Pod Insights How I Built This with Guy Raz Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci About this episode Carla Bartolucci grew up in an Italian-American household, eating fresh gnocchi and ravioli made by her mother, and lobster caught by her father. She met her husband Rodolfo while studying abroad in Italy; and by the early 1990's, the two of them were running a small sandwich shop in Mystic, Connecticut. They eventually partnered with the Italian company Bionaturae to sell whole wheat pastas, sauces and olive oil in the U. S. When that partnership ended in a lawsuit, Carla decided to launch her own brand of pasta, made from gluten-free grains and a prehistoric wheat called Einkorn. Jovial Foods has since grown into a multi-million dollar brand that includes organic tomatoes, olive oil, and snacks.
Very sadly, Carla passed away unexpectedly last month after a brief illness. We're sharing this interview in celebration of her remarkable life and career. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript 15,069 words · 5 speakers
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0:00 Guy Raz? Our presenting sponsor today is Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Every founder on this show started with a hard question. Not the marketing plan, the 2 a.m. kind. Is this idea any good? Am I the one to build it? Should I quit my job? Anthropic got built the same way. A public benefit corporation founded on one hard question. How do we make sure AI goes well for people? So they asked over 100,000 people their hopes and their fears and are publishing what they find, even the uncomfortable parts. Me? I've got my own hard question about AI. Here it is. If everyone has access to something that can help them write the business plan,
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5:13 Speaker 01 My brother loaned me $85,000, and I couldn't lose my brother's money. So I was in my office, this little office we had. I put two chairs together. I laid down, and I just said, please, I promise that I will be a good employer. I'll share my profits with my employees. I'll always do right by my customers. Just please help me not lose this money.
5:47 Guy Raz? From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.
5:59 Guy Raz? I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Carla Bartolucci rediscovered a prehistoric grain, turned it into flour and pasta, and launched a powerhouse organic brand, Jovial Foods.
6:18 Guy Raz? A lot of people ask us how we choose the stories we tell on the show. And a simple answer is, a lot of searching. We spend a lot of time researching founders and their brands. But every once in a while, an idea grows from something we come across in our daily lives. And about a year ago, in the supermarket, I noticed a box of gluten-free spaghetti made from cassava flour. I was intrigued, so I bought it, and it was pretty great. The brand was called Jovial, and I'd already been using their diced tomatoes and rice pastas in my cooking for a few years. They make olive oil and tomato paste, and even cookies, all produced in Italy.
6:59 Guy Raz? But the brand is probably best known for its pastas made from a wheat called einkorn. And because I'm a sucker for stories on boxes, I read about how Jovial helped revive this ancient, unhybridized wheat, a type of wheat that is not genetically modified, so some people with gluten sensitivities can actually eat it. Anyway, I decided to dig around to find out more about the brand, and I came across the story of Carla Bartolucci. Carla and her husband Rodolfo grew Jovial from a shaky startup into a national multimillion-dollar brand over the past decade.
7:40 Guy Raz? They were inspired by their own daughter, who had a sensitivity to wheat and gluten. But the journey to building Jovial was filled with personal tragedy, failures, bad business partners, and very slow growth. So I called up Carla, and we ended up having a wonderful, rich conversation about her life, about her working-class upbringing in Connecticut, and, most importantly, about our mutual love of cooking. In the weeks after the interview, we stayed in close touch. Carla sent me her einkorn sourdough starter. I sent her photos of my einkorn flour pizzas. And then, a few weeks ago, I received a small bottle of balsamic vinegar from Modena.
8:25 Guy Raz? She wrote, "This balsamic comes from one of the oldest vinegar makers in Modena. Enjoy this black gold," which I did. And then, a few days ago, I got a call that left me stunned. After a very brief illness, Carla Bartolucci died unexpectedly at the age of 53. Even though we never met face to face, it still felt like losing a good friend. And while Carla wasn't a household name, she was well-known in the specialty food business and widely respected for her vision and integrity. So while there are a lot of important business lessons to learn from this episode,
9:10 Guy Raz? we want to think of it mostly as a tribute to her remarkable life and career. A life that began in New London, Connecticut, where Carla grew up, the granddaughter of four Italian immigrants.
9:24 Speaker 01 Food was really important to my family. Both my mother and father were really, really good cooks. My mother, she was just effortless in the kitchen. I never can remember one bad meal, maybe one, but she would also make vegetables really good. She knew how to clean artichokes and cook them with parsley and garlic and a little white wine so that when you ate them, they just melted in your mouth. So as a kid, I would just walk by this huge bowl of artichokes and just plop them in my mouth. They were so good. She made fresh ravioli, gnocchi, tagliatelle with all kinds of sauces. And, you know, my dad, he was a great cook, too. He didn't cook that often, but he would make cabbage and bean soup. I'd never be able to-- I've tried.
10:08 Speaker 01 I can't replicate the flavor. And, you know, my dad, he loved fishing. So he had a lobster boat and lobster pots and--
10:19 Speaker 01 We had a ping pong table in our basement and I still remember that ping pong table being lined with trays of lobsters, stuffed lobsters that they would cook for our relatives.
10:29 Guy Raz? Wow.
10:30 Speaker 01 He also made wine.
10:31 Guy Raz? Hmm.
10:32 Speaker 01 In our cellar, we made wine and it was nice, you know, but at the same time, I was growing up in America. And so.
10:39 Guy Raz? Yeah.
10:39 Speaker 01 I think when the, um, my grandparents immigrated, they didn't wanna be Italian. They wanted to be American.
10:45 Guy Raz? Hmm.
10:46 Speaker 01 So they tried to lose their accent, but, but they, they held on to these food traditions.
10:52 Guy Raz? Where you grew up in Connecticut, was it Italian? Was it Irish? Was it like most people kind of WASPy? Like, what do you remember about the people in your, in your town?
11:02 Speaker 01 I, I mean, there was basically in Italy, people would choose a town that was similar to where they came from.
11:08 Guy Raz? Yeah.
11:08 Speaker 01 And so a lot of people there lived, came from this one area of Fano, it's called. And they actually developed a neighborhood that was called the fort. And on the other side of the town was kind of the nice beachy area where more wealthy people lived. And my father was able to buy a piece of land on the nice side of town and build a house for us. So I grew up in a neighborhood with people, you know, who were better off than us.
11:38 Guy Raz? So, uh, uh, tell me about what, what your dad did for a living.
11:41 Speaker 01 He was a bricklayer.
11:42 Guy Raz? Did he have like a small business that he ran?
11:44 Speaker 01 He tried. I mean, he really wanted to own his own business, but he had four children and so he ended up just working for construction companies.
11:55 Guy Raz? So your dad was a bricklayer and you had three siblings, other siblings. Were you the youngest, by the way?
12:01 Speaker 01 I was the youngest.
12:02 Guy Raz? And, um, were you, were you the only girl?
12:05 Speaker 01 I was the only girl.
12:06 Guy Raz? Oh, so you were surrounded by boys?
12:07 Speaker 01 Yeah. So I was very competitive in, at a young age because I just felt this pressure like to do good, uh, just to do things that they were doing.
12:17 Guy Raz? Yeah. All right. So you grew up, you're growing up in Connecticut. And from what I understand, when you were 16, your father was diagnosed with cancer.
12:29 Speaker 01 Yes. My parents sat us down in the living room and told us. And the next day I went to height, I was in high school, I went to English class. And my friend's father owned the funeral home in town. And I said, you know, Eileen, my father has cancer. It's not bad. I didn't even know what it was. And she just looked at me like, yeah, very bad. And so that weekend, I asked my mom to drive me to the health food store. It was this little teeny health food store I'd never been in, but I saw it when we were driving past it to go to the supermarket. And I walked in and, you know, it smelled like falafel mix. It was kind of weird, you know, with all the bulk bins. And, and I went to the section where they had books.
13:14 Speaker 01 And I noticed the macrobiotic, I think that that time it was called Cure for Cancer. It was a long time ago. And I asked my mom to buy it. And then I came home and I was like, Dad, I'm gonna cure you of cancer. I'm gonna cook. And he just, he just was not interested.
13:30 Guy Raz? How old was your dad when he was diagnosed?
13:33 Speaker 01 He was, he was 56.
13:35 Guy Raz? Wow.
13:36 Speaker 01 But he had been to Italy to reconnect with these relatives on his own once. And his final wish was to go back there. So he was very, very sick, but he took one of my brothers and I, and we were there for a month.
13:52 Guy Raz? He, he wanted to go to Italy, knowing that he did not have a long time to live.
13:57 Speaker 01 No, he died a few months later. He was also a little sick there. But, but the trip was amazing. That trip completely changed my life.
14:07 Guy Raz? And this is your first time going?
14:09 Speaker 01 Yes. Yeah. You know, we stayed with relatives. They gave us an apartment to live in, right in front of the gelato store. And first of all, I noticed just how good people looked. You know, it was a time in Italy before things got big.
14:27 Guy Raz? This was in the, in the early 80s?
14:30 Speaker 01 85. And I also noticed that when we got to this apartment, like I was obsessed with like turning over forks and looking at the tablecloths and everything in the house was made in Italy. And I was like, wow, this country sustains itself. Cause back in Connecticut. Everything was getting like huge supermarkets and this little downtown that we had with a butcher shop and a fish market and everything was all closing down.
14:56 Guy Raz? Yeah.
14:57 Speaker 01 And then I had this one memory of it's called the night of San Lorenzo, when there's a lot of shooting stars. So we went up into the hills. You could see the Adriatic coast. And then we just sat there and the sky was so clear and there were shooting stars everywhere. And I just said, I wish I could live here someday.
15:21 Guy Raz? Wow.
15:21 Speaker 01 You know, I was, I was totally hooked. I was thinking, why did my grandparents leave?
15:26 Guy Raz? Leave, yeah.
15:26 Speaker 01 This is paradise. Yeah.
15:28 Guy Raz? So that trip clearly had a huge impact on you. Um, and, and I guess when you went to college, you went to Connecticut college.
15:36 Speaker 01 Um, I went to Connecticut college because I wanted to stay close to home because I, I didn't know if my father was gonna be alive or not.
15:45 Guy Raz? Yeah.
15:45 Speaker 01 That's where, that's where I went.
15:47 Guy Raz? And, and your dad, your dad passed away pretty, pretty soon after that trip.
15:52 Speaker 01 He did, a couple of days before I actually started college.
15:55 Guy Raz? Wow.
15:56 Speaker 01 And it got to the point where you had to decide your major. So I was looking through the book and I said, let me look at Italian. And it said, if you majored in Italian and you have financial aid, you have to spend a year abroad in Italy. And the program covers like your apartment, it gives you a stipend. And I was like, that's me.
16:17 Guy Raz? That's me. I have to go to Italy. I've got to go.
16:21 Speaker 01 It's calling me.
16:22 Guy Raz? So you end up spending your, your junior year abroad in Italy. And that year would be, would like change the rest of your life. Because that year you also met the man who would eventually become your husband and, and business partner, Rodolfo. How did you guys, how did you meet?
16:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, he, he was a friend of one of these distant relatives that I had that lived in Wadonna. And he said, oh, let's, my mother said, you know, I should come and pick you up and take you to her house so you can say hi to her. So we went to his house and my husband had just pulled up because his best friend lived next door.
17:02 Guy Raz? He wasn't your husband yet. He was this guy.
17:04 Speaker 01 No, Rodolfo. As soon as I saw him, I was like, if I'm pretty enough for you, you're my man. I just knew it. He was, he was just, I don't know, just had this feeling.
17:17 Guy Raz? And you hit it off right away?
17:18 Speaker 01 We were just friends. I mean, we would, I would go, in Italy, when you're that, when you're that age, you have like this group of friends and they all go out together. So on Friday or Saturday nights, they would say, hey, do you want to come to Modena and go out with us? So the girls would sit on one side of the table, the guys would sit on the other and they would just talk all night long. And I was, I'd get bored. You know, they were talking about things like, oh, have you ever heard of like band roll, they have these roll-ons now that work as deodorant. I was like, oh, my God. But they would always sit me next to him because he didn't have a girlfriend.
17:53 Guy Raz? Hmm. Was he a student?
17:55 Speaker 01 He actually had just finished military service and he had previously studied agriculture in Bologna, but his family had had some financial hardships, so he had to go to work.
18:10 Guy Raz? Hmm. So I guess you two start dating and at a certain point you go back to the US to finish college, but then you, you returned to Italy and you and Rodolfo move in together, right?
18:22 Speaker 01 Yes.
18:23 Guy Raz? And what, what were you both doing?
18:25 Speaker 01 He was working in this agricultural company and I had my first and only job as a translator. But after a couple of months, I got yelled at because I translated stainless steel to inoxidable steel. And I think it was an important company to the, it was important, you know, customer. So the man who ran the place took me to his office and just yelled at me and I just looked at him and I said, I quit. You know, so I, I've only had one job in my life and it was like two months. And we were already having a hard time making ends meet because in Italy, you know, people don't really make a lot of money. And if
19:05 Speaker 01 your parents don't have something, it's almost impossible to get ahead. And I didn't want to be like my parents, always worrying about money. I wanted to have a family. I wanted to, I, I wanted to do things. So I was very motivated to, to get ahead.
19:22 Guy Raz? You wanted to start a business?
19:24 Speaker 01 I did. And so I convinced my husband to go to the United States because one day I was like, God, you can open a business in the United States for like $200. And he said, okay.
19:35 Guy Raz? Wow. So you convinced him. And by the way, did he speak any English?
19:40 Speaker 01 No, he studied German in high school.
19:42 Guy Raz? So he knew no English. You convince him, Rodolfo, you convince him to go to the US. And you're not married at this point, right?
19:50 Speaker 01 No, but we did have to get married for him to get green.
19:53 Guy Raz? Okay, I got you. Right.
19:54 Speaker 01 We just like called my cousin was like a justice of the peace and we signed the papers and that was it.
20:00 Guy Raz? All right. So you get married to come back to the US. And now, what was the idea? What was the business you were gonna do?
20:08 Speaker 01 The first business idea was to move to Miami and open a Piadina hut at the beach. So Piadina is like this flatbread that they make on the Adriatic coast and they have these striped huts. And, you know, you just stuff them with prosciutto or cheese or greens or tomatoes. And that was our idea. So we drove to southern Florida and we actually stayed in a campground in a tent. And it was very frustrating because nobody was going to give you the permit to open up a Piadina hut in Miami Beach. And so one night, I went to bed and I left my sneakers outside of the tent. And when I woke up in the morning,
20:51 Speaker 01 I put them on with no socks. And there were these little teeny fire ants inside the sneakers and they bit my feet. And it was so painful. I looked at my husband, I started to cry and I said, let's go back to Connecticut. I can't take it anymore.
21:05 Guy Raz? All right. And so you go back to Connecticut. And did you go back to New London where you grew up?
21:09 Speaker 01 We live with my parents. I didn't have any with my mother. I didn't have any money. So we were in the kitchen brainstorming and my brother and his friend were there. And I said, we're gonna open a fresh pasta shop with like prepared sauces in this touristy town called Mystic, Connecticut. And they were like, you'll never make it. You need to make sandwiches and grinders and things like that.
21:35 Guy Raz? Right, because Connecticut.
21:37 Speaker 01 Yeah, so I was like, all right, all right. So we found this man who made this really good Italian bread. It was like 20 minutes away. And so we would go, we would leave our house at like 5:00 in the morning, pick up this whole load of bread. And then I would weave in some Italian things. So like I made focaccia, I made spinach pie. And we found an empty store and it was only $500 a month. We couldn't really afford a sign or anything. So I actually painted the windows backwards in red paint.
22:09 Guy Raz? And this was, this was in like the late 80s, right?
22:12 Speaker 01 I think it was 91.
22:14 Guy Raz? Oh, wow. So if I have my cinematic history correct, this is after Mystic Pizza, the movie came out.
22:20 Speaker 01 Probably. We didn't get many tourists, though. It was pretty much a local spot. And we also, my brother had loaned us $5,000. And we took 1,500 of that and bought this old Firema cappuccino machine. So we were the first people in town to have a cappuccino machine. And, you know, my husband was a pretty good looking guy who could barely speak a word of English. So I think people like to come and just for the novelty of getting a cappuccino from a real Italian. And then on Saturday, you could special order, you know, fresh tortelloni, tagliatelle, all kinds of sauces. You can get homemade lasagna.
22:58 Guy Raz? And who was making all this stuff?
23:00 Speaker 01 Me and my husband. My mother helped us too.
23:03 Guy Raz? So you guys were just like working like crazy?
23:06 Speaker 01 We were.
23:07 Guy Raz? Yeah, but it was fun?
23:09 Speaker 01 Retail's not my thing. I knew that right away. You know, I don't really like to be everybody's friend or talk to people. I'm kind of like a behind the scenes type of person. So after a year, we decided to put the business up for sale. We just wanted to move back to Italy. My husband always wanted to own a farm or something. And we sold the business for about, I think it was like $25,000. And we had saved money because we were living with our parents. And so we took all of that money and moved back to Italy. And our idea was to buy a little piece of land and put up a greenhouse and open a nursery.
23:46 Guy Raz? From what I understand, around that time you you went back, Rodolfo's brother was was paralyzed. He was in a car accident. And then around that time, your mom was diagnosed with cancer as well.
24:00 Speaker 01 We were trying to get something started. And one afternoon, it was summertime and we were all getting ready to go to the beach. And the phone rang.
24:07 Guy Raz? This is in Italy?
24:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, the phone rang and it was like the hospital and they said that his brother had had a serious accident and was being life started helicoptered to the Bologna Hospital to get there right away. So we took all of our money, basically, and helped his family renovate a bathroom and a little room in his house that was handicap accessible. And then, once things started to get better with his health, I got a call. It was my mother and she said, I have cancer. And I said to my husband, I just can't, I have to go back. So he came with me.
24:44 Guy Raz? Wow. All right. So you guys are back and forth, back and forth, and now back in Connecticut again. Your mom, presumably, you don't know how how long she has to live at that point.
24:58 Speaker 01 She had multiple myeloma, so she was sick for about four years. It's a lot of cancer going away, cancer coming back. I mean, it just tore me apart. It was terrible.
25:09 Guy Raz? Did you guys go back and move in with her?
25:11 Speaker 01 We did. We took care of her and started to kind of brainstorm. What was our next move? And she really latched on to my husband. She loved him. It was like Carla who? Like, I don't, you know, and so they were always together and. I started to do Italian lessons because we didn't have any money. And one of the women I taught, I became really close with, she was an older woman. And she had just lost her son to brain cancer. And so we connected and she, she told me when I told her I was trying to help my mother with diet and she said, you should go check out Bread and Circus in Providence. I was like, what's that? You know?
25:49 Guy Raz? And Bread and Circus was a, a natural food store that, we should just say eventually was bought out by Whole Foods. But at the time it was, it was like in New England, Boston and I guess Providence. And it was like, it was an amazing store.
26:02 Speaker 01 Yes, it was. And, and you know, at that time, my husband moves to America. You know, when he grew up, the bakery where his parents bought bread was owned by Luciano Pavarotti's father. He still talks about how good these little French rolls were there. And he comes to the United States and it's when everything is becoming fake. You know, so we would go to the supermarket and buy a loaf of French bread. And he would just look at the ingredients and say, God, why can't they just make bread with flour and water? I mean, what is dough conditioner and all this other stuff?
26:36 Guy Raz? Yeah.
26:37 Speaker 01 And I was like, yeah, you're right, you know? And one day we, we drive to Bread and Circus and I walked in there. And I immediately went to the customer service and got, they had a little pamphlet with their financial statement. And I was like, this is where the food needs to go. I mean, America needs to be natural. It doesn't have to be, you know, hippie natural, but we can't keep eating all this, these additives. And so that's really what I wanted to do. And I was like, this is it. I'm getting into this industry. And, you know, naturally we gravitated toward the pasta aisle. And at the time, I think whole wheat pasta was basically like, if you wanted to be healthy, you ate whole wheat pasta.
27:19 Guy Raz? Like that was what people gravitated towards. They thought whole wheat pasta was healthier.
27:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, gluten free came out way later, but they thought, you know? And so we bought some whole wheat pasta. I think DeBolle's was the number one brand. And when I tasted it, I was like, oh my God, we can do so much.
27:35 Guy Raz? A little bitter, right?
27:36 Speaker 01 We can do so much better than this.
27:38 Guy Raz? Yeah. But Carla, like you were, I'd say this with all due respect, you were like, you know, barely out of college with no money and like no resources. How are you gonna get into a place like Bread and Circus?
27:53 Speaker 01 Well, first of all, I have to say that my father was always incredibly proud of me and he made me feel like I could do anything in life. So I grew up with this confidence, like I could do anything. My husband isn't really like that, you know, it was me. And second of all, my husband really, really missed his hometown. I mean, moving to Connecticut was tough for him. So to make him feel better, sometimes we used to drive to New Haven where they had a newsstand that sold Italian newspapers and magazines and he would load up and-
28:27 Guy Raz? It was an international newsstand?
28:29 Speaker 01 Yes. And so we opened the magazine and there was an advertisement for an organic brand of pasta and olive oil and tomatoes and things like that. So we called his father and said, go, in Italy, you have to write, who is the co-packer? So we said, go to the store and figure out where they make this product.
28:51 Guy Raz? It was just an advertisement, but how did you, what was it about the ad that struck you as interesting?
28:56 Speaker 01 I didn't even know that there were people in Europe making organic foods.
29:01 Guy Raz? Okay, it was organic. I got you. It was organic pasta and you thought, oh, this is interesting. Maybe, maybe we should check this out.
29:07 Speaker 01 Yeah. So we had his father go. He bought a bottle of olive oil. He gave us the address and we made up a fax and lied that we were a food distributor and, and that we wanted to sell the products.
29:21 Guy Raz? So you, you send a fax to this company and you say, hey, we wanted, we want to distribute this in the US and they were like-
29:30 Guy Raz? Sure. No due diligence or nothing. They were just like, yeah, okay, fine.
29:34 Speaker 01 Yeah, and they they said that they had just developed this brand called Bionaturae, and they were thrilled to sell in the United States. And then we became friends with them after afterwards.
29:44 Guy Raz? And you were gonna just get all this this raw material and then package it under your own brand and label?
29:50 Speaker 01 No, they packaged everything under their brand.
29:52 Guy Raz? They package it?
29:53 Speaker 01 Yeah.
29:53 Guy Raz? How much did you order?
29:55 Speaker 01 Our first order, I believe it was about $20,000. It was a 20-foot container.
30:03 Guy Raz? Wow. How did you pay for it? Because you guys, you and Rodolfo had no money.
30:07 Speaker 01 We had no money, but my brother had saved a lot of money working as a bricklayer, and he was just tired of his life. And I said, if you, I have an idea. If you loan me some money, you can have a third of the company. And eventually, when we make enough money, I can hire you and you can manage our warehouse.
30:28 Guy Raz? He was a, your brother was a bricklayer, just like your dad. He was just saving his money?
30:33 Speaker 01 He saved every penny. He still saves every penny. I don't think he turns his heat on in his house. He's very frugal. Yeah.
30:39 Guy Raz? How how much did your brother loan you?
30:42 Speaker 01 My brother loaned me $85,000.
30:44 Guy Raz? Which was his life savings, I have to imagine.
30:47 Speaker 01 Almost, almost all of it, yeah. And
30:49 Guy Raz? Yeah.
30:50 Speaker 01 we took $65,000 mortgage on my parents' house.
30:55 Guy Raz? That's a lot of risk. I mean, you took a mortgage out on the house that basically was the only asset you guys had, right?
31:04 Speaker 01 Yeah, but I never, I never really thought I would lose the money. I was, I was just, this is gonna work. I don't know. I never thought I wouldn't succeed. I thought I could do, I thought, I think I can do anything.
31:15 Guy Raz? That's awesome. All right. So that was the money just for the, this new business, this importing business that was going to sell organic pastas and sauces in the US. So you make the order and the shipment presumably arrives a couple weeks or months later. And you've got Tens of thousands of dollars worth of product. By the way, where did you, did you go and pick it up at like, I don't know Mystic Seaport? Where does it arrive?
31:43 Speaker 01 No, we rented, we rented a warehouse and a little warehouse. It was actually in an old grain mill near my home and the owner of the building, my landlord, he just really liked Rodolfo and I. So I can remember when the first distributor came to pick up the product. We loaded the truck and he said, okay, where's the bill of lading? And I'm like, bill of lading? What's a bill of lading? So I ran to the landlord and I'm like, Frank, what's a bill of lading? He said, I'll help you, I'll help you. I mean, we had to learn every, we didn't know anything.
32:15 Guy Raz? How did you even, you have all this product coming and then what did you guys do? Did you start to go around to grocery stores and, and say, hey, we've got this pasta. Will you carry it? What did you, how did you even, because ordering the pasta from that company and the sauces is the easy part.
32:33 Speaker 01 Yes, and my husband couldn't speak English and I'm a terrible seller. So basically.
32:39 Guy Raz? Perfect. Combination.
32:42 Speaker 01 Yeah, so there was a gourmet shop in town and I kind of clicked with the manager there. She took some and I mean, eventually I figured out you need a broker and things like that.
32:53 Guy Raz? And, and I guess you also presumably started to work with a, a small distributor there. Where, where were they placing your products?
33:01 Speaker 01 Well, it was basically in the Northeast and this small, this distributor called Associated Buyers actually started selling our products to food co-ops. So there's like a national network of food co-ops. Then it was all independent, but the food co-ops really embraced this whole wheat pasta. And that's how we really got started.
33:24 Guy Raz? So it was, it was whole wheat pasta and what else were you, were you guys selling?
33:28 Speaker 01 I think we had some jellies, some juices, fruit nectars.
33:32 Guy Raz? Like jams, like sweet jellies?
33:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, olive oil.
33:36 Guy Raz? And all under this, this label, Bionaturae?
33:38 Speaker 01 Yes.
33:39 Guy Raz? And at the time, was it you and Rodolfo?
33:44 Guy Raz? And your brother living together?
33:47 Speaker 01 Yes, and he would go to work and put money on the table because we couldn't get a paycheck. And I would cook for us.
33:55 Guy Raz? So there's a three of you living in an apartment. And I mean, you were putting money, you were spending money to buy this product, right? But you had to make money from the product. And were you, was it hard or was it easy? I don't, how does it work? Like, you import the stuff, I mean, you buy something for a dollar, you sell it for a dollar fifty, right? Pretty simple principle, but was that more or less what you were, what you were doing?
34:18 Speaker 01 It's what we were trying to do. I mean, we also had to pay for trade shows and expenses. We submitted the Bionaturae brand for the fancy food show. I think it's called the Sophie Award. And we actually won as best new product line.
34:35 Guy Raz? Where's that, where's that food show?
34:37 Speaker 01 In New York. And so that's where all the money went. You know, it was like those added expenses.
34:44 Guy Raz? But still, I mean, it's still hard to, I mean, anyone knows, anyone who's introducing a brand knows how hard it is, especially with no marketing budget, to get people to use it or to try it. I have to imagine even, even in the first few years, it was still a tiny number of people had even heard of it.
35:03 Speaker 01 I think we managed to sell about $500,000 the first year.
35:07 Guy Raz? That's not bad.
35:07 Speaker 01 And at the end of the year, I was really behind in the QuickBooks and putting things into the computers. But it was the end of the year. So I had put all the bills and all the expenses and I ran our first P and L. And it was like negative 200.
35:22 Guy Raz? Because of the cost that you were, the amount of money you were spending on buying product? And also going to trade shows and other expenses?
35:30 Speaker 01 Yes. And I couldn't lose my brother's money. So I was in my office, this little office we had, I put two chairs together. I laid down and I just said, please, I promise that I will be a good employer. I'll share my profits with my employees. I'll always do right by my customers. Just please help me not lose this money.
35:56 Guy Raz? Who are you talking to?
35:59 Speaker 01 Whatever higher power would listen to me.
36:04 Guy Raz? When we come back in just a moment, how Carla and Rodolfo built Bionaturae into a top organic brand and then almost lost control of the business, and how that near disaster led to the launch of Jobio. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.
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40:08 Guy Raz? Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So it's the late 1990s and Carla and Rodolfo are trying to get Bionaturae's pastas and jams and olive oil into small food co-ops across the country. And they're also trying not to lose all their money in the process. And then?
40:30 Speaker 01 A major organic food distributor called us and told us they wanted to carry our products.
40:35 Guy Raz? How did they find out about you?
40:37 Speaker 01 These food co-ops requested that they pick up the product.
40:41 Guy Raz? Wow.
40:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, wow. And so basically, if you can get your product in enough retail stores, the retail stores can request that the distributor carries your product. And that's what happened to us. And once that distributor carried our products, a food broker called us and asked if they could represent us. And then things just started to take off.
41:06 Guy Raz? And the idea would be that people who were looking for more sort of whole grain, wholesome pastas would just discover it on the shelves?
41:14 Speaker 01 Yes. And a lot of people started to buy the Semolina pasta because we pressed it with bronze dyes. It was made in an old pasta. I mean, it was really good quality.
41:22 Guy Raz? Because bronze and bronze dyes, that's what makes pasta have that, like, those like microscopic ridges in them, right, that holds the sauce?
41:32 Speaker 01 Yes. Otherwise, it just slides, the sauce will slide right off.
41:35 Guy Raz? Just slides off?
41:37 Speaker 01 Yes. And I organized my company in a way that we were able to market the product.
41:43 Guy Raz? What did you do? How did you do? Tell me some of the things that you remember doing to market the product.
41:48 Speaker 01 Well, basically, when you start to sell the product, there's all of these, you know, sales and promotions that you have to do. And we were getting charged back so much money, it was becoming hard to make money.
42:01 Guy Raz? And when you take charge back, you were having to pay the supermarkets the money that you essentially were discounting to the customers, right?
42:09 Speaker 01 Yes.
42:09 Guy Raz? Yeah, that's actually how it works. Like, when there's a discount at the supermarket, the supermarket's not giving you a discount. It's the brand, and then they still have to pay the supermarket the full price that it normally would retail for.
42:22 Speaker 01 And if you don't have a way to control that, it just becomes unreasonable.
42:27 Guy Raz? And it can completely destroy business.
42:30 Speaker 01 Yes, because you don't want to say no, but you have to sometimes.
42:32 Guy Raz? Yeah.
42:33 Speaker 01 You know, you have to be in charge of how you're spending your money.
42:36 Guy Raz? So there must have been times where you were selling the pastas for less than you were paying for them, or around the same price.
42:45 Speaker 01 It was tough. Let's just say it was tough.
42:47 Guy Raz? So part of it was just discounts, and then what other kind of marketing were you doing?
42:54 Speaker 01 Well, to believe it or not, I actually answered customer service emails for, like, five years. And really connected with our customers. And I think, I don't know, I personally felt like it made a difference. You know, I would just, if we made a mistake, I would say, yeah, we made a mistake, I'm sorry. Or I would give them a glimpse of the education I had on food, and they were like, oh, my God, this is the best customer service I've ever gotten.
43:22 Guy Raz? But how did, what explains the fact that people were finding out about it? I mean, it's one brand of pasta on a shelf of 40 brands of pasta. What explains the fact that people found out about it? I mean, you weren't, I'm assuming you weren't advertising on television or in magazines. You weren't on Oprah. What was it?
43:45 Speaker 01 Well, there is a large organic trade show in California called the Natural Products Expo West.
43:53 Guy Raz? Yeah, in Anaheim, famous one.
43:55 Speaker 01 Yes. And we had begged this manufacturer to make the first organic balsamic vinegar on the market. And we went to the trade show and we exhibited these products. And at a certain point, this guy came by and he was from Spectrum Organics.
44:13 Guy Raz? Oh, yeah.
44:13 Speaker 01 And he was the founder, CEO. And he said, I'm gonna send a friend of mine, you know, a guy that works at our company by to talk to you about this organic balsamic vinegar. So his president, Neil, came by and said, you know, we'd really like to partner with you on this product and sell it under the Spectrum brand. So he came to Italy and we visited the factory and then.
44:39 Guy Raz? Well, you made an agreement with him? You said, sure, we're happy to do it.
44:42 Speaker 01 Yes.
44:42 Guy Raz? With the balsamic vinegar?
44:44 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
44:46 Guy Raz? Yeah.
44:46 Speaker 01 So he came to Italy and we rented this minivan. We just randomly drove around Italy and stopped wherever we felt like stopping. And his wife and him were kind of bickering in the car. So I said, hey, let's switch places. So she sat in front with Rodolfo and they got along so well. And I sat next to him and at a certain point, I turned to him and I said, Neil, I really need to find a sales guy. And he said, somebody called me the other day. I think he'd be perfect for you. Let me, let me get his name and I'll give it to you. So when I, when we got home to Connecticut, I called this guy. And basically I sent him a package and a price list. And I said, I really need help with these charge backs.
45:31 Guy Raz? What did you send him? You sent him pasta and what else?
45:34 Speaker 01 I think we had tomatoes at that time and olive oil and everything.
45:38 Guy Raz? Right.
45:38 Speaker 01 And the next day I got a letter from him and he said, I love your line. I want to work for you.
45:44 Guy Raz? Wow.
45:44 Speaker 01 He had a lot of experience and he really helped us grow the brand. And so it took, I'm not sure how many years, but Bionaturae became the number one organic selling pasta in the United States.
45:55 Guy Raz? Let's just be clear about that for a sec. That sounds great. It sounds amazing. It's a huge achievement. But I have to imagine, by the time it became the number one organic pasta brand in the US, let's say in the early 2000s, that's a tiny sliver of the pasta market, right? I mean, it's teeny, tiny sliver.
46:11 Speaker 01 I've always been humble, so I never was like, oh, my God, I'm so great. You know, I'm the number one pasta. But the people in Italy, you know, the success really went to their heads, and they were the total opposites of us.
46:25 Guy Raz? They were excited about how well the product was doing in the US. It was doing better in the US than it was in Italy?
46:32 Speaker 01 Much better.
46:33 Guy Raz? Because in the US, this was something interesting. Organic Italian pasta, whereas in Italy, it was just pasta.
46:41 Speaker 01 Yes.
46:42 Guy Raz? But did it occur to you at that point, like, maybe we should be doing our own thing? Or were you just perfectly happy, kind of being the Bionaturae outpost in the US?
46:53 Speaker 01 I was trusting, and we actually didn't even have a contract, which is crazy. And at that point, things were getting a little... I noticed that these guys were, you know, they had brought on partner investors.
47:05 Guy Raz? The Italian owners of the Bionaturae brand, OK.
47:08 Speaker 01 And they opened a new factory, and it was beautiful. But I was like, how are they going to pay for this thing? You know, I was sensing that there were signs that they were overspending.
47:18 Guy Raz? So what happened? I mean, did Bionaturae... Let's just say they were going to go out of business. That would obviously affect you guys, because you would not have a product to sell in the US.
47:32 Speaker 01 We would have lost everything. I mean, and I knew that. And at the same time, Bionaturae weren't getting along with their partners. So they were interested in a distribution agreement, but also a licensing agreement that we could start if we wanted to, because they figured if things went bad with their partners, we could take control of the brand, and they would get a royalty payment.
47:57 Guy Raz? And were you guys at that point... Because now we're... This is around, I think, 2008, and the financial crisis is hitting. I mean... Was your business doing really well? Were you guys financially secure and all those things?
48:11 Speaker 01 I think we were surviving. I mean, we were about maybe 15 million in sales and things were okay.
48:18 Guy Raz? But you had, I mean, you weren't banking 15 million bucks a year, right? I mean,
48:23 Speaker 01 No, no. You know, I have an accountant who's been my financial advisor from day one. And I walked in, I told him my story and he looked at me and he said, Carla, you're really bright. I think you're going to be successful, but you're going to have to accept that you're not going to be able to take money out of this company. You're just going to have to keep reinvesting your profits every year. And that's what I did.
48:45 Guy Raz? So when this company, Bionaturae, started to come apart, and you guys very wisely made an agreement with them that if it did fall apart, you would continue to have the license and pay them a royalty. That must have been really stressful because you would invest it at this point, 10 years more in this business.
49:08 Speaker 01 Yes, it was a hard time for my family. My kids were six and three and my older daughter was always like, why do you have that face, Mom? I'm like, oh, just thinking about work, you know? Or what are those bad people doing? You know, they didn't understand, but it was evident that we were in big trouble.
49:26 Guy Raz? And you, at the time, even though you had a house in Connecticut, you decided that you wanted to move back to Italy and live in Italy, right?
49:36 Speaker 01 Well, we just had finished a house which I had bought by the skin of my teeth. And we packed up our bags and went to Italy because now we had to find people to make the products right away because we were, there was no more factory.
49:51 Guy Raz? Wow.
49:51 Speaker 01 So we went there and found new factories and suddenly realized that the pricing that we had was very unfair. And so when we went direct, we made a lot more money.
50:06 Guy Raz? Because the price that they were selling it to you was actually,
50:08 Speaker 01 Totally unfair.
50:09 Guy Raz? Yeah.
50:09 Speaker 01 Totally unfair.
50:11 Guy Raz? So I guess at this point, Carla, I should explain. Kind of a complex situation that you kind of found yourself in because from what I understand, Bionaturae, right, they were, they were having problems. They, some of the owners of Bionaturae made a deal with other, another group of Italian business owners to allow them to license their products in the US, basically trying to cut you guys out, even though you and Rodolfo had built up the brand in the US. And so you, you guys filed the lawsuit.
50:49 Speaker 01 Yes.
50:50 Guy Raz? And I mean, anybody listening to this knows that a lawsuit is super stressful and, and, and takes a long time.
50:57 Speaker 01 It took years and it was very expensive. And I did actually hire a top lawyer because I didn't want to lose. Because I didn't even not want to lose because the licensing part was a no brainer.
51:10 Guy Raz? Yeah.
51:10 Speaker 01 I wanted to prove that they had held us back and caused us to lose a lot of profits so that we could actually buy the brand.
51:19 Guy Raz? You need to just buy them out because what was the point of promoting the brand in the US and all the work you had done for the previous 12 years if, if you didn't have a ownership, some ownership?
51:29 Speaker 01 Exactly.
51:30 Guy Raz? God, I cannot believe you worked with them without a contract for almost 10 years.
51:35 Speaker 01 Anyone who's listening, do not do that.
51:38 Guy Raz? Yes. Right, because you were, you were basically, I mean, they had a great deal, right? And, and again, I mean, it sounds like it was, there was a friendship. You had met these people, you liked them, they liked you. And, and then you were promoting their, their brand. It's like if I started a kombucha company called Guys Kombucha and I found some young French college students, like, yep, you guys go promote it and I'll, you know, I'll sell it to you and you guys can get a cut of it in France. And then they just spend the next 10 years promoting Guys Kombucha in France. Like, I've got a great brand in France. I mean, that's basically what they had.
52:12 Speaker 01 Like I said, I-
52:13 Guy Raz? Bionaturae, yeah.
52:14 Speaker 01 Like I said, I had no, I really had no idea what I was doing. And I didn't really have any qualifications to even ask, you know, I felt like I couldn't even ask for a contract in the beginning. And then by the time I didn't, it just, we were so busy working, I never really, never really crossed my mind.
52:32 Guy Raz? So, all right. So now you've got this lawsuit, which is super stressful. And you have to run the company and you've got two kids and they're in school in Italy. How are you doing all that stuff?
52:45 Speaker 01 It's a very difficult time in my life and you know, just the children, you know, my daughter was like, where's my yellow house? Where are my toys?
52:54 Guy Raz? Yeah.
52:55 Speaker 01 And renting an apartment and just buying everything all over again. It was, it was tough.
53:02 Guy Raz? So I imagine at this point you are dealing with a lawsuit, you're dealing with this stress of a potential competitor distributing your brand in the US. And at this point, you don't yet own the brand. Today, you do own it, but at that time, you did not own the brand, Bionaturae.
53:20 Speaker 01 Right.
53:21 Guy Raz? Did you start to think, I gotta get some control over something? Because there was a possibility that you would not win that lawsuit and then Bionaturae would be out of your hands.
53:30 Speaker 01 Yeah. We would talk about it all the time. Do we switch the brand out? You know, we didn't know what to do.
53:36 Guy Raz? Yeah.
53:36 Speaker 01 And one day I said, I'm gonna start a new brand. I told everybody in our company and they said, you're crazy.
53:44 Guy Raz? Because you'd already spent all this time building up the brand, Bionaturae?
53:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, but I, I said, I'm really the one who built the Bionaturae brand. I can do it again. And I learned a lot in my life. I think I was 40 when I started Jovial. And someone had said to me, oh, it's your 40th birthday. Think of what you want to accomplish. So I thought about it and I thought, you know, I want to do something that really is, comes from within.
54:14 Guy Raz? Did you come to the realization when you started Jovial, when you were about to start Jovial, that, that you had to do this? That relying only on Bionaturae was too, actually quite dangerous? That in order to actually do something that was less dangerous, you almost, it's almost like you had to start Jovial?
54:34 Speaker 01 I had to. I mean, I had no choice. I wasn't gonna switch out the brand. It was just too weird. I mean, I had to start over and I really wanted to do something that I had created because I knew that I was. A big part of the Bionaturae's success. And even though those products, a few of the products were lined up before I got into it, I feel like I improved them later and that I'm good at what I do.
55:01 Guy Raz? So you're, you're starting to think about a brand. Meantime, one of your kids has some serious health problems, right? Is this Giulia, your older daughter?
55:10 Speaker 01 Giulia, my oldest daughter.
55:12 Guy Raz? What's, what's going on with her at the time?
55:14 Speaker 01 She had, she had food sensitivities since she was born. It just kept getting progressively worse, to the point where she had a lot of symptoms and just looked very unwell.
55:25 Guy Raz? What was, what was, I mean, if you don't mind me asking, what, what kind of symptoms?
55:29 Speaker 01 Not, not at all. She had stomach discomfort. She had swollen lymph nodes. She had huge tonsils. Her nose were plugged. She'd often get bronchitis. And then she developed asthma and then her hair started to fall out in clumps.
55:46 Guy Raz? I mean, and this is, she was, how old was she?
55:48 Speaker 01 She was seven.
55:50 Guy Raz? This started to happen with more frequency when you were in Italy?
55:53 Speaker 01 Yes, because we got here and we were living with my mother-in-law and it was all, you know, bread, pasta.
56:01 Guy Raz? Pasta.
56:02 Speaker 01 Yeah. And literally after two weeks, she had a severe asthma attack.
56:06 Guy Raz? So I'm assuming you went to the doctor to find out what was going on?
56:09 Speaker 01 We did. They tested her for celiac disease because that's pretty prominent here in Italy.
56:14 Guy Raz? Yeah.
56:15 Speaker 01 And it came back negative.
56:16 Guy Raz? Came back negative. I did not know celiac is prominent in Italy.
56:19 Speaker 01 Italy loves people with food and they regard celiac disease as a serious disease. So, you know, people are trained in restaurants, certified. They just have a complete respect. Like, if you can't eat wheat, they feel bad for you. They don't feel like, oh yeah, sure, you know?
56:37 Guy Raz? Wow. So she came back for, from a celiac test and she was negative. So that means that she was not allergic to gluten, but it didn't mean that gluten wasn't maybe connected to some of her health issues?
56:50 Speaker 01 Right. There is a famous homeopathic doctor in my town. So we got her in there and he looked her over and he said, I believe she has gluten sensitivity. It's not celiac disease, but if she stops eating wheat, I think all of her symptoms will go away.
57:09 Guy Raz? So you go on a gluten-free diet.
57:11 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
57:12 Guy Raz? Right? You stop eating.
57:12 Speaker 01 Yes.
57:13 Guy Raz? And, and, and, let's be honest, gluten-free bread, I'm sure there's some great, and I know people are going to be listening and they're going to start sending me loaves of gluten-free bread, but I haven't found one that is good as not gluten-free bread. Let's just be honest.
57:27 Speaker 01 Right, regular bread.
57:28 Guy Raz? It's not great. It's really hard. And so, but in the meantime, this is, from what I understand, this is like 2007, 2008. You come across a variety of wheat called einkorn.
57:44 Speaker 01 Yes.
57:44 Guy Raz? How did you come across einkorn? Were you searching for like an alternative wheat to try for, for your daughter?
57:50 Speaker 01 Well, you have to know that I'm a food manufacturer. So I educate myself in food. So when the doctor said she can't eat wheat, I immediately started to research wheat. And I read about things that had happened to wheat and how it was hybridized. And then how in the 1940s, there was the green revolution where they were breeding it to increase yields and how they had dwarfed it with cobalt radiation. And I was like, oh, my God, no wonder why my daughter can't digest this wheat.
58:18 Guy Raz? And you're thinking, what? Maybe I can find wheat that's not hybridized?
58:24 Speaker 01 Yeah, maybe I can find the oldest wheat that there is. So I, my husband is really our research and development. And I was like, find something, please. Because when I see somebody who's not well, I don't believe it's their fault. I feel like it's, there's something wrong with what they're eating. And, you know, it became my daughter so that, so I was never going to stop till I figured out what to do. And I told my husband, find the oldest wheat that there is in existence, and let's try it.
58:57 Guy Raz? When we come back in just a moment, how Carla helped bring einkorn out of the shadows and onto the shelves of stores, and how she began to market jovial with one of the most labor-intensive ideas you can think of, inviting a bunch of people to a cooking retreat in Tuscany. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.
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1:00:58 Guy Raz? Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's around 2009 and Carla and Rodolfo are talking about starting a new pasta brand, and they're also starting to learn about an ancient form of wheat called einkorn.
1:01:14 Speaker 01 So we looked up the story of einkorn being found frozen in the stomach of Otzi, the Iceman, the frozen mummy that was found in the Alps.
1:01:27 Guy Raz? Yeah.
1:01:28 Speaker 01 There's a museum here. We immediately went to the museum with our kids and there was a couple of grains that were frozen on his coat that looked exactly like a wheat berry from today. It was amazing. And we found an association in northern Italy that after he had been discovered, they got grants from the European Union to figure out everything they could on about einkorn. And with a local farmer, they started to replenish these einkorn seeds.
1:01:56 Guy Raz? Wow. So a couple of questions. First of all, it sounds like a German name, einkorn.
1:02:01 Speaker 01 It is. It means one grain because there's only one grain attached to the stalk at a time. It looks different than regular wheat.
1:02:08 Guy Raz? So basically, this wheat was thought to have been extinct and was resurrected?
1:02:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, there's a couple hundred acres, some in France, some in Germany, you know, Turkey, where people still grow it.
1:02:22 Guy Raz? You come across this grain and what did you do? Did you, I mean, was it available? Could you just buy a bunch of it and mill it into flour?
1:02:30 Speaker 01 No. So we, well, basically, we made an appointment with this researcher. We listened to the whole story, which was fascinating to me, the nutrition, the versatility. You know, it was just, I was like, oh, my God. So at the end of the meeting, I said, I believe that I can sell this product in the United States. Can you give us seeds?
1:02:51 Guy Raz? But how did you know? I mean, even though it was less hybridized, you thought, wait, this might be, might be a way to get people who are not celiac but still gluten sensitive to still enjoy wheat because this is an heirloom, pure, non-hybridized wheat?
1:03:06 Speaker 01 It's more than heirloom. It's ancient, the most ancient grain that there is. So nobody touched it. It's pure. But I run my business by intuition. You know, my head said, go for it. And I did.
1:03:18 Guy Raz? So how did, how did you get your hands on it to start experimenting? Because you're a baker, you're a cook.
1:03:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, so there was, I found a little mill that had some in northern Italy and I got some. And then I put Julia on this clinical trial, basically. She either ate a meal with einkorn for lunch and then gluten-free, we switched back and forth.
1:03:40 Guy Raz? What were you making? Einkorn what?
1:03:42 Speaker 01 I started to make bread. And you know, cookies and whatever, like anything, everything.
1:03:48 Guy Raz? And was it harder to work? I mean, is einkorn flour, does it work the same way? Was it easy to kind of work with and turn it into a nice bread loaf?
1:03:56 Speaker 01 It wasn't. My kids still talk about the first loaves were like bricks. Because basically it absorbs less water than wheat. So I would keep adding flour to make it feel like the texture of regular, because I already knew how to make sourdough.
1:04:11 Guy Raz? Yeah.
1:04:11 Speaker 01 And then when I would bake it, it wouldn't rise and it was terrible. And then this one week, we went on vacation and I took the flour and the starter and there was nothing in this kitchen that we were in. So I mixed up the dough and it was really late and I was tired. And so I just decided to add more water. And then the next day I kind of plopped it in this pan and oh my God, the best bread came out of the oven. I was like, that's the trick.
1:04:36 Guy Raz? So you had a wet dough to, to, to throw into the, the pot?
1:04:39 Speaker 01 I didn't add as, it's still way less water than a regular loaf of bread, but it was enough to, to get the bread to rise well.
1:04:47 Guy Raz? And you didn't need it, basically?
1:04:49 Speaker 01 No, it was kind of like a no need bread.
1:04:51 Guy Raz? A no need bread. I got you. And, and this flour was, I mean, it's still wheat, right? But it's different because what it was like, it's higher in protein content?
1:05:01 Speaker 01 It has a very weak gluten. So there are certain types of glutens or proteins in all other kinds of wheat that einkorn does not have.
1:05:12 Guy Raz? So like pizza made in Naples is they use like double O flour. Like that has a very high gluten?
1:05:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's chewy. That's where you get the chewiness. Yeah. But you can still make delicious pizza and everything with einkorn. You just have to learn how to do it.
1:05:29 Guy Raz? And einkorn, to be clear, is not gluten free. We should make.
1:05:32 Speaker 01 It is not gluten free. You can't eat it if you have celiac disease.
1:05:35 Guy Raz? Okay. So you start experimenting with this and you're making einkorn everything? Like einkorn bread and pastas and pies and, and stuff like that for Julia and? What happens? Do her symptoms go away?
1:05:50 Speaker 01 She started to feel better in about two months. And then progressively better. It took about two years for everything to go away.
1:05:58 Guy Raz? All right. So now you know that you you have something that you want to develop into a brand. But who who's growing einkorn? Where do you get it?
1:06:09 Speaker 01 Well, so basically I asked this researcher if I could have seeds and he gave us the name of a farmer. And he said, we don't sell seeds, but if this guy is willing to share with you, go for it. So everybody likes my husband. He drove to the farm. They became friends. The guy said, OK, I'll give you the seeds. And then that weekend, we had a school end of the year dinner. We sat across from this guy. We started talking. He said he was a wheat farmer. And I was like, hey, you interested in trying something new? And he said, sure, I'm not making any money growing wheat.
1:06:43 Guy Raz? Talk about, wait, just for a moment, just talk about a a moment of luck here. It's a an elementary school dinner and the guy you're talking to is a wheat farmer. And you happen to be, you happen to have a wheat problem that you need solved. And and how often do we get to just sit across the table from a wheat farmer who we randomly meet?
1:07:01 Speaker 01 It just fell into my lap.
1:07:03 Guy Raz? Yeah.
1:07:03 Speaker 01 And he wasn't only a wheat farmer, he was like the best wheat farmer I've ever met because he was going to grow that wheat no matter what. I mean, we had no idea how many seeds you planted per acre. Like, we didn't know anything. And I think we planted 50 acres the first year. And I love this farmer because he would come in Italy, you can pick your children up for lunch at elementary school. He would come in a gigantic tractor to pick up his daughter for school. And I would be like, there's my farmer. And he would just every once in a while say, you guys got to come to the farm because I've never seen anything like it. It's like totally different. I don't know if I don't know if it's going to make it and. It did, and we harvested it.
1:07:45 Guy Raz? And from what I understand, by the way, from reading about this, the yield is like a fifth of the normal yield for wheat. So like, you might have 50 acres of this, but like, it's a fifth less than you would get for hybridized normal wheat that most of us eat.
1:08:01 Speaker 01 It's nothing. And we've had to save the seeds every year. We started with this original variety, which will never change. So we've had to manage everything. It's, you know, it's a huge project.
1:08:13 Guy Raz? All right. Meantime, you are starting, you decide to start a new brand called Jovial. You're going to continue to distribute Bionaturae in the US, but you're going to start this new brand, Jovial. And Jovial was going to be built around einkorn and gluten-free pastas?
1:08:32 Speaker 01 Yes. A lot of advisors said, don't do anything but einkorn. You're the einkorn person. And I'm like, it's going to take years.
1:08:40 Guy Raz? To get people to know what it is, yeah.
1:08:41 Speaker 01 I can't do that. I need to come up with, you know, something else.
1:08:45 Guy Raz? Yeah, yeah. So you started, when you started out with Jovial, you didn't just start with the einkorn pasta, but you also had like, like rice pastas, like full-on gluten-free pastas?
1:08:58 Speaker 01 Yes. I didn't want my daughter to be eating a ton of starch and gums for the rest of her life. I wanted to just be flour. So I've always tried to make gluten-free foods without those added ingredients. So the Pasta Factory that makes our pasta actually started making gluten-free pasta in 1970. It was a no-protein pasta for people with kidney disease. And they tweaked a machine and they got in on the gluten-free pasta really early, and they're really good at it. So I said, let's pull out all the stops. Bronze dyes, slow drying, everything. And, you know, who's going to do that for, like, who really cares about gluten-free people? Well, I did. I wanted a good pasta. Yeah.
1:09:42 Guy Raz? You wanted the bronze, because that's more expensive, right? Because the most pasta we eat in the US, even probably even in Italy, is just mass-produced, and it's not extruded through bronze dyes that leave those, that like, nice textured pasta. If you want to buy it, you can go and buy it. It's more expensive.
1:10:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, they use Teflon, so it's like a non-stick pan. It just slides right through.
1:10:06 Guy Raz? But you wanted gluten-free pasta to have that
1:10:10 Guy Raz? That texture to hold the sauce.
1:10:13 Speaker 01 I wanted the gluten free pasta to be as close to regular pasta as I could possibly make it.
1:10:19 Guy Raz? And what did you start with? You start with with rice?
1:10:22 Speaker 01 Brown rice.
1:10:23 Guy Raz? Brown rice. Okay, you start with brown rice.
1:10:24 Speaker 01 You know, you need the brown rice to get it a little bit more flavor, to be closer to wheat flavor.
1:10:30 Guy Raz? Got it. Okay. So I think in 2010, Jovial was born. And now you've already had this distribution network because through Bionaturae. So I have to imagine it wasn't that hard to get to get your products into Whole Foods and to other health food stores, right? Did you so did you? Were you able to get the the Einkorn pasta into Whole Foods pretty quickly?
1:10:53 Speaker 01 We did. They took it nationally. And it was actually not too hard to get the products into distribution, but unfortunately, they did not sell.
1:11:01 Guy Raz? They didn't sell?
1:11:03 Speaker 01 People didn't know the brand. And I was surprised by that. I was surprised.
1:11:06 Guy Raz? Because you thought, consumers are like me, they're going to look at the labels, they're going to see there's high protein content, they're going to see there's a high fiber content, they're going to want to try this. But people are not like you. They don't do that in the grocery store.
1:11:18 Speaker 01 They walk by things a couple of times before they pick it up.
1:11:21 Guy Raz? Yeah.
1:11:22 Speaker 01 I mean, I think Americans are, you know, they like, they're faithful to their brand. So once you get them on your side, it's good, but they it's hard to to get them to stop buying whatever they're buying and try something new.
1:11:34 Guy Raz? So it did not do well?
1:11:35 Speaker 01 I think it took six months for Einkorn to be off the shelf, but they kept the other products.
1:11:42 Guy Raz? What were the other, oh, the the brown rice?
1:11:43 Speaker 01 The brown rice pasta.
1:11:44 Guy Raz? So they dropped Einkorn pasta, and that must have been kind of a gut punch.
1:11:50 Speaker 01 It was, but we also had a lot of people that were embracing the flour. They wanted to bake at home with something that they felt was pure. So it was this product that we were growing in a different way than our usual channels.
1:12:04 Guy Raz? So you were selling Einkorn flour, like all purpose flour, at Whole Foods?
1:12:09 Speaker 01 No, we were selling it direct.
1:12:10 Guy Raz? Direct to consumers?
1:12:12 Speaker 01 Yeah. And a lot of people, the word started to spreading.
1:12:16 Guy Raz? Meantime, you're not getting traction with the Einkorn pasta at Whole Foods. Pretty soon after Whole Foods dropped you, from what I understand, you you decided to offer like cooking retreats in Tuscany, like for people to come to learn how to cook with Einkorn flour. You started to like host people and teach them how to do this, right?
1:12:40 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:12:41 Guy Raz? And the idea was that if you could just get people to see and to hear the story, then more people would know about it and it would take off?
1:12:48 Speaker 01 Sometimes I would sit with marketing and I would tell them stories and they were like, oh, if people could just hear this, they would buy our product. So I started to think about it and I said, I'm gonna try this. So I think the first two times, I had no idea how this would go. So I didn't, I wasn't gonna teach the classes. I, I paid an influencer who was popular and gluten free to come and do it. But she also promoted the trip and that's how people came because they didn't really know us too well.
1:13:16 Guy Raz? This was a, this is a food blogger who was influential in the gluten free world. And you said, hey, come and we want to show you what we do.
1:13:24 Speaker 01 Yes. She was called Gluten Free Girl at the time. And basically, we all live in the same big villa, which is beautiful. And it's a few steps from the Pasta Factory. So I would invite, you know, important buyers or, you know, people also in the industry to come and take them on a tour of the Pasta Factory. Then we would have a class every other day, free time in between. And after class, we would make a traditional Italian dinner that everybody loved. But when we first started, I worked so hard. I'd wake up at four o'clock in the morning to have breakfast ready by seven because everything was fresh. I wouldn't sit down until midnight. I mean, I basically would sleep for four hours.
1:14:07 Speaker 01 And this is like manual labor, you're like cooking and, but we learned how to get better at it. And I just learned that I have a, I feel like I have a gift for this type of teaching. I know a lot about food. So when we're in the cooking class, their eyes are just on me, you know, they love it.
1:14:26 Guy Raz? I'm just wondering, Carla, from a marketing perspective, I mean, you were really busy. You're running Bionaturae, you're starting this new brand, Jovial. And you need to get the word out about Einkorn. Like, it doesn't seem super efficient to, to start a food retreat and to spend your free time, which probably you had almost none, teaching just 20 people at a time, how to Cook with Einkorn, it doesn't seem like a particularly efficient way to market your product.
1:14:55 Speaker 01 But just think of all the people that would see that on social media and want to go but not be able to go.
1:15:01 Guy Raz? Yeah.
1:15:01 Speaker 01 And I've always wanted my business to be my own. You know, I want to do what I'm good at. Like staying true to yourself is the best thing that you can do in a business. I don't, I don't copy people. I just, I just do what I feel like is important, is, is true to me. And that was something that I have that's unique. And once I started doing the getaways, I would hear people talking about everything. I got to know the gluten free consumer up close and personal and understand what was missing in their lives. And I also connected with them on a deep level and I'm, I've had people come back six times.
1:15:37 Guy Raz? Yeah. It's just, it's amazing to me that you decided to do this, which turned out to be smart because it was a way to get the, the word out about the food. But like, this is not, I mean, when you look at like a, your P and L, right? For your business, this is not a money generator. You can, you can go on these retreats now and they're, you know, they're not bargain basement cheap, but I can't imagine you guys are making, really making money off of these things.
1:16:05 Speaker 01 We try to break even. My business has never been about money. If you looked at the margins on Einkorn, they never would have happened unless I was crazy. But I always felt like, you know, that first promise, like I am going to honor my consumer. If I did that, the money would follow.
1:16:23 Guy Raz? When did you guys first, I mean, you started this business with your, your brother as a, as a partner in 96 or something. When did you become profitable?
1:16:34 Speaker 01 I think we were profitable after the third year. Not immensely profitable.
1:16:39 Guy Raz? Yeah.
1:16:39 Speaker 01 And I think we had two years where we lost money, but
1:16:41 Guy Raz? Yeah.
1:16:42 Speaker 01 We've run a tight ship. I mean, we had a very small warehouse that we rented for $3,000 a month for, until 2014. And we stretched that space. We outgrew that seven years before we moved out.
1:16:58 Guy Raz? I think that in maybe 2012 or 2013, I think America's Test Kitchen named your gluten-free pasta, the brown rice pasta, the best in the US, which I have to imagine just like was a huge boost for your business, for the Jovial brand.
1:17:17 Speaker 01 They actually did it a couple of years in a row and they marketed that a lot and it really did, it was a turning point for our pasta.
1:17:24 Guy Raz? And that really, did the gluten-free pasta really begin to drive the Jovial brand? Was that the engine that kind of helped it take off?
1:17:32 Speaker 01 Yes, and it totally does today, too. It's our best-selling product.
1:17:36 Guy Raz? So as you started to gain more traction through the gluten-free pasta, did you start to see more traction through the einkorn pastas?
1:17:44 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think we did. We introduced tomatoes, cracker, einkorn crackers, cookies. And then because I have this passion for products packed in glass, we also came up with beans. And last year, we introduced a grain-free pasta, which has taken off like you can't even believe.
1:18:07 Guy Raz? Cassava pasta?
1:18:08 Speaker 01 Yes, because I feel like if I can create a food that can make a difference in somebody's life and fill a void and do it well, then that's what I have to do. So grain-free was becoming popular and I felt like I could do this well with no added ingredients, nothing, just cassava and water. And that product has taken off way faster than brown rice pasta. It's really, really doing well.
1:18:37 Guy Raz? So now the brand, Jovial, you're still based in Connecticut, right? It's, the headquarters are in Connecticut.
1:18:44 Speaker 01 Yes, we have a warehouse and an office.
1:18:47 Guy Raz? But you make all of your things, all your products are made in Italy. Most of your things, your products are made in Italy, right?
1:18:53 Speaker 01 Everything is currently made in Italy, but we do have about five years of new products. And some of these products will have to be made in the United States because they're not products that we can make in Italy. So I'm very excited to, you know, I'll finally have a product that's made in the USA, which I'm proud of.
1:19:13 Guy Raz? We should mention, by the way, you did win that lawsuit eventually and you did were able to buy out the Bionaturae brand and it is now yours. You own that brand.
1:19:21 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:19:22 Guy Raz? When did Jovial kind of begin to become a bigger brand than Bionaturae? If it is?
1:19:29 Speaker 01 It is.
1:19:30 Guy Raz? When did you start to notice Jovial kind of overshadowing Bionaturae as a brand?
1:19:35 Speaker 01 2019.
1:19:37 Guy Raz? 2019?
1:19:38 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:19:39 Guy Raz? You know, so many companies we've, so many businesses that we've had on the show, the founders, some of the businesses are totally privately owned or founder-owned. Some of them got to a point where they could not actually scale without outside money. Like because a Walmart or a Target said, "We need your product." And it meant that they had to like quadruple output and cash flow alone could not fund that or finance that. How would you deal with that?
1:20:10 Speaker 01 I don't spend money unless I have it. So if I want to do a project, I make sure that we make the money that we need to cover it. Because you can choose what supermarkets or chains or whatever you present to. You don't have to say yes to everybody. That's how we do it. We have an order of priorities and work down that list. I don't need to double my sales. I don't need to sell 200. I mean, if I do, that's great, but it's got to happen in a manageable way. And when I hired our new sales guy, I told him, you know, you might be able to totally go over, you know, the sales goals that I'm going to give you, but I don't want to grow faster than that. I don't want to put myself in a position where I'd need to ask for money.
1:20:51 Guy Raz? Over the years, I mean, I have to imagine that you've been approached by people who want to invest and want to kind of scale this and make this into like the, you know, the Barilla Pasta of organics and, you know, whatever. And is that attractive to you? Is there anything about, I mean, is that an interesting thought to turn Jovial into like the Barilla of organics?
1:21:13 Speaker 01 Absolutely not. I mean, I have worked so hard, I can't even tell you, to stay independently owned. And I just want to keep continuing to be privately owned and be able to hand this down to my children.
1:21:26 Guy Raz? Yeah. What would happen? I mean, I've asked this question to Gary Erickson and Kit Crawford, the owners of Cliff Bar, because they owned, they started it.
1:21:36 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:21:37 Guy Raz? They own it. And, you know, I've asked him the similar question. What happens if your kids don't want to run this company one day?
1:21:45 Speaker 01 Well, we've talked about it recently, actually, and I believe they do. They, they might not run it from day to day, but they are totally against selling our company. So I've kind of set up a management team last year because it got too hard for me. I couldn't do everything anymore. And I feel like we're growing the infrastructure and everything could run smoothly and they could live happily ever after. But here's my daughter, she actually developed a product that I think is really going to be successful and we're trying to get it produced.
1:22:23 Guy Raz? So is it a, is it come in a jar or does it come in a box?
1:22:29 Speaker 01 It's actually a bread product.
1:22:31 Guy Raz? Oh, interesting. So maybe it comes in the freezer section?
1:22:34 Speaker 01 Maybe.
1:22:35 Guy Raz? Maybe.
1:22:36 Speaker 01 Maybe. I think you'll like it. Yeah.
1:22:40 Guy Raz? I think so. And by the way, what, what role does Rodolfo play with the company now?
1:22:45 Speaker 01 He manages every factory except for the pasta factory. And he manages the farmers and he manages research and development. He's, he also taught me a lot. You know, we've worked together from day one and he's a totally different personality than me. So there is this Italian side to the business. And if I was the only person here, we never would have succeeded because he's more just very humble, sweet man. He's just nice and kind and he has patience. And he also had a different approach to running a business. Like when we first started to hire people, he couldn't believe that people had to pay
1:23:30 Speaker 01 for health insurance. So from day one, I've always paid 100% of every employee's health insurance and covered every expense because we have this European kind of sensibility to things like that. So he's taught me a lot. I mean, he taught me a lot about food. He's kind of a behind the scenes, quiet person who really has made a difference.
1:23:52 Guy Raz? When you think about all of the struggle that you went through, you know, starting the Piadini place and mistake and shutting it down and going back and forth to Italy and then back to America and back to Italy and then, you know, and all that, just an incredible tragedy. I mean, your father, your mother, Rodolfo's brothers, and then the lawsuits and the, I mean, just, there's a lot of struggle there. I don't know, does, when you think about that, do you think, yep, that's just part of the journey? Or do you think, God, that's kind of crazy. I don't know how I made it through?
1:24:31 Speaker 01 I think I think both. Sometimes I think, I've had a full life. I mean, I've lived every, not every experience, but I've lived a lot of experiences. And sometimes my husband and I talk about it, like, how did all this happen to us? But I think we've just, most people have tragedies. We've had a lot of them. But I think it's shaped our lives. And it's really made me more sensitive to helping others.
1:25:05 Guy Raz? When you think about your journey and what happened and where you are now, how much do you attribute that to your hard work? And how much do you attribute that to your, to just luck?
1:25:18 Speaker 01 Well, I was lucky to get into the health food industry early. And I've definitely worked very, very hard. But I've had this very strong intuition or inner voice that has really guided me through. And I've listened to it. And I think that has been important.
1:25:44 Guy Raz? That's Carla Bartolucci, co-founder of Jovial Foods. On May 22, Carla passed away unexpectedly after a brief illness. Carla's husband Rodolfo will continue in his role at Jovial. And this month, their daughter Julia, who was the inspiration for the brand, will be officially joining Jovial to help run the family business. Thanks so much for listening to the show this week. If you're not yet a subscriber, please do subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to write to us, our email address is [email protected] . And if you want to follow us on Twitter, we're @GuyRaz or @HowIBuiltThis.
1:26:28 Guy Raz? You can also find us on Instagram. That's @HowIBuiltThisNPR, or my personal account, @Guy.Raz. This episode was produced by J.C. Howard, with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant, with research help from Derrit Gales. Our audio engineer was Patrick Boyd. Our production staff includes Casey Herman, Rachel Faulkner, James Delahoussaye, Julia Carney, Farah Safari, Liz Metzger, Janet Wu-Juan-Lee, and Annalee Sober. Our intern is Harrison Vijay Choi. And Jeff Rogers is our executive producer. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.
1:27:13 Guy Raz? This is NPR.
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