Two weeks before Burlington's iconic Italian restaurant Bove's Café is scheduled to close, its owners announced Monday that they will build a sauce production facility in Milton to help expand their national wholesale operation.

The Bove family has long augmented the downtown eatery that opened in 1941 by selling jars of their sauce in grocery stores across the country. For several years, the sauce has been made and packaged in a Youngstown, Ohio facility, owner Mark Bove said at a press conference Monday inside the Pearl Street restaurant.

"We are coming home ... and thrilled to make the investment in the state where we started," Bove said

The 15,000-square-foot facility in Milton, located on Route 7 a mile from Interstate 89, will open in 2016 and will employ "five to 10 people," Bove said, most of whom currently work in the restaurant. Bove decline to say how much the Milton facility cost to build.

It will have a tasting room and will offer tours. The Bove family will continue to produce their frozen meatballs and lasagna in Shelburne, but could eventually move those operations to Milton, Bove said.

"This helps our Vermont brand. It helps show we have some history," said Lt. Gov. Phil Scott, who attended the press conference.

Luis and Victoria Bove founded the restaurant, which once hosted President John F. Kennedy. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has been a regular for decades.

The restaurant, as the family previously announced, will close December 23, and will be turned into a temporary headquarters for the family's catering operation. That catering will eventually move to Milton.

Bove said the family has yet to decide what to do with the Pearl Street restaurant building in the long term, but hoped it will include some elements of "preservation."