215 – Re-Energize Your Brand and Watch Sales Grow with Eric DeLary of Pasta Mamas

This is gift biz unwrapped episode 215 there's just a completely

different customer base shopping in different places,

so there might be opportunities in places where you didn't even

realize that opportunity existed.

Attention gifters,

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and makers pursuing your dream can be fun whether you have

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Join us for an episode packed full of invaluable guidance,

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Here is your host gift biz gal,

Sue moon Heights.

Hi there.

Get Sue So happy that we're back together again today.

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Let's turn now and talk about what I have in store

for you on the show today.

You know,

most of the time I bring on guests who have started

their business from scratch,

but what if you come upon an opportunity to buy an

existing business?

And what if that business isn't living up to its potential,

but you see what it could be and you want to

take a shot at turning it around?

Is it worth the risk?

I'll rephrase that.

Is it more or less risky than starting from nothing?

You can decide for yourself as you hear what Eric has

accomplished in bringing a well known brand back into its glory.

Along the way,

you'll also hear Eric mentioned actions that you too can use

to get more business regardless of how you started your company.

It's my pleasure now to introduce you to Eric of pasta

mamas. Let's roll that interview Today.

I am so excited to introduce you to Eric Deleri of

pastor mamas.

Eric is the general manager and managing partner at pasta mamas,

which is a small pasta manufacturer in Richland,

Washington. The path to where he is today took many turns

from working with Burton snowboards in Vermont to DC shoes in

California. Eric's passion has been with iconic brands in niche industries

working on projects with red bull and monster energy.

When the opportunity arose to take control of a local brand

with a lot of room to grow,

he took it.

family. There were some not so typical ups and downs.

The brand has survived over the years.

It is once again thriving.

Thanks to a refresher image revised energy and a broader company

passion that focuses on their founding principles to provide the highest

quality gourmet foods possible,

utilizing only the finest,

all natural ingredients.

Welcome to the gift biz unwrapped podcast.

Eric, thanks so much for having me.

So glad to be here.

I am so excited.

It'll be interesting to see if we get into the story

about how we know each other,

but we'll just see how things progress here.

Absolutely. We're going to leave our listeners curious for a minute.

I like it.

Perfect. First,

I want you to share with all of our listeners who

you are by way of a motivational candle.

So if you were to give me the color and a

quote on a candle that you would create that you would

put your name on,

what does your candle look like?

I think right now my candle is bright orange and it

would say context is everything.

I think that that's where I'm at and what does that

mean? Yeah.

The further I get along in this little journey of life,

the more that you're able to absorb and experiences and individuals

and just as much context as you can put to life

in general.

I think it helps you understand what's going on around you

all the time and just creates this synergy that keeps you

going and motivated and everything comes into alignment when there's a

context that you can define and see.

So it's not just the situation at hand,

it's everything around it.

That so where that situation links into the whole,

Yes, exactly.

Got it.

But yeah,

there's so much synergy around you all the time.

I feel like and there's always things going on.

The world is such a small place.

Right and I think the more that we network and the

more that we meet people,

the more we realize just how small that is and so

when we can see that context and understand it,

it starts to intertwine everything.

I like that Way of thinking cause I think it leads

to broadening your mind and your thoughts.

Absolutely. All right.

I am really excited to talk about pasta mamas,

Eric, because I know a little back story of pasta mamas

and then I also,

and I guess we're going to get into our relationship,

our relationship,

Eric, pretty quickly here,

but I got a chance to meet your now new wife,

Sarah gift biz listeners.

You might remember Sarah Frank from a show boy several months

ago. She and Eric have now gotten married and I've been

hearing about pasta mamas all the way along and I think

this is going to be a really interesting conversation.

Let's jump right into how you got into pasta mamas and

how you identified the opportunity.

Well, originally I met Sarah almost 10 years ago and she

was into a lot of freelance marketing things back then.

I did a lot of marketing.

It was into those things and we actually were just in

different places at different times and we cruised around for quite

a bit doing our own thing.

And then we reconnected back a couple of years ago and

it's all history now.

And yet we got married on the first of this year

and there's just been a lot of different things that she's

done that really aligned with the things that I've done.

It actually goes right back to what I said before is

just there's always this open synergy between people wherever you are.

And as long as you continue to make those connections and

just go with the flow of things,

amazing things happen.

So I had been working on a number of different projects

and really doing different freelance things and was just busy traveling

and doing some of these things and uh,

really kind of wanted to settle down and found myself looking

for some new opportunities.

And she had actually been working with pasta mama's from a

marketing standpoint and they were a client of hers and the

owner really just needed fresh management there.

And he's getting a little bit older.

He's actually a fifth generation wheat farmer out of Spokane.

He had bought the company from the sand Antilles back in

2013. I've been partnered with them for several years before they

moved on to other things as well.

And I saw an opportunity to ever take a brand that

had been around for a long time that needed some love

and attention and really put some effort into restructuring how the

company not only is doing business day to day internally,

but how we see the brand aligned in that industry in

general. Because grocery is definitely something that's complex and there's a

lot of moving pieces to it.

So it was just really interesting from the start.

This is interesting because you were looking for opportunities,

so you were in a mode where you're thinking,

okay, I want to do something new.

Sarah had been working with him a little bit and so

did she recognize the opportunity and chat with you and you're

like, Hey,

you know,

yes, all the stuff that I've been doing is something that

they could use.

How did that union start coming together?

And the reason I ask you is a lot of the

people who are listening here are thinking of starting a business

for themselves.

And that idea of linking up with someone else who might

need their area of could be a new concept for people.

So I think this can add some new context.

Eric. I love that.

Good job.

There you go.

Yeah, so ironically,

I mean I'm pretty outspoken with stuff,

especially with my wife.

I saw so much potential and I kind of just kept

speaking up about certain things that maybe she was working on

or different ways that the brand could be thinking of things

differently. So as an agency essentially with different employees working for

her, obviously she's taking instruction from her clients,

she's getting feedback and ultimately even with her own recommendations,

they're still going to do what they perceive is the best

fit for their company.

And that's ultimately what I saw going on As well.

They should,

right. I mean they should take recommendations from a lot of

people and then decide,

cause we all steer our own ships.

Exactly. So what I really saw was sometimes there's just things

that needed some changing and when previous management decided to go

the other way,

I said this is a great opportunity for us to reinvent

what's going on here.

One of the really cool things,

yeah. What about pasta moms in particular is they did actually

2010 and the volume of business that they were doing leading

up to 97 was tremendous.

They had done an incredible job with the business.

There was tragedy with Paul,

the owner at the time,

he actually was in an accident and became paralyzed.

Oh dear.

And that's kind of why they shut it down for a

But if you think about the landscape of let's say mail

order catalogs and writing checks and everything that was going on

e-commerce and Amazon competition,

I mean it's just an entirely different dynamic.

So keeping that same business bottle and doing what they had

known for so long definitely was a setback and they really

needed to start reinventing things.

So it was a struggle I think when they reinvented it

and trying to bring it back around.

And so that's what we looked at it as is just

this awesome opportunity to really look at what we had and

how it fits in the marketplace and really do something too

that was streamline and cost effective because we're a small business

and again,

working with somebody who's a wheat farmer himself,

he's not a huge investor,

I guess.

More conservative business growth.

Yeah. So at that time,

I'm just curious,

how did you go about creating,

he didn't just hire you in because like you own a

portion of the company,

you're invested in the company in that way.

How did you do this from a legal standpoint and or

investigating whether this was a good idea for you to enter

into? We definitely spent a lot of time looking through the

financials the last couple of years and what the business had

done and where it was headed.

It was important for us obviously to look at what the

advantages were,

but not enter this as something that was going to be

an immediate issue for us in terms of financial stability or

having to invest a lot of money into it.

So clearly a development move.

Yes, exactly.

So we spent a lot of time going through the numbers

and when we finally settled on something,

what we said was,

we'll make this in the company itself.

We'll take the time to do the things that we need

to do and invest our own resources into it.

As long as the partner that's working with us on this

is able to continue funding the month to month minor investments

that we need and then we can keep pushing forward with

the new development of product lines,

point of sale merchandising,

just a lot of the assets that we really needed in

general and really infrastructure for production as well,

so some of the systems and processes in place needed to

be updated,

so that's how we went into it and really what we

said too is we wanted to evaluate quarterly and then we

set a deadline to decide how we were going to move

forward as a partnership.

Once we reached the point where we all felt comfortable that

we were in the right position because it wasn't doing great

when we took it over.

I think we might get into that a little bit when

we talk about some of the challenges,

but I believe what I heard you just say is as

you were looking at it,

of course you're looking at the numbers and then you also

divvied up responsibilities.

These will be things that we're going to bring to the

table. There are advantages for the partnership.

These are things we're expecting you to do,

which enable us to fulfill what we're wanting to do.

So you have divided responsibilities before you even made an agreement.

Yes, absolutely.

And we didn't just have that conversation that we drafted everything

out so that you can actually see what those roles were,

what they look like and what those responsibilities were.

And then after a year we did the same thing and

reevaluate it again and just looked at what do we need

now and what are the next steps forward.

Well, I thank you for sharing that because I think for

our listeners,

anyone who's interested in joining into a partnership that's really important

is talking through all of that beforehand.

The other thing I really like about what you're talking about,

Eric, is points of evaluation.

Like at certain points you have it built into the whole

structure that you're going to be relooking at it at certain

points along the way and making changes,

deciding where you go,

et cetera.

Yeah, and you really have to,

I think especially now things are always so fluid and constantly

changing right now that you really do have to set,

I would say at least quarterly.

We do monthly meetings internally,

but then as far as,

well we do monthly meetings as partner meetings as well,

but even the staff internally,

we're always meeting on these things and then reevaluate our position

quarterly and just check everything and make sure that here's what

we set as goals and these are what we're aiming to

achieve. What's still in line,

what makes sense or what have we dove into development wise

and then found out that this may not make as much

sense as we thought that it did and what's another way

of looking at it.

So something that's pretty exciting that we'll be making an official

announcement about here shortly is that we're going to have an

offshoot of a lot of gourmet products that are going to

accompany what we've been doing for years and really the recipes

that the Santillana family left behind with the legacy of the

company. So there's a lot of really cool attributes to the

company that maybe some years ago we just weren't focused on.

And now with some of the opportunities in the marketplace,

that's where we see these new opportunities.

Oh, that's exciting.

You've piqued my interest there for sure.

To finalize this portion.

How Long a time did it take from when you identified

the opportunity?

I know when Sarah was working with them,

maybe we're starting to think and build the concept and kind

of lay the groundwork,

but from the time you guys agreed that this would work,

how long did it take to define roles?

Do your due diligence,

get something legal together and then sign?

Really, and I think because it is a small business and

without somebody in the proper position,

it doesn't take it long to start falling by the wayside.

We did this pretty quickly,

but we did it in about three months,

which may also be why we said after six months,

let's really look at this again and revisit everything.

And after a year again,

and we started revamping everything,

so what are we,

we're 16 months into this now.

Yeah. Yeah,

and I would say finally with what we're doing now,

we feel like we're really at a good place and the

entire business has done a complete one 80 we've increased revenue

every month over twice of the previous year,

so we're really excited about just the changes that we've seen

in the last year alone.

Very cool.

Okay. I'm writing some notes here,

a bunch of things I want to talk to you from

a baseline.

Can you give us a feel for when you walked in?

What were some things that you felt that you needed to

work on that have changed to give you the numbers and

the results that you're getting now?

But initially what we had heard was customer service.

There were just certain things that the customers seemed like they

wanted to see.

Our client base is small business owners.

The majority of the business for a lot of years.

We have a database of a little over 500 gift and

gourmet stores around the country.

Farm stands,

mercantiles country stores,

small hometown businesses,

and so we pride ourselves on our ability to work one

on one with these folks who are doing everything they can

to run a small business,

so we love that aspect of it,

which means we really needed to listen to what was going

on with them and so the customer service side was one

of the biggest things and coming from a gift and gourmet

specialty food item.

Yeah. Obviously customers are very specific on what they want and

what they expect and when quality changes or packaging changes or

somebody makes an abrupt change and doesn't notify customers that these

things are going out,

you have to communicate with people and so sending some of

that stuff out.

The previous management did some rebranding,

they changed some recipes,

they sent stuff out.

It didn't notify people and that you immediately start losing customers

that way.

I'm glad you bring that up because I was involved in

the gift basket industry for a while and knew of pasta

mamas and knew of them as being a solid reputation,

solid product for a while.

Then I dropped out of that industry a little bit.

But I think that's the time when maybe some of the

changes happened and you bring up a really good point that

customers come to expect something.

And certainly if it's a consumable product,

so certain types of ingredients,

your product is a certain way cause they're you in that

way. And if anything is changing,

and this is before you came on the scene,

I know Eric,

if anything's changing,

it's really critical that you communicate that out,

which is what sounds like maybe didn't happen here.

So when you came on board,

you were actually working,

I don't want to say from a deficit,

I don't mean to say it that way,

but it sounds like there was a point when trust had

to be reestablished and there was a level of education that

needed to be had to say,

here, this is what happened in the past and here's how

this is going to be different for the future.

Yeah, no,

that's exactly it.

And you said it perfectly,

to be honest is we felt a little bit initially like

there was a deficit there because so much business had been

lost or it really,

because these are small town businesses too.

What's amazing about it is you do get direct feedback.

So if someone had come in and had been buying pasta

mamas from a local store for years and then they came

in and picked up their typical groceries with it and came

home and cooked it and it was completely different,

you can bet that that person probably mentioned it to the

store owner the next time they went in and that store

owner definitely called us and let us know,

Hey, you know our customers are coming in and saying this

and that,

and we heard that constantly,

which sounds like a deficit.

But what's great about it is we're getting the feedback.

So if we're a big company in a big store and

somebody goes in and complaints to the manager,

they might apologize,

wish them the best,

but they most certainly aren't going to reach out directly.

And that's really what we spent the first at least six

months doing is just reaching directly out to people and asking

for forgiveness.

Hey, can you give us a shot again?

Here's what we've done.

We've revamped the recipe,

we've gone back to the original one,

we're using the same flowers,

we're using the same ingredients.

Give us a shot again.

And they did.

And that's the great thing honestly,

about small businesses is that they're willing to give it a

shot if you're willing to work with them,

they're willing to give it a shot.

I think as small business owners,

we want to feel important and we want to know that

we're being heard and that we're recognized.

Our input is being recognized and to do that goes a

long way.

I mean,

look at what you overcame and to be fair,

I don't think,

and I don't know,

cause I hadn't tasted it during that transition time,

but I mean it wasn't like it wasn't edible.

It was just different.

Right. I mean it wasn't a bad product necessarily.

It just wasn't what was expected anticipated.

And now you've taken it to a whole different level.

We're going to get to that.

We'll definitely get to that.

It's interesting.

Yeah. Okay.

So reaching out and talking directly and virtually being honest with

what's happened and ask in kind of just asking them to

give you another shot is what you're saying.

That's it.

Yeah. It really is.

Just we know we'd love to work with you again and

really offering to bring value back to their business as well.

And that is one of the things that I saw as

such a potential with,

this is again,

the consolidation and buying up of small craft brands,

gourmet brands,

food, beverage,

whatever it is,

any industry really that had been happening so much that it

really did become harder for small businesses to buy these products

from other small businesses.

And that's what many of our customers prided themselves on was

these really nice craft products.

So there's not many of those out there anymore.

It's coming back again.

I think there's a lot of new craft businesses and people

are doing amazing things,

but some of these brands that have been around as long

as they have,

they've usually been bought up by somebody else at this point,

which is eventually what you'd like to do with a lot

of your brands and sell it off to and start something

else perhaps.

But yeah,

it was just cool to see something come back to life

that would really start supporting these small business owners again.

And I think that's why we've done so well in the

last year is because we've done everything we possibly can to

help them grow their business,

which obviously in return grows ours.

I think that that's why it's been a good situation over

the last year.

Yeah. Well the way you just described that as brilliant Eric,

because you have a need the you want to get the

product out and retell the story that it's now different.

Right. But they also had the need of being able to

get product that they're not seeing in the large grocery stores,

their specialty.

So this is a really important point on positioning for everybody

to recognize and ways to do things for their businesses too.

Because you need to find a need on behalf of who

your customers and if you can talk to your product and

how it fills an issue that they're having,

you're able to jump so much further ahead.

It's absolutely of your initial list of people who you were

going after to tell the story they used to buy pasta.

Mama is they probably they went through,

I mean actually those customers went through a little bit cause

the business closed.

Then it came back up in a tireless different product.

There were a couple of little hurdles,

big hurdles maybe that you've had to overcome,

but what would you say just you might know the number

exactly, but like how many customers do you think you retained

through the whole process?

It's actually,

it's kind of hard to judge because there's such a long

list of customers from over the years and truthfully all businesses

close and some go away.

But really I think our list,

if I had to say there's about 300 stores in particular

that we really wanted to go after,

I would say that we've gotten at least two thirds of

those back at this point.

I am not surprised.

Congratulations on that.

Thank you.

So I know that you had to change,

I don't know that you had to,

but part of the success is that you changed the recipe

back to the original recipe.

What is that do back of house to you?

How do you even do that?

Yeah, so I said before I kind of came from some,

I always think like a product as a product and as

long as you know your product,

the general strategy overall for business development and your processes,

it should be similar,

right? So whether you're selling sneakers or apparel or an energy

drink or a bag of pasta,

it all has the same type of business cycle and it's

just how you look at it.

But what I didn't think about with the pasta in particular

was really how much science goes into pasta itself.

Well, for example,

I went to wazoo Washington state university shortly after I started

because when I started looking at the flower and trying to

figure out why the customers didn't like the product,

because the flower did come from the same farm in Spokane.

Again, the partner in the business,

it was a fifth generation wheat farmer.

He decided to harvest all the wheat himself one year.

And then instead of using the typical mill that we use

with a company called Shepherd's grain,

he has a slightly different milling process,

same wheat,

same type of flour milled slightly differently.

And it changed the consistency of it.

So when I went to Washington state university,

I was woken up very quickly when they told me there's

over 15,000

different strains of flour right in their lab that they study

specifically. And I thought,

alright, yeah,

there's way more flour variations than I may have thought that

there was.

Well, yeah,

it's crazy.

So you start looking at what consistency the flour is to

make certain things.

And really what we were using was a little bit better

for maybe like a pizza crust or bagels,

but it was a little bit too firm and whole wheat

for the pasta.

So actually a semolina wheat flour is still all wheat flour,

but the milling process is different.

It's a bit more grainy and textured.

But a typical semolina is what Italian pasta makers have been

using for years.

We went back to that.

We just refined the recipes.

We tested a lot of times and made sure that our

hydration was spot on and what we were doing with the

ingredients was spot on and we just dialed everything in.

We set those standards again and made sure that we had

one good handbook for everything production wise and that's where we're

at. I could go down so many little rabbit holes here

to try and stay.

I know I'm going to try and stay on top of

things that I think would be interesting and good information for

our listeners too.

Did you have inventory sitting there?

Did you just have to like ditch in?

Like was that a financial hit or how did you deal

with that?

First off,

let me start with did you,

Yeah, we did.

So within the first,

basically after the first three months and getting the feedback,

I quickly learned that the flour just wasn't going to work.

So I reached out to my partner and said,

Hey, you know we have flour in storage somewhere.

Can you tell me how much we have?

And he said,

well, we have 25 pallets.

We had 50,000

pounds of flour in storage.

We go through about a pallet maybe every two weeks depending

on some of the orders that come in.

And we might go through it in a week,

but that is a good supply of flour and a lot

of it and it clearly wasn't going to work.

So we did donate it to this great place just up

the road from us called second harvest.

They're an amazing nonprofit.

They have this beautiful commercial kitchen and they do and repurpose

all of these different food products.

So 50,000

pounds of flour,

they can do a lot with that product.

So we did write it off.

It was a bit of a loss.

But moving forward,

you just have to make those decisions too and decide we're

either going to continue making poor product and pushing out things

that people just aren't into or you got to cut your

losses and move on to something else.

So that's what we did.

Yeah, I think so too.

Especially in the situation you're talking about a clear,

well I can say that cause I know it's been a

choice. So that's an easy statement for me.

But in terms of just,

even though it was a financial hit,

just saying,

okay, starting here now line in the sand because that also

helps you in communicating with customers.

We're serious about this,

this is what we're changing as of now it's back to

the new recipe.

None of this,

Oh we're just going to whittle down what we already have.

Right, Exactly.

None of that.

It was just clear and I think that was a really

strong solid statement.

So with that,

let's now describe,

and I've had the opportunity,

you guys sent me samples of everything.

Not just the pasta but the sauce.

Is it?

Oh my gosh.

I'm just going to start with so super yummy.

I love it.

Without a doubt.

Thank you so much.

Good. And it's really,

really different in a good way than some of the other

pastas I've had.

So you can definitely tell it's of high quality and flavor.

And I guess the audience is saying,

well, yeah,

because you have Eric on the podcast.

Obviously you're going to say that.

No, honestly and seriously,

it's true.

So describe for everybody how you would go in if you

were presenting to us for the first time,

like we're all business owners and we have the potential to

carry your product.

How would you describe the line?

Your mouth is going to start watering when you hear Eric's

description, and that's going to happen right after a word from

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All of the recipes literally are traditional Italian recipes.

And so when we say there's an ingredient,

and let's say it's a spinach linguine,

it is semolina.

It has spinach in it as water,

and those are the only ingredients that are in it.

There's no fillers.

We don't put anything extra into it.

There's no preservatives.

All of our ingredients are sourced locally.

So we know where our spinach,

shark, cayenne pepper,

tomato, Bazell,

anything that we have,

it's all coming right from the Pacific Northwest.

Currently we get everything from Oregon spice.

All of our flour comes from Shepherd's grain,

which is all non-GMO verified.

And we pride ourselves on a product that is small batch

and handmade.

So we don't use high temperature drying machines.

We don't use the $2 million piece of equipment like some

of the large pasta companies.

I have a great production staff who hand makes everything in

small 50 pound batches.

It's hand folded.

It's long dried for 48 hours at right about room temperature.

Typically we're right about 70 degrees.

We use fans and a dehumidifier to remove some of the

moisture. But other than that,

we're not cooking it at 180 degrees for two hours to

crank out as much as we possibly can.

And what that really does is it leaves all the nutrients,

it leaves all the good things that you want in your

pasta in there,

and it allows it to cook it a lot nicer pace.

So it's just a higher quality product in general.

And then the sauce is typically,

have you spent any time in Italy at?

I have.

Yeah. It's a beautiful place.

I'd like to spend a lot more time over there cause

you didn't want to come back.

Yeah. Yeah.

I love it.

Yes. Well and it's really hard to compete with their pastas

over there.

And one of the things they always say is enjoy the

pasta and the sauce is just light sauce.

So we've always done a traditional dry sauce mix because then

you can customize everything to exactly what you want and how

much sauce you want.

I think in America we tend to put way more sauce

and she's done things typically.

But yeah,

we just,

all of our sauces,

same thing,

all natural ingredients.

It's all just the best quality things.

There's no binders,

no fillers,

No preservatives,

no additives.

It's just a great quality product.

Again, all hand mixed,

hand packaged and done right here and then the Tri-Cities in

Washington. So what I'm hearing is that the real benefits besides

the flavor and all of that is the health aspect.

All the nutrients aren't cooked out of everything.

Yeah. And it's not a high carb product.

I know a lot of people think that pasta is just

this high carbohydrate product as well.

But again,

it depends on the quality of ingredients you're using and how

you're processing and packaging those ingredients.

So I think sometimes we don't think about that in particular.

We're not thinking about how our food gets to where it

is and the process by which it gets there.

We're just thinking about the end result and what we're going

to make with it.

Yeah. And that it's going to taste good and we're going

to really like it.

But it's really good if it tastes good and you like

it and it also is healthy for you.

Uh, yeah.

That would be the best benefit I think.

Yeah. How about that as a concept?

Yeah, crazy concept.

Okay. You know,

a lot of our listeners as they're building out their own

products, question their packaging,

how they're going to represent their brand in terms of the

visuals and how everything's going to be packaged up.

And I know you guys just went through a whole rebranding

and that was super fun because Sarah let me in and

give some feedback on it.

And I know you went through a couple of reiterations and

landed on something really super solid share with us how that

whole process went.

Yeah, so one of the first things that I think,

I mean with any product again is you have to draw

your customer to it.

There's going to be something particularly attractive about whatever it is

that you're doing.

And then it also has to pertain to your brand and

the perceived value of what you're doing.

So I think packaging is super critical.

And then one of the most important parts of really your

brand in general is how you look all the time and

how you show up.

So again,

we really just talked to a lot of people and listen

to what they had to say.

Folks missed some of the old packaging from before,

which some of it is nostalgia or some of it's habit

and people get used to certain things.

They missed it because of the imagery or the actual materials

of the packages or,

To be quite honest,

they said it looked higher end when it was white with

like a gold foil logo on it and they didn't like

what we had done over the,

it kind of ran through until we changed it over in

2017 but they changed it over to like this black packaging

or a black and it was Nice that they updated it

and the branding had changed,

but they just hired somebody to develop something new and there

wasn't a lot of attention to what are the customers going

to think and does this fit the food category and is

this attractive for this particular product?

And realistically,

no, the black packaging and the colors that they use and

things like that from not being attractive on the shelf to

honestly people just saying,

you know,

we used to put all this stuff in gift baskets and

it's really hard to match this to other products.

It doesn't look good.

That's really what the feedback was.

So yeah.

How do we tie back and keep the original feel of

the package,

give customers back what they want,

but really update something and bring it forward.

Because a gold foil on a white label from the eighties

isn't also gonna achieve what we need to do now.

Right. So I love the fact that you started at once

again by listening to customers.

Super smart.

And it's interesting because the way a package looks,

even if it's the same product in the package,

the quality can be perceived differently if there's not like if

a potential purchaser can't resonate with it.

I also know from working and being with Sarah for a

while that you guys wanted to make sure that they all

looked good on a display because your clients mostly are gourmet

stores, so you had to be able to have it.

Look, I don't know how to say this right,

but in terms of the displays that it wasn't all just

one signal package of positive.

There were variations and flavors and it had to be attractive

and also size wise for the basket people.

Yeah, a huge part of that was making sure that it

was something that we could merchandise.

Well, You went through several iterations,

right? Like how do you do that?

If you're going to go through and rebrand,

what's the process?

Can you take us through the steps that you went through?

First, it's the idea,

Oh my gosh,

our customers aren't liking the branding.

It's not making sense.

We need to change it up.

So then what happens from there?

Yeah, so I gathered the feedback from them initially and then

what you look at is how do we stand out in

the marketplace?

So then it's one of the best things to do is,

yeah, look at all your competitors,

what's around you?

So I spent a lot of time just cruising out to

different grocery stores,

small boutique retailers,

things like that.

And really just looked at all of our competitors.

And again,

kind of what I said earlier is you have this big

landscape of the big companies that do this in boxes and

with high priced items or high priced equipment.

And then you have smaller companies that actually similar to pasta.

Mama's maybe haven't rebranded in years and the packaging is a

little older.

And then you have to think to the boxes,

things like that,

automated box packaging,

it's so expensive.

So how do we continue to do something that is cost

effective? It's something that we don't have to make a huge

investment in production wise,

but then meet all of our objectives.

Well, and for you with a consumable product,

it has to be packaging that's going to retain the integrity

of the product in terms of freshness and all that.

Yep, absolutely.

Well, and what we kept hearing back from people too,

the bag they liked that you could see through a bag.

I really was set on the idea that I'd like to

have being an all product and health conscious,

environmentally conscious too.

And I don't love the idea of plastic,

but realistically the cost of boxes,

the barrier to entry and doing some of those things and

the cost of the equipment to do it is just,

it's astronomical for a small business.

So the feedback was in general that they really liked the

bags. Most people wanted the bags that we use right now.

So it was kind of a no brainer to just redo

the label.

And we spent some time with the elements that we knew

we wanted.

We is obviously a huge factor in pasta.

So that became an element and the logo and visually you

just play around with it.

I would,

I always love to do is you look at the brand

and where you want to see it and maybe five years,

what's the vision,

what's the story you want to tell?

What is the imagery that you see representing the brand?

And I create a vision board for all of that.

So rusty pickup trucks in the field next to a farm

with the wheat and straw hats and like just all of

these different You kind of have to paint that image of

what you want the brand to be and then look at

how your logo and your packaging represents that brand.

And so that's what we continue to do.

And I think you're going to see that in the next

line that we launch here.

Should see it.

I think at the beginning of may.

So it sounds like it's an evolution to that image that

you just set out.

For us it is.

So then you had some versions of what the logo would

look like,

you'd send it in,

it would include wheat and you already knew it was gonna

be plastic with some type of a label on it.

Then did you go to customers for feedback on it or

how did you decide and narrow down on exactly the one

it was going to be?

Yeah, you know,

I did get some feedback.

We reached out to some reps and we have some folks

that rep our product as well,

and we have a broker that works on some of our

other accounts.

So we definitely got feedback and really we asked folks like

you, I had Sarah vetted through people as well.

Yep. I got to give my input.

That's what's super helpful is we got a lot of the

same feedback on the ones that we were really looking at.

So even after having several rounds,

let's say we had six different versions of the logo and

we really had two that we loved and getting feedback even

from a couple of dozen people just reinforce that,

yeah, we're headed in the right direction and this is perfect.

I'm so glad you did that because you are so close

to it and you're probably looking at all different versions of

images and colors and like all of that.

You get so lost in it sometimes that it's really good

to get outside feedback and then for it to land on

the one that you liked was perfect.

Yes, exactly.

Wait, well,

and that's what I was just going to say is you

get so close to it sometimes at some point you just

have to say,

yup, love it.

Let's go and pull the trigger on it because I mean,

yeah, sometimes I get caught up in the weeds on some

of those things and you think,

all right,

well we could do it this way or you could do

it this way and really just got to pull the trigger

and make it happen.

I like to always say that a perfectionist paralysis and if

you linger too long on something,

you may never get it done.

So just pull the trigger and go,

Oh my gosh.

So true.

And many of our listeners including me can be guilty of

that cause we're,

so we're gonna fumble around with the color of something on

the frame of a painting or adding more to those glass

beads or the jewelry or like you could go on forever.

Oh my God.

Forever. Yup.

Yup. And that totally messes with your profits because you're spending

so much time you can't output as much,

especially if you're making single things versus you know,

the type of thing that you're making.

Let's move on to sales a little bit more.

Cause this is always a big question with my audience is

how do I attract more customers?

You've already talked about the gold that was in the existing

list. You could have said,

Eric, Oh my gosh,

all of these other people hate us because of what happened.

We changed the recipe.

Like I don't want to go and have to have those

conversations with people.

I'm going to start fresh.

But you were really smart cause you saw the value in

existing customers and that was a base.

You had all the contact information,

so you did that first,

which is always the best I would say,

where you can get more business out of existing customers and

this is a good lesson.

Maybe even if you have had some issues,

it's always best to go back there first.

But then how are you now today attracting visibility for your

business besides being on a podcast?

Yeah, which is awesome.

I'm super excited that we even get to do this.

Yeah, me too.

Yeah. Really reaching out to everybody.

Again, what it does is it reminds you of the categories

of the businesses that you really need to be looking at.

So looking at identifying certain categories where your product can be

placed, right?

Yeah, exactly.

And so even just using our own store locator on our

website, which again,

the little things that have to be updated and you go

through it and you say you look at maybe your sales

for the last six months and look at who your customers

are. And who used to be and start reaching back out

and then you start filling on all these other little holes

where one of the strategies,

honestly it was just we have these three stores and let's

say Minnesota,

well who else is in this general area and how far

do we have to go before we hit another place that

carries our products,

so I don't want customers to be right on top of

each other.

I'd like them to have the exclusivity of our products and

there's plenty of people out there to do that,

so we really just started looking around at other stores.

Olive oil and vinegar stores.

Huge part of our business always has been,

Well that's a complimentary product for you.

Exactly. It's always been a big part of the business,

so reaching back out to other places that are doing those

things. Farmstands other mercantiles things like that that are in that

realm. That's really all we started to do is look up

those businesses.

Was that part of your sales play though also that we

don't want,

we are reaching out to people who don't have our product

already available in their area,

which gives more potential.

I mean that's another selling point for an owner.

Just like I'll,

I want to have that product cause kind of honestly,

indirectly it's almost saying,

but if you're not interested I'll go to someone else in

your area.

Kind of.

Pretty Much,

yeah. Kind of.

Yeah. Kind of.

So what we found too is because there's not that many

other small pasta brands like ours,

I mean to be honest,

if you head on to other folks websites and they have

store locators typically too.

And so where are our competitors selling?

Let's give them a call.

I have plenty of the stores.

There's one particular pasta company that is in many of the

locations that we're in.

And I think competition is great.

So having them next to us and a lot of these

places, it really just creates opportunity for both of the brands.

And then we're really just competing in that space and it's

just us.

And so yeah,

reaching out to some of these places that actually wasn't sure

that they could get pasta mama's anymore and had been buying

some of our competitor's stuff.

It was great for them to see that there was another

option and maybe it was the pricing was slightly different.

Plus we have a couple of other things that that brand

doesn't, it really again is just giving people options and so

that's really how we reached out.

Were you replacing then store space or you were in addition

to the other ones?

In a couple of situations we're replacing it in a couple

of situations.

They're adding us to it.

You know,

I kind of feel we forget that if someone loves your

product, they don't necessarily always buy from only one source.

Like if you love jewelry,

you don't only buy jewelry from one place.

Do you like necklaces?

Let's say you maybe have necklaces from a whole bunch of

places. Same thing could be with pasta or anything else for

that matter.

If people love pasta,

they may love both.

You might be loyal,

but there's no reason why one has to be exclusive of

another. Really for both of you to win.

I guess this is what I was going to say.

Totally. Well And right here it's interesting because right here in

the tri cities we have mean because there's been such a

history of the brand here,

we have such a variety of customers and we really have,

wow, there's probably,

I would say at least a dozen larger customers right here

that are still smaller,

independent businesses,

but do a lot of volume with us and I would

be willing to say that even though some of them price

our products slightly different from location to location,

I don't think customer crossover exists as much as you might

think that it does.

So somebody who might shop out at one of the other

specialty stores may not shop at the grocery store down the

road who carries the product.

So you don't see a lot of,

I don't have a customer coming in and saying,

Hey, I bought this at this store down the road for

$2 more than I bought it for this store.

And just giving an example.

But that's the general idea.

There's just a completely different customer base shopping in different places.

So there might be opportunities in places where you didn't even

realize that opportunity existed.

Interesting. I think you're right and I think nowadays too,

we value convenience and habit.

Just what's in our regular routine over price.

Yeah. I always stop at this place on the way home.

I love to grab it.

Or you might just be familiar with the store and it's

just a lot easier for you to get around.

I know just walking into like you walk into a different

Safeway or any store for that matter,

if it's slightly different,

it could be the exact same franchise,

but everything isn't in an entirely different place and it takes

you an extra 20 minutes to figure out where stuff is.

It is so true.

Totally. Final question here.

Do you create certain promotions or something to gain trial of

the product or what do you do from an offering standpoint

for people?

Let's go with new customers here.

Anyone that's a new customer in terms of our wholesale business,

of course,

free samples all day long.

We'll send you some stuffs as cheating,

check it out.

Sometimes we go a little crazy and we may send larger

packages than I anticipate,

but I really want people to see the colors and the

flavors of everything.

I got that larger you didn't feel buried in pasta and

sauces? Oh no,

no, no.

I loved it.

Yeah, that's our big thing.

I love people to try it out because if they do

once they're going to love it and that's really it.

So just try the product.

We'll send it out to whoever we can,

but then we do a lot of different promos and things

like that too.

Would you,

if you're a brand new customer,

we're going to help you out with your initial order Store

displays. I was just going to say store displays.

We do recipe cards,

we do shelf talkers.

We have like a pairing card that is a pairing card

on one side so you can see what sauces and pastas

go well together.

And then on the other side it's kind of a value

proposition for both of our product lines and the company overall.

Just simple,

quick, easy,

something that's readable and a good takeaway for customers that are

just cruising through the store.

Even if they don't buy the product and grab the pairing

sheet or something like that or the parent card and you

have a little takeaway and maybe they think of it the

next time they cruise in there.

Oh my gosh,

that is an excellent idea.

So gift biz listeners,

any of you guys who are doing craft shows and you're

looking at promotional materials,

and this doesn't have to be just for a consumable product

either, but the cards are a great idea for exactly what

you said because you're also then Eric adding on like add

on sales because if someone's looking at the positive,

they're getting a certain one and they're like,

Oh my gosh,

I see three spices that are recommended now I need all

three versus the just the pesto that I was going to

get or whatever.

Exactly. Yeah.

And sometimes it's hard for some of these stores.

I mean,

in a grocery store you're maybe going to have just kind

of the top three skews or something like that.

We have 36 different combinations of flavor and pasta style.

We have 16 different sauces.

You're probably not going to see it all there at the

store. So yeah,

you pick up a pairing sheet and see that there's no

man there.

I didn't know they had all this stuff too.

You might go to the website.

Oh yeah,

because you're not necessarily going to have everything there.

No store might not carry everything they should,

but they might not even know why they don't.

But we're trying.

I know these crazy store buyers,

like why isn't the whole store just your product?

I know the stock is up.

Alright, so given that,

let's take a little bit of a peek into your future,

and I do this also in a little bit of a

different way.

I'd like to present you with a virtual gift.

This is a magical box containing unlimited possibilities for your future,

Eric, or the future of pasta mamas.

You get to decide,

so this is your goal of almost unreachable Heights that you

are looking at within whatever time range you decide is appropriate.

So please accept this gift and open it in our presence.

What's inside your box?

Oh, this I think is the gift of constant exploration.

Ooh, talk More.

Yeah. If I had any High expectation of myself or anything

that I want to do,

be it pasta mamas or my personal life or with my

wife and kids.

Any of those things.

Just want to keep exploring and keep my mind open to

new opportunities and new things,

and I'm in kind of like I said earlier,

the more you explore and the more that you open yourself

up to new opportunities and just put yourself out there,

the more that you see context to the life that you're

living in and the synergy between all of the different things

that you do.

So being able to continue to explore with an open mind

all the time.

I just think it creates just this wonderful synergy in life.

Love it,

and that's what gives you the spirit and the energy that

we hear in your voice.

For sure.

Just that attitude and approach to life.

I appreciate that.

How would you direct our listeners to learn more about pasta

mamas? You can go to pasta mama's dot com just P

a S T a M a M a s.com.

You can sign up for a newsletter there.

You can sign up for an account and check out some

pasta. You can send us a note at info at pasta

mama's dot com if you'd like to try out some pastas

and you're interested in doing anything like that,

we'd be happy to send you some.

You can email me at Eric at pasta mama's dot com

also. Beautiful.

That's pretty much it.

Find us.

Yeah, you can find us on Facebook and Instagram as well.

We've got recipes and always updating new blog posts with recipes

and content.

Oh, Ooh,

yeah, we didn't even get into that.

We'll have to schedule another time.

It will have to be for another time.

so give biz listeners,

you know Eric just rattled off a number of different ways

you can connect up with them.

I will have all of that information as well as the

links to all the social media sites over on the show

notes page.

So if you're out and about,

you're not able to have a pen and paper,

but it sounds pretty easy.

Just remember pasta mamas and I bet you you can find

your way there.

Eric loved hearing the story.

Like I said,

I've known a little bit of it.

I've had a few intimate looks behind the scenes,

but hearing the whole story from you has been absolutely fabulous.

You've shared some great,

really solid best practices with our audience,

so I really appreciate that too.

And I look forward to seeing the future of pasta mamas.

Thank you so much for being on the show.

Awesome. Thank you so much too and I really appreciate you

taking the time to bring me on and talk with me

about all of this.

Hopefully I wasn't too long winded.

You weren't,

but you have done one thing.

I now have to go home and make pasta for dinner.

That's just the way it has to be.

Take a picture Tag,

isn't it?

If you do that,

I love seeing all of our different recipes and anything that

we have out there getting cooked up.

So anything you're creating,

I would love to see it.

Okay. And we're going to end this on a final fun

note. If you were doing that,

what would be the pasta choice and the sauce?

Like describe to us as we're going out here,

what it would look like.

Your favorite,

You know,

I love the black pepper.

It's got a little bit of zip to it and you

can get it in a linguine or a fettuccine or a

Pepperdine. I personally liked the big Pepperdine noodles and I love

the creamy Craill sauce.

I like a little bit of spice.

I don't love a lot of spice,

but the creamy cradle sauce and the black pepper pepper Dale

with let's say some good fish and shrimp or scallops.

So good.

That would be a good way to go.

Yes, absolutely.

Alright, thanks again for taking your time today.

Yeah, thank you.

I appreciate it.

Okay. I seriously think I'll be making Eric's pasta tonight.

If you have a business that could potentially use his product,

you definitely want to get a sample as he so generously

offered and if you see it on the shelf in your

local gourmet shop,

take it from me,

pick it up and plan for a very tasty experience.

I'm really loving right now how one podcast episode is leading

into another and next week is no exception.

What comes up after a delicious pasta dinner?

Dessert, of course,

and I have a very sweet show being served up next.

An easy way to make sure you don't miss any episodes

is to subscribe to the show in Apple podcasts or wherever

you listen to the show.

That way a new episode every time it comes live will

just automatically be delivered over to your phone,

so that's a wrap for this week.

Meanwhile, don't forget to join us in the masterclass.

That link again is gift biz unwrapped.com

forward slash masterclass.

Bye for now.

I want to make sure you're familiar with my free Facebook

group called gift biz breeze.

It's a place where we all gather and our community to

support each other.

I've got a really fun post in there.

That's my favorite of the week.

I have to say where I invite all of you to

share what you're doing,

to show pictures of your product,

to show what you're working on for the week,

to get reaction from other people and just for fun because

we all get to see the wonderful products that everybody in

the community is making.

My favorite posts every single week without doubt.

Wait, what aren't you part of the group already?

If not,

make sure to jump over to Facebook and search for the

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Don't delay.