazareth as the two laborers cut, slice and stack their pickles in jars for sale. 

For 14 hours, JoAnn prepares the recipe for the brine while Gene slices the cucumbers. 

JoAnn gently stacks each pickle atop of another until they’re all in her “layage” — a term JoAnn coined after she said she didn’t know how else to describe her design. All jars are then sealed with a signature sticker and tied with pink and white plaid ribbon. 

It takes one hour to make 12 jars in this order. 

Gene and JoAnn of Pip and Pop’s Pickles took their overgrown garden of cucumbers and turned it into a business. At the same time, what was once a nickname given by their three grandkids has become their identifier at farmers markets in Bethlehem and Easton. 

Bethlehem residents know Pip and Pop’s Pickles pretty well. Every customer is addressed as “honey,” and every Lehigh student has two grandparents away from home.

In fact, it was never just about the pickles. To Pip and Pop Ruocchio, their business is about sharing their love, kindness and, of course, a little bit of brine.

“I wouldn’t really call it a job,” JoAnn said. “We said, ‘Let’s make some pickles.’”

The idea began after the couple’s son-in-law, Sal, had suggested something needed to be done with the overwhelming amount of cucumbers piling in their garden out back. They began giving out half-sour and garlic dill pickles as gifts to their neighborhood in 2020. 

“Everybody was like, ‘Wow, you have to sell these,’” JoAnn said. 

So they did.

The garden is just one part of the house that helps Gene and JoAnn with the business. Their grandkids, Gianna, 18, Sal, 17, and Ella, 12, live right upstairs. To them, JoAnn isn’t Grandma, she’s Pip. Gene is Pop. 

As Pip speaks of her grandchildren, she smiles softly, eyes welling with happy tears.

“They are a blessing,” she said.

Before the grandkids lived upstairs and before pickles were handmade in the kitchen, Gene, 68, and JoAnn, 67, were stacking them on top of orders at the McDonald’s in the Staten Island Mall where the two met.

Gene admitted he tried to set his future wife up with a friend, but when that failed, he took her out to a movie: “The Exorcist.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Gene shrugs.

The two looked at one another and laughed. 

“He was hoping I’d get scared and jump in his lap,” JoAnn said.

A year into their romance, McDonald’s decided they talked too much and worked too little. Gene was moved to the Highland Avenue location in Staten Island, but it didn’t stop them from seeing each other. The couple married in 1977 and never ate McDonald’s pickles again. 

Gene went on to work in finance, and then was a railroad conductor for 31 years before retiring in 2019. JoAnn worked as a lead teller at a bank prior to her retirement. 

The couple moved to Mount Pocono and went on to have a son and a daughter. Their son went to study at Penn State and settled in State College soon after where he and his wife are teachers.

After their daughter gave birth to their three grandchildren, Pip and Pop moved in downstairs to help with driving, babysitting and whatever else was needed.

Their eldest granddaughter is now looking at colleges, and Pip said she hopes to play Division II or III softball. Pip said she hopes she stays nearby. 

“If Lehigh weren’t Division I, I’d want her to come here,” she said.

Though in a way, JoAnn and Gene are Lehigh grandparents already. In Farrington Square at the Bethlehem Farmer’s Market every Thursday from April to November and at the Nazareth Farmer’s Market on Saturdays from May to October, Pip and Pop can be seen selling their assortment of jars and crocheted pickles.

To Ingrid Weissman,‘26, Pip and Pop are why she’s been coming to the Bethlehem Farmer’s Market for three years. 

She didn’t like pickles before walking by their stand. It was only after Pip and Pop told her to try the sweet pickles that she changed her mind. 

“They’re always very willing to give recommendations and let you try whatever you want,” Weissman said. “They don’t make you feel bad if you want to try multiple things, which is really nice.” 

As Weissman grew up, so did her taste. She now prefers garlic dill or regular dill. 

But some things never change. She and her friends always head to Pip and Pop’s Pickles.

“I feel like we’ll go and kind of bee-line, get pickles and maybe wander around a little bit and then leave,” Weissman said.  “I feel like we all really love it.”

The couple sells about 250 jars of pickles each week in the fall. The business also sells to local restaurants and gives back to their customers.  

Two years ago, JoAnn said a family friend brought their daughter to their stand in Nazareth. The daughter, who has autism, told the couple she loves pickles and offered to crochet the emerald and mint green-colored pickles for the markets. JoAnn said the two send all proceeds to the artist. At the Bethlehem market, the crochet pieces with black button eyes and a sewn smile are just as constant as the couple’s warmth.

Brooke Scott has lived in Bethlehem for five months, and went to the Bethlehem Farmer’s Market for the first time on Oct. 23, 2025. She wandered from stand to stand in a violet jacket. Scott said the market, to her, was everything she’d hoped for.

“I don’t know the vendors, but the gentleman (Pop), was sweet as pie, the sweetest little man, gave me as many samples as I wanted,” Scott said.  

Scott said she’s ready to go back to Pip and Pop’s Pickles, and has her eye set on a garlic dill jar to purchase.

By the time Pip closes the tent and Pop pulls the car around to drive home remaining jars, it’s almost time to make pickles all over again. 

The recipe is a secret, but the business model is explicit: share, love and make everyone they come across feel anything but bitter.