Alison Roman's Plan to Conquer the Tomato Sauce Market

UKG, their HR, pay, and workforce management tools help business leaders empower their people. Because when work works, everything works. Learn more at ukg.com slash work. The news doesn't stop on the weekends. Context changes constantly. And now Bloomberg is the place to stay on top of it all. Hi, I'm David Gurra. Join us every Saturday and Sunday for the new Bloomberg This Weekend. I'm Christina Ruffini. will bring you the latest headlines, in-depth analysis, and big interviews. All the stories that hit home on your days off. And I'm Lisa Mateo. Watch and listen to Bloomberg this weekend for thoughtful, enlightening conversations about business, lifestyle, people, and culture. On Saturday mornings, we put the past week's events into context, examining what happened in the markets and the world. Then on Sundays, we speak with journalists, columnists, and key political figures to prepare you for the week ahead. Join us as soon as you wake up and bring us with you wherever your weekend plans take you. Watch us on Bloomberg Television, listen on Bloomberg Radio, stream the show live on the Bloomberg Business app, or listen to the podcast. That's Bloomberg this weekend, Saturdays and Sundays, starting at 7 a.m. Eastern on February 28th. Make us part of your weekend routine on Bloomberg Television, radio, and wherever you get your podcasts. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Jill Weisenthal. And I'm Tracy Alloway. So, Tracy, we're recording this on February 4th, and a lot of tech stocks have been getting clobbered lately, but you know what's doing really well? What? Companies that make consumer staples, all of the core staples that you'd see in your pantry, et cetera, like your Pepsi-Colas and all this stuff. Companies that might make jarred sauces and stuff. People are returning to sort of the old-style basics that people buy in the stock market. Who would have thought that food is lengthy? Yeah. Amazing. Food persists. No, but it's serious. You know, it's like the only place to hide right now in the market. Like I look at my screen and everything is bright red. And the only thing that people feel comfortable betting on right now seems to basically be food. Pasta sauce. Pasta sauce and the stuff that people have eaten for all time and probably will be eating for as long as there are people on earth. Right. And this always – so I find this business really interesting because, you know, I joke that food is Lindy in many ways. But, you know, like food is – But it is. Right. Food is essential, but it's also constantly changing, it feels like. And so I'm always very curious about how consumer brands actually make pricing decisions, branding decisions especially, because it also feels like an area that's very crowded. You walk into the supermarket and there's like 20 different brands of, I don't know, flour or something. No, totally. You know, one of the things, you know, we've done various CPG episodes over the years. Remember, we did some episodes about like Celsius energy drink and stuff. And one of the themes that we sort of maybe I hadn't appreciated prior is like that competition for shelf space. Yeah. The distribution aspect, getting on the shelf, getting a spot in the truck that delivers the beverages to the grocery store or to the bodega or whatever. Like so much of the game is, yes, the brand. Yes, the product. And then just the sort of logistical aspects of it. And I think like that sort of we don't talk about it enough. But as a theme, I love like learning about this space, how the CPG business works, especially with regards to pricing and so forth. It's so illuminatory about how the whole economy works. Is that a word? Illuminating. Illuminating. Very good. Well, we do have the perfect guest. I'm very excited to say we do have the perfect guest today. Someone who is in the tomato sauce business, but really known for so much more. One of the, I would say, most famous people in the food world these days. We are going to be speaking with Alison Roman. She's a cook and the author. She has a grocery store called First Bloom that I missed when they had a pop-up Manhattan location. I missed it. Hopefully, that'll get reopened at some point. And tomato sauce business called A Very Good Tomato Sauce. So, Allison, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots. Oh, thank you for having me. This is a pleasure. Joe, can I ask you a question before we start, which is I know you love fresh tomatoes. Yeah. Do you also love tomato sauce? Yeah, yeah. Okay. You want to establish some baselines here? That's right. There is room for both. I'm glad we got this in. All right. Where to begin? So you are this genuine celebrity of the food world. People are addicted and they love your recipes. I just at home two nights ago, my wife made your, I think it was like a broccoli cheddar soup that you have a recipe for. Oh, yeah. That's a deep cut. It's a deep cut. Old school. We've had your famous chickpea stew that went viral. We've had multiple recipes go viral. But how did you decide to get into – why a tomato sauce? I think I – well, I got my start working in professional kitchens and I worked in editorial. And then I sort of went off on my own writing books and doing miscellaneous things. And my whole career as sort of a recipe writer, cookbook author has been teaching you how to cook and being like, why would you buy anything when you can make it yourself? You know, as the person who their pantry is lined with like ingredients rather than, you know, things. So it's funny that I then got into the tomato sauce business because I've written recipes for tomato sauce and I'm very proud of mine. And I think it's delicious and easy to make and anyone can do it. And then the older I got and I married a man who does not cook. I had a baby. The baby does not cook yet either, unfortunately. I needed to eat more. I needed someone to cook for me. And it just became sort of this question I had of like, why am I so allergic to the tomato sauces on the market? Why am I not embracing of the things that are currently available? And I realized it's because I'm, well, A, very picky, B, probably very snobby. C, I just was sort of, you know, like I do want to make it myself. I do want the sort of control here. So I made it myself. And when I had opened the grocery store, First Bloom, I decided to start including it as like a line of things that we would keep in the freezer. chicken broth, beans, tomato sauce, things that we would make in the store to sell to people at the market. And very soon the demand exceeded supply. And I, you know, for all the things that I do, I did not want to be full-time making tomato sauce. There was just, I didn't have the equipment, I didn't have the time. And so I was approached by somebody who is in the tomato sauce making business. And she was like, why don't you just outsource it and have somebody make your recipe? And I was like, well, how is that going to work? You know, like, won't people know the difference? And how could it possibly scale? And through a lot of trial and error, I figured out we can scale it. Definitely want to ask about scaling up. But before we do, were you daunted at all by doing tomato sauce specifically? Because this seems to be an area where there is a lot of competition, especially between, I can think of two, like, big players, which would be Rouse and Carbone. Right. What are those? And then all the cheap stuff. But I guess those aren't really competitors. Yeah. I bought the Carbone things once, which probably maybe says something about it. But anyway, how do you differentiate your product from, you know, those names with very, very strong branding and customer recognition? Yeah, I think it's an interesting thing because sometimes often people start a business saying, what doesn't exist? There's a hole in the market. I'm going to fill it. And obviously, tomato sauce, there are many brands constantly fighting for sale prices and shelf space. but there wasn't a tomato sauce like mine. And there wasn't, I find that most tomato sauces on the market, especially the popular ones, Reos, Carbone, et cetera, are more marinara in style. They are, you know, more uniform in texture. They are sweeter. They tend to have oregano. There's just like a specific vibe that they're going for. And I think to me, sort of modeled after the like old school Progresso, which is what my mom bought growing up. And that's what I ate. And I think that that was sort of the gold standard and people kind of went down that path. And it's interesting because we talk about Carbone as like the, you know, top two. They are not very old. And so we, in our consciousness, we're like, oh, well, that's the top two. Well, they've only been the top two for as long as they've been around, which somebody can fact check, but I believe it's only a few years. Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. So it's not like this legacy brand that I'm competing with. It's just another company with name recognition, a lot of financial backing and strong branding. And I also noticed that all the tomato sauces were sort of like chef focused and male dominated energy. It was sort of like a chef, a guy, a bro, a person's name that was a guy. And I don't know. I just was sort of like, I want to do something totally different, even if it's tomato sauce. I don't think they're all created equal. And so with everything I do, I genuinely try to ask myself, does this already exist? And if not, then I want to make it. I have some thoughts about chef bro energy, but I'm going to save them for after the podcast. I can't wait. No, I'm going to save them for after the episode. But I want to talk about the entire, from your conception in your mind to the end consumer, the whole supply chain. So I want to really break it down and understand it. But let's start with how do you scale up a recipe? Because quality control. You have some recipe that you make in your kitchen and you really like it, et cetera. Then making it in large batches is a totally different game. And then you're not there to supervise it all the time. Talk to us a little bit about that process. just how that even works such that a recipe that you make at home can be done by someone else at a different facility in volume and it's still the same recipe. Yeah, I think that you have to consider, you know, there's a lot of knowledge that goes into it of like your knowledge of cooking and how ingredients, you know, they're not a one for one. You can't just multiply it by 10 and be like, this is going to be the same thing. Also, the equipment is different. How they're doing things are different. We have three flavors. We have a garlicky tomato, which is sort of your classic, a spicy fennel, which is spicy and has fennel as advertised, and then a caramelized shallot anchovy, which is modeled after the shallot pasta, which is popular. Which was viral during the pandemic. I think we all at one point probably made it. If I have no fans, the shallot pasta will still have a million. Like it is more famous than I am for sure. And that was the trickiest one to nail because the caramelizing of the shallots, the addition of anchovy, I ended up having to go back three times after we had jarred the first batch and adjust the recipe, which I didn't have to do with the others. But because shallots, when you caramelize it at large scale, they tend to get soft and jammy and very sweet, which increases the sweetness perception of the final product. We ended up switching to a different method of cooking the shallots. I ended up reducing the amount entirely, cooking them further. Like it, the whole thing had to change as soon as we started getting to the batch size and each co-packer is different. So I think, you know, an issue we can, we'll get there. But if you talk about scaling, it's each co-packer is going to handle things differently. And right now we're with a pretty small co-packer, which I like because I can visit them in, from my apartment. They're in Industry City, Brooklyn. And I go there and I can taste the batches. I can say, okay, we multiplied the chili flake in this recipe and now it's way too spicy. So we're actually going to cut it by half, which is, it seems to stand to reason that that would be not nearly as spicy, but because of the way the ingredients behave, it is, you know, so stuff like that, where you're sort of in the lab, as it were, tweaking as it goes. And I think that the more I explore the CPG world, that is the biggest challenge of you can't just send a recipe in and hope for the best. Like you really have to be tweaking and adjusting at scale. UKG. Their HR, pay and workforce management tools help business leaders empower their people. Because when work works, everything works. Learn more at ukg.com slash work. Hello, I'm Stephen Carroll. I'm in Brussels, where many of Europe's biggest decisions get made. And I'm Caroline Hepker in London with the hosts of the Bloomberg Daybreak Europe podcast. We're up early every weekday keeping an eye on what's happening across Europe and around the world. We do it early so the news is fresh, not recycled and so you know what actually matters as the day gets going. From Brussels, I'm following the politics, policy and the people shaping the European Union right now. And from London, I'm looking at what all that means for markets, money and the wider economy. We've got reporters across Europe and around the globe feeding in as stories break. So whether it's geopolitics, energy, tech or markets, you're hearing it while it happens. It's smart, calm and to the point. And it fits into your morning. You can find new episodes of the Bloomberg Daybreak Europe podcast by 7am in Dublin or 8am in Brussels, Berlin and Paris. On Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. How big is the tomato sauce making operation right now? Like in people? It's two people. Two people. Yeah. So it's still relatively small. Yes. They have big, massive kettles. And I think that also when you think of like wide tomato sauce, like I just, I kind of knew that getting there would maybe be the path of least resistance. Yeah. And that I'm not inventing something from scratch. We're not, you know, requiring equipment that nobody has. Like these are kettles that you can make many different things in. And so co-packers are a bit easier to find. These particular co-packers specialize in tomato sauce than most that I've encountered do. And that's like what they do. And so they are, you know, well-informed. I'm sorry. I might ask just a lot of like really remedial questions about this. Let's go deep. So the kitchen, the two-person kitchen where they're making it, that is a separate facility than the co-packer? Or is it the same entity? It's the same entity. Okay. So we have the place, the warehouse where the tomato sauce gets made. They get the jars in. They sterilize the jars. Oh, I see. They make the sauce. They batch the sauce. They put them in the boxes. The boxes then get shipped to a third-party logistics warehouse, which is actually not far from where the tomato sauce is made. So we cut down on shipping a bit And that is where the tomato sauce comes from when you order it online Because right now we are we do have it in store in the upstate grocery store But for a few reasons which we can also get into we are just D to C Got it. Yeah. And then, again, maybe a very obvious question. When it comes to, you know, maybe at some point you grow and there'll be 10 people, etc. In the food industry, are there chefs whose job is more or less to specialize in cooking at scale? That basically it's like, okay, someone has an idea for a tomato sauce like you. You know, you're not, you can't be there every day. Are there people who like have professionalized the art of scaling up a recipe in volume? I mean, I've never heard of that job specifically. But I mean, the guy who makes the tomato sauce for us, like that is his primary. I mean, he was a chef, you know, did a lot of catering, private chefing, et cetera. And then I think to understand how to make things at scale, you do have it's a lot of trial and error. You have to like understand it from a different perspective. But even working in restaurants, I experienced this because you take recipes built for a home cook, especially, say, baking. You're going to make biscuits for a restaurant. You take a recipe that you like from somebody's cookbook. I don't know. And you're like, OK, well, now I have to make these biscuits for I have to make 200 of them a day. I'm not making 16. Yeah. And you cannot just multiply that recipe ever. And so I had a bit of experience in the baking world working at scale because you're never making 16 of something in a pastry kitchen. You're making 200. And so you kind of understand. And also conversely, working at the Bon Appetit test kitchen, when I first started working there, we were doing a lot more chef-driven recipes. And when you work in a professional kitchen, you're making sauce. You're making 16 quarts of sauce. You're not making two cups of sauce. So it was sort of reverse engineering that, understanding that it's the same thing. The ingredients ebb and flow, even if you're decreasing. So it's just kind of having that knowledge ahead of time. But I think that's how those people find themselves as a co-packer. And as we look into other products to make, it's like, OK, well, these guys specialize in baked goods. These guys specialize in granola. These guys, you know, and they're, that's what they do. So they know. How did you go about finding suppliers? Because, you know, I imagine you have some connections with your grocery store to, you know, farmers maybe. But if you're doing it at scale or a larger scale than previously, how do you actually find someone who's going to provide you with a steady supply of tomatoes or a steady supply of shallots and anchovies, I guess? Yeah. We use canned tomatoes. In the summer, we will do limited edition quantities of things like, you know, bruised tomatoes, sun gold tomatoes, like more in-season fresh stuff. But because tomatoes are so seasonal, and I also believe the best tomato sauce does come from canned tomatoes, that part isn't an issue. But it really is. I had worked with this woman, Isabel, who had more experience in CPG. And we sort of figured it out together with my chief of staff, Narnie. And it was kind of the three of us looking at numbers and saying, like, who's located where? What is the shipping going to cost? What tomatoes are they using? What tomatoes can they get? What is their capacity? Like how quickly can we grow here? And so all of those things come into factor because honestly, the type of shallots you're using at that scale doesn't really matter. I think it would be my dream to always use the highest quality ingredients. I'd love to use like old ugly shallots that nobody wants and the bad tomatoes and like make something beautiful from waste. And that's my aspiration. And that business model led down a very, very expensive path. and I think is achievable at massive scale, but we're just not there yet. Wait, say more about that. Basically, that is sort of the issue with CPG in general. And if you want to make a small mom and pop, like locally sourced, like beautifully made responsibly, pay your workers excellent wages, and it's going to be like a $38 jar of tomato sauce. And it's going to be a very limited market of people that are willing to pay for that. And, you know, I look at my local grocery store and I, the first thing I do is I go to the tomato sauce aisle. I'm just like, got to know what's going on over there. But you see Rayo's and Carbone on the same eye level and additional merchandising behind you. And they are both on sale for $8.99. And that's a 32-ounce jar. Our jars are 16 ounces and, you know, $12.99 or $12 retail. Joe, I'm going to betray my elder millennial status, but I'm thinking of that Friends episode where Monica starts making jam and selling it. And then she realizes that, like, in order to break even, it has to be $17 per jar, which was a lot back then. That was a lot back then. Well, guess who else made jam? And me. I did. Oh, same. Tell us about your jam-making experience. Yeah, I mean, that was a million years ago when I first moved to New York and I was working at Milk Bar at the time and used their commissary kitchen to sort of decide I was going to make jam and sell it at the Williamsburg Smorgasburg. Oh, yeah, that is. And when it first launched and same thing. 2010's lore. Oh, yeah, baby. And, you know, handwriting each label, like getting beautiful weck jars, which cost $4 a piece. Like the economics were so poor. I didn't care. I wanted to do it anyway. And as long as we could make more money to buy more jars and then make more jam, obviously that was not sustainable. It didn't last for very long, maybe a year and a half. But same concept where, OK, in order to get this actually done and to actually turn a profit, you're like, OK, well, that's why people go for the jugular immediately and seek out investment and say we need to be in Target to launch. So we've sort of talked a little bit about, you know, just scaling up the recipe. Let's talk about business scale. One of my favorite books I've read is the autobiography of the Nike founder, Phil Knight. Shoe Dog. Shoe Dog. And he talks a lot about, you know, they started small with sneakers. And then there was, you know, this sort of jump where it's like he had the opportunity to get a lot bigger. Banks didn't really want to give him loans because it seemed dicey. It wasn't like a VC style business. But he clearly needed capital to sort of take it to the next level, like bigger factories, et cetera. Talk to us a little bit about like financial scaling and the risks that involve of like, OK, one day you don't want it to just be two people in a kitchen. You want it to be 20 people or 200 people in a kitchen. Well, that requires a lot of upfront costs and new warehouses maybe. Talk to us about how you're thinking about that or what you've seen on the landscape in terms of your options. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it seems like what you're fed in terms of like the media coverage of brands and you're like, oh, this brand has $3 million out the gate and this brand has six million. That doesn't mean that brand is going to succeed. That doesn't mean that that brand is good. $3 million in the hole because they have to pay that back with multiple interest before the founder sees a penny of it. Exactly. And it also means that there's a lot of pressure to increase SKUs and marketing. And it's to me a very overwhelming landscape that is not rooted in authenticity or something being good. And that to me is always going to be the most important thing that I do. I also want to do it intelligently and make sure that it's not like a financial crazy firestorm. But I think that right now, literally today after this, I'm going to a few meetings, but I am right in the thick of it of figuring out that the answer to that question of like, who do I hire? How do I hire them? At what level? Who's going to actually help me? Basically, my desire is to hire somebody, two people, three people who are excellent at what they do. I am not a business person. I am a tomato sauce person. I make tomato sauce and I make really good tomato sauce. I don't know how to do these other things. And what I do know is that I'm not trying to scale up at such an intense rate that it sacrifices the quality or the integrity or puts me in a position to grow the business faster than I want to. And, you know, I think it's interesting because a lot of times people start businesses, especially in the food CPG world, where the immediate thought is before they've even made the product, how do I sell it? Like, how do I, what's my exit? Okay. And six years we could, you know, it's like, what happened to just making a great product that people are really into? And I think I have the luxury of having 42 other jobs. And so, you know, I'm a writer, I do video, I make cookbooks. And I think that knowing that this isn't my primary, you know, the one thing that I'm betting on, but I do think that there's a sort of credibility that's been lost in developing products. And I think that people are going to start to want that. And I think that they're going to be like, well, why would I buy this person's tomato sauce? Because I'm seeing it everywhere or this one because I trust it, that it comes from a good place. What kind of lenders or investors do you actually talk to for this sort of thing? Is it like VC? I don't yet, but that would ostensibly be it. I think that for me personally, I've self-funded every project I've ever done. And I've kind of taken this to its maximum in that I'm not that in the red and I will be whole probably by the end of the year, which is great. It's more that I want to be sure if I'm going to ask for money, it's, I want to ask for money from people that understand me and are not expecting me to be someone else or model my business after those other ones that they see as being successful. And I say that today, ask me next year and I might be in a different position. But I think it's sort of, you know, a friends and family round style or one main investor who sort of sees me, sees the goal, and is like, I want to be the lead and I want to be sort of the primary. Do you have to bring like actual jars of the sauce when you meet with investors? I know you haven't done it yet, but I'm really curious. If you have a food company, is that a requirement or are people just looking at the numbers and the branding and the distribution network? I don't think it could hurt. I think that if you are a lesser known quantity, that's probably a must. I would. I mean, I'd want you to know what I'm selling you and why you should invest in it. It's giving Shark Tank. But I think for me, I've been very fortunate that I've already sort of been approached by people that are like, I like what you do. I like everything that you do. Everything you do works. And like, I have no reason to believe this would be any different. Even though I do know, given the saturation of the market and how crowded it is, it is sort of, a, ooh, why would you enter into what was effectively the most crowded, you know, market? But again, I see my contribution as being unique. This might be sort of a sensitive question. You know, there is a, I think you have cult status within, among some people. We seem to be in an age where people with a certain level of cult status, they have these fans who like really just like, they want to buy something from you. They're excited to give that the opportunity to do business with you. Yes. Taylor Swift's fans want her to make five different color vinyl versions of each album because they're really excited about buying something. And they'll buy each one. Yeah. And Donald Trump's fans really like want him to like, you know, make a vodka brand and whatever because they're excited about buying Trump vodka. I know. Do you feel that? Like, do you feel that you have like a base that is enthusiastic about the prospect of essentially supporting you and like being part of your, you know, growing your world? Yeah, I think that I am very fortunate to have been in this industry for as long as I have. And I think that with that comes a reputation and trust. And you cannot buy that trust and you cannot force it to happen over a short period of time. And I think that it is familiarity, but above all, people are like, I know this works. Or I know when she recommends something, it is good. And so it stands to reason if I'm going to make if I'm going to put my name behind something and like put my own money behind starting a company like this isn't a money grab. You know, it's not the most lucrative thing I do. It's a definite loss leader. But it's sort of for now anyway. But I think that there is a hopefully I would imagine people would think if she's going to do this, I know it's going to be good. And I get a lot of feedback on the sauce. People saying I've never bought sauce in my life, but I am curious. Or it's people that were like me 10 years ago, cooking from dining in, cooking from, you know, nothing fancy. Well, eight years ago. But, you know, and thought to themselves, well, I'll never buy tomato sauce because I make my own. And now their lives have changed and their perspectives are different. And they're like, you know what? I might buy tomato sauce. How are you thinking about distribution? Because as Joe mentioned in the intro, one thing we've learned from conversations with different food and drinks and snack companies is like you kind of live and die by the shelf space that you get. Oh, yeah. Eye level, baby. OK. And then also like which comes first? Is it a distribution agreement or the actual scaling of the operation? This is exactly where I'm at right now. I'm like in the thick of these conversations of trying to figure that out because do I find a new co-packer that can meet the needs of potentially being in Whole Foods? Well, then without a Whole Foods contract, I'm sitting on potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars of product. And where does that product go? Then I'm paying for storage for that product. So how do you move that without having that deal in place? You also, I would imagine Whole Foods is not going to give you something unless they know for certain that you can produce it. And I'm assuming they want some proof of concept. But right now I'm – it's very chicken or the egg. And I'm sort of like, okay, what has to happen first? Is it the person who's going to get me that relationship with Whole Foods? Is it the co-packer that I know can fulfill and execute at the level that I want? And, you know, these questions are being asked and answered very quickly. And, you know, if we had done this meeting next week, I probably would have a better answer for you. Can you come back in two weeks? Yeah, I can. We just do a quick follow-up. Well, it's so funny. I'm sure anyone listening to this that does know a lot about CPG is like, this woman has no idea what you're talking about. But I believe that's part of my charm in that I kind of jump into everything that I do like really curious and excited. And I actually think that there's a lot of benefit to not knowing because I think getting hung up on how things are done and what is the norm kind of limits you. Are you just like surrounded right now by like food industry execs that are promising they can take your business to the next level? Maybe they did a stint at Whole Foods or something like that and like hire me. We can. There's a few people. There must be a lot, right? There's a few. There's, yes, the inbox is very busy right now. And I will say primarily women, which is really encouraging. And yeah, I think there's always somebody that's like, I can help you. And then some people that are like I want skin in the game Some people are like I want to help you find the money so that I can have skin in the game in the future And I think that these companies become so hot and then often plateau or crash or people don care anymore Protein is no longer a thing. Nobody wants to drink this type of thing. But to me, I am such a legacy brand person. And I believe so firmly in well-made products that are built to last that never go out of style. And to me, this is that. and I'd rather be successful over a really long term than like a flash in the pan or like hot right now and then next year nobody cares and then I'm ****. Yeah. Tomato sauce is definitely Lindy, I think. Do you know what? Lindy, I don't know. I've heard it now four times. No, but I need to know. It's sort of an in-joke over here. It means it's lasted a long time and therefore one can infer that it will last a long time. Okay, I love it. I'm going to adopt that word in my pitches. It's a good word to use. what's been the most challenging aspect of building this business? Because, you know, you're talking about a bunch of different things all at once. There's the financing, there's distribution, there's logistics, there's actually making the product, branding, all of that. I will say I sort of did everything that was easiest first, which was developing the recipe, figuring out the label, like the creative fun stuff that I feel qualified to weigh in on and execute. And now we're at the hard part where it's like, okay, we've made the sauce, we've sold it, people love it. Okay. That feels like the hard part for a lot of people. For me, that was the easy part. And now, you know, I was saying to someone the other day, like what I'm really craving is an adult in the room and I need a boss in this venture. You know what I mean? Like I, I'm so, okay, I have the sauce. It's, it looks great. It tastes great. People want it. How do, what now? And I need somebody who knows what they're doing to come into the room and say, here's the order of operations. Here's how much that's going to cost. Here's who's going to do that. Like when you're starting a business like this, there's nobody to tell you. And so you do sort of feel a little vulnerable to people that are like, I can help you. And so it becomes sort of this personality vetting and who do we vibe with? Who do you think understands you that it doesn't just see dollar signs? And it's again, built on trust and like, who's going to like really be in this with you to best advise what's best for you, the business owner, and also the product and not just sort of treat you like a mouthpiece for a thing that can make the money. I'm Steven Ronella from the Meat Eater Podcast. Do you love being out in nature? Ever wonder what it would be like to hunt and fish for your food? You want to hear about discoveries in ecology and anthropology with some animal attack stories thrown in? The Meat Eater Podcast has all that plus laughs delivered through conversations with authors, scientists, historians, policymakers, even comedians. The Meat Eater Podcast. Listen or watch wherever you get your favorite shows. You mentioned you have the luxury of you're not betting your life on this brand. You have your thriving media empire, et cetera. And so you're in the position to self-fund and so forth. It occurs to me, like, you know, again, journalism isn't such a difficult time, but like, you know, thinking back 10 years ago, like all these consumer brands trying to build out a media side and you're like, oh, we're going to hire the editor in chief of Gillette, you know, because we want to like build a whole series of blogs that are implicitly about razors and stuff. Yeah, which people can't wait to read. Yeah, this is like, right, because they think this is going to be the best marketing is we'll just buy the media brand itself. It must be really nice to not, like, you already have that part solved implicitly. It seems so much easier to start with this media thing that everybody loves, that lots of people love, and then like add on to these various products that can be sold on top of Yeah. And I would obviously never call myself a celebrity, but I think that's the appeal of the celebrity brand and why that is so appealing to people when they're like a, you know, a pop star that launches a makeup brand and an actor who launches lingerie. It's like, it's a built in excitement. It's a built in buy-in, you know? And so I think for me, again, I take that very seriously, that responsibility very seriously. But it is great to know that most of it seems like what the money goes towards, in addition to hiring, is marketing. Because if you're just like a person that's like no one knows who you are, you don't have any food background, but you're like I'm going to start a insert blank here, you know, company that is food. Well, yeah, if you come from the tech world, if you come from the business world, you're already a leg up on me in a lot of ways. But I'm a leg up on you in a lot of ways. But one, money unfortunately trumps all. So I feel like always sort of at a disadvantage without that as my thing in the back pocket, because a lot of brands that begin, they begin from a guy in a vest. And, you know, and I don't have that. Have you seen like I think there are some memes about it or like jokes where it's like it'll parody some guys, you know, working at McKinsey. And I realized I had to quit my job and dedicate my life to making the ultimate tortilla chip. Have you seen it? There's like all these jokes and you see these on the labels like we were working nine to five jobs in New York City. And then we're like, why can't we just make sun-dried tomatoes? Exactly. Like, why isn't there a cream cheese for me? And you're like, yeah, I mean, if you have a dream, you know, and I think that that is very inspiring when you can have a job that makes you so much money. And then you're like, wait, this is soulless. And actually, I just want to like make granola. Sure, that's great. I think that for me, I've always sort of been the inverse where I've dedicated my life to cooking and food and like the whole act of it. And knowing that those things like no one gets into the restaurant business to make money. I started working in restaurants when I was 19 making $7.50 an hour. And I never once thought, how will I make more money? I just thought, wow, this is great. I'm so happy. I love cooking. And so to end up here and be like, OK, I can like put a small amount towards this. But we've sort of reached the end of that road of the money that I was willing to bet on it. And it was sort of like, I thought pretty low stakes. I was like, I believe in the product. I know it's going to sell. And it did. And it was great. And so now it's time to consider what's next. And how do you consider what is a middle class small business? Because it feels like it's only extreme farmer's market mom and pop. Nobody knows who you are except if you live in the town. Or $5 million debut at Target. I have a slightly random question. But since we were talking food media, I think this has actually come up on the podcast before, but like a long, long time ago. Why do I have to read 3000 words of people's life story or like explaining what an onion is before I get to the recipe online? Well, originally, the reason that I think that where those complaints originated from is blog culture, which predates sort of recipe database like Bonavati, New York Times cooking, et cetera. Because basically, in order for those bloggers to get ad revenue, the person had to scroll a certain amount. They couldn't just go to the page and click because they wouldn't see the ad. So the ad revenue couldn't support them. That is, I think, like 90s sort of reasoning. For me, as a person who writes those things, it's because I think people care or it makes you a better cook and it provides context and richness to the story of the recipe. That also said, I often separate the text from the recipe. So I write in such a way that often, like for my newsletter, for example, there's many, many words about something. It could be a sweater or my baby or a tomato sauce. And then you jump to the recipe, which has like maybe six sentences about like why you need to do what I'm asking you to do so you don't skip it and mess up the recipe and then the recipe. But you can always jump to it. So that also said I always felt very defensive of that complaint because I'm a writer and I – part of what I do is writing. And I also think that's a huge part of my success because people are like emotionally invested in what I'm asking you to do and also selling you something. I'm like, okay, you might not want to make lentil soup, but I'm going to write something that is so compelling that you're going to be like, oh, my God, I have to make this lentil soup. And that is part of my job. And so I do respect that, though. And interestingly enough, it's one of my favorite things to do when I'm writing actual cookbooks because you're limited to the page versus the Internet. You could write forever. Most people don't have good editors or editors at all. I don't have an editor. And one thing that I learned while working in magazines is you have to ask yourself, who cares? And so if I find myself blabbing on about something, I think about that person being like, why do I care about this? And I have to justify it. And oftentimes I edit stuff out all the time where I'm like, that's boring or stupid or only I think that's funny or that's too niche or it doesn't need to be here. I'm very cognizant of the fact that if something is too long, people's eyes glaze over. They don't care. They are going to lose interest. So you really fight for every word. That's especially true in a cookbook because you have to keep it to a certain length. Otherwise, it doesn't get printed. And, you know, there's a lot that goes into that for me anyway. And I think each person that writes recipes or whatever in the food world will have a different answer. And that's mine. Joe, technology has actually solved this problem for me because there's a really great app called Paprika. And you just like paste in the URL of a recipe. You're killing people. I know. You're killing people. I know. But, you know, that is like the utility user. And like that, I'd rather you do that than like just go on AI to like be like, what, you know, recipe with that. Well, I didn't even think about AI. Oh, shit. Did I just put that? Now you just put that. I know. Damn it. Yeah, yeah. Really? How often do you cook? I cook like all the time on the weekends. And I don't cook in New York because I have a tiny New York kitchen. Okay. I have a big kitchen in Connecticut where I can do like whatever I want. The dream. Yeah. Do you find yourself reading cookbooks for pleasure ever? Yeah, sometimes. I have an expansive collection and I just ordered, what's that food book? It's like How to Eat a Wolf or something. Have you ever heard of that? No. Apparently it was written in World War II and it's all about like, I guess, how to eat frugally when there's like not so much supply. When we're at war. So I'm looking forward to that. The rations. How to cook a wolf by MFK. How to cook a wolf. Yes. Yeah. Of course. Sorry. I thought it was more contemporary. Okay. So like I do read some food stuff, but when I'm actually cooking, having to scroll is really difficult because like your hands are covered in like flour or sauce or whatever. And I just find it distracting. You'll be pleased to know that on my website, there's a tab at the beginning that says jump to recipe. And you can always just click on it and skip all the text. I should have said I have your book, by the way, the fancy one. Nothing fancy. Speaking of AI and cooking, et cetera, you know, like all media is, perhaps even you, but like all media is very anxious about the presence of AI for various reasons. And people are worried how they're going to navigate it. But like traditional food media, like obviously you have a niche, you have a name. People really like reading your stuff. Like what's the broader landscape look like these days or what's interesting in the broader landscape? I think the broader landscape, and we're noticing this in TV and also in newsletter culture, both in fashion, food, cultural criticism, politics. We're sort of going back to what we ran from. So it's like the streamers are bundling and you can watch all the things. Oh, wait, that's cable. Right. And then so now the newsletter people are sort of gaining employees and learning how to bundle their situation and saying, well, I've deflected and now we're starting a cooperative. I'm like, well, that's a magazine. And so it's so fascinating to me. And I think any of us that are old enough to have seen, you know, lived through the various cycles of media and everything is returning to itself. And, you know, I'm sure they'll disband again and it'll become more about the individual. And now it's, you know, coming back to magazines. So, you know, the move into tomato sauce maybe is like a little bit of a difference between your old self. Or maybe you would have looked down on that when you think, OK, tomato sauce. Like another very hot button thing in the news. There was a big viral New York Times article a couple of days ago about people spending crazy amounts of money on DoorDash. And then people love to sneer at people who buy. Define crazy, though, because some people just love food. No, like there were like some like someone was spending like a third of it. $700 in a week. For him and his husband, I believe, right? Yeah, that's a lot. Yeah. Wait, how much did you say? I think it was $700. Yeah, yeah. It was a couple. And like they spent- Wait, what were they buying? Do you remember? Like what were they getting? All I know is that if my husband and I order from our favorite Szechuan restaurant, which is down the street, embarrassingly enough, sometimes we do pick up. But if we're getting it delivered, that can be upwards of $100 plus. Yeah, it does. It is expensive. And so let's say you're ordering from a more expensive place and you're doing it seven nights a week. Yeah, $700 plus. It really, I could see how you got there. The thing that I think also set people off was the guy in the photo had these really nice copper pans and pots and stuff like that. Why did you spend thousands of dollars to deck out your kitchen? But apparently he was. But would you ever, you know, 10 years from now, there's ever going to be an Alison Roman like ghost kitchen? No, that I've been approached so many times for that. Oh, really? Say more about that. What's the pitch when they bring it to you? The pitch is people want high quality chef made food. You have a name. People would go crazy to have Alison Roman's shallot pasta made by Alison Roman. But I'm not actually making that for you. You're not making the tomato sauce either. But I'm not claiming to. Okay. And I think that there is, to me, that devalues what I actually do. And having tomato sauce and then making something with that tomato sauce feels very different to me. I also understand meeting people where they're at. And if they're not going to make tomato sauce from scratch, at least they're cooking something at home, even if it's opening a jar and adding something to it and blah blah blah. That to me is not a far cry. But the ghost kitchen, the delivery, the D, it's to me very impersonal. It freaks me out I don care for it I think it like a weird licensing of your name in a way that feels really inauthentic to me Have you seen that thing Wonder Yes I find it really weird There's one near me. I find it very creepy. Wait, what is this? So it's like it's a sort of I think it's I don't totally know the business, but I think it's basically trying to roll up the DoorDash and the restaurant at the same time so that they have this big facility that can make 30 different kinds of cuisines. and they have their own app and they have their own delivery drivers. So basically just like vertically integrate the whole supply chain. But they have this space on, not Houston, the one that starts with D, down in the Lower East Side. Delancey. Delancey, thank you. And on the outside, it says like a new kind of food hall. And I was like, oh, I like food halls. So I got walked in and there's just these kiosks. Screens. And on the screens, there's like a Mexican option, Italian and a Chinese one, a Japanese. It's like you're at the airport. Yeah, it's like you're at the airport. And then so there's a theory 30 kinds of restaurants. Well, now you guys are really selling it to me. I know. It sounds like hell to me. That is literally my personal hell. And I think also where they get you is they tell you, a small business owner who's like a chef who has a restaurant, my rent's going up. I can't afford $20,000 in rent because blah, blah, blah, DoorDash. Okay, so they come in and say, we can give you the space, but no one can really eat in your restaurant. So you're basically cutting out the entire reason for a restaurant to exist. And there are so many restaurants whose business is like 85% delivery. And you walk in and they're empty, but they're able to stay alive because of delivery. So if you take away that rent and the need to staff and da-da-da, that's pretty appealing to a small business owner. And I think it's very predatory. I think it's very sort of like, we can help you stay alive. And it's like, well, at what cost? Because you're then sort of, you know, I don't know. And some of these businesses never start as a brick and mortar. They are only an idea or they do take big name chefs and say, we can do like a fried chicken concept with your name on it. And when you look on DoorDash or Wonder or whatever, it looks like a real restaurant. So you look like you think you're ordering from a neighborhood restaurant. Right. But it's not a neighborhood restaurant. I've done that before. And then I like walked past where they were actually making the food. And I was like, wait a second. I've ordered from there. Speaking of hell. So one of the things that has changed in food media over the years is I think the emphasis on aesthetics. Right. So I think everyone probably does this. I certainly am guilty. But if I make something that I'm proud of, I take a photo of it, post it on social media. Otherwise you didn't cook it. Otherwise I didn't cook it. There's no proof. How do you think about that particular aspect when you're coming up with recipes or, you know, deciding what to do with your food empire? Yeah, it's funny. I just wrote an article about this for the newly relaunched Gourmet magazine, which I don't know if you guys heard about that or what they're doing. But the Conde Nast trademark for Gourmet, the old magazine, had lapsed. They let it lapse. And so this group of people, one of whom was a friend of mine, took it over and relaunched it as basically a website and newsletter. So very interesting thing that they're doing is a very different tone of voice, very different vibe. It's sort of like pirates that took over a ship. And you're like, oh, this is not the same gourmet, but I think in a very fun and smart way. But I was thinking a lot about this recently because it feels like most people now, especially on the Internet, are making food to look good. They're reverse engineering of what's going to look beautiful and what's going to look great. And this is going back to I worked at BuzzFeed Food for approximately eight months, 15 years ago or 10 years ago. How long ago? I don't know. It was too long ago. Anyway, but it was sort of like I would watch them in the way that they considered what recipes to run and what they would make videos out of. And it was always like, well, what has cheese and what has cream and what has this? And it was always reverse engineered from a visual perspective. And I think that we're still sort of in that, even if it's a lady in her kitchen or a guy in his kitchen with like a forward facing iPhone. And so as a reaction to this, I developed this recipe for pork cooked in milk, which is a very old Italian recipe. It's ugly as hell. It is just sinful. It is beige and clumpy with milk curds and soft looking. And it's really disgusting. But wow, does it taste good. It's like truly incredible. Some of the best tasting things are just like a bowl of slop or they look like it. Yeah. And I think it was sort of, you know, what about this food? Like, are we going to make this food on the Internet anymore? Like, because I had considered what could I develop for this magazine that I wouldn't develop for myself. And I told my friend, I was like, well, I would never put this on my own. Really? Because it's too ugly. But also I understand that part of encouraging someone to eat something is it has to look good and it also has to sound good. And so the writing has to be there and the photo has to be there and everything works in conjunction. But it was just an interesting exercise. And I think that I said something to the effect of like we're not developing recipes. We're designing them. And I think that a lot of people lead with aesthetics and what they think will, quote, perform well versus thinking about is something like a soulful, authentically created recipe. Can we just return a little bit to the tomato sauce? But I'm curious, you know, another reason we like to talk about this topic is because you get a snapshot into the consumer and pricing and all the et cetera. When did you conceive of this? Like when did this idea that you were going to launch a tomato sauce company? In 2023. So like, OK, so two and a half or three years later. When you look at costs of jars, the glass jars, when you look at ingredients or rent, like how is the math working out relative to what it looked like in 2023? And how volatile is it still in terms of being able to get a good price on the raw ingredients or the good price on jars or a good price on shipping and stuff like that? Yeah, that hasn't fluctuated too much. Again, that's really a scale question. So the reason why D2C doesn't quite work for a business model in this way with something like tomato sauce is because jars are heavy. Jars of sauce are even heavier. So your shipping will always be the thing that gets you. And so there are, you know, we looked into, you know, we had a co-packer or a 3PL in California. And we're like, OK, so we're going to ship the sauce from Brooklyn to L.A. And then it's going to go out to the rest of the country. We're like, no, that's going to add $1.50 per jar or whatever. So you look at every consideration. OK, this might be slightly more expensive here, but we're saving here. So that's actually the better choice. But again, it's scale. So we could be jars could fluctuate within a few cents. The packing materials was something that we really considered because jars cannot explode on their way to you. The better the packaging, the more expensive the packaging. And so we someone told me it was like they're like it feels like a old school election box. We're like, how am I going to break into this box? She's like, but all the jars arrived intact. and that was really important to us. So we spent a little bit more money on the packaging. Wait, how do you actually evaluate the jars? Are you like tossing them around? You just ship them. You just ship them. Yeah. You send it to your parents. You send it to yourself. It's hilarious. Here's a bunch of empty jars. Enjoy. No, you put the sauce in. Yeah, there's a lot of like a few trial and error situations and some of them were aesthetic choices of like, oh, I don't like the way this is or how does it feel to open it? Is it complicated? Is it annoying? Is there too much material? Does it feel wasteful? All of those things were deeply, deeply considered. And then to say nothing of like, do you put a card in there? Do you put a note? Does it come with a ribbit? Like the aesthetic choices, which also add cost. And so, you know, of course, that's why the obvious choice is to be sold in the store because you're not dealing with any of that. And I think a lot of, to me, respectable D2C brands evolve into retail only. But at first doing the D2C model to like get people into it, to get people hooked, to get people like excited about a product, sort of then you can show those bigger retailers, like look at all the people who already love this product, who are going to buy it in your store. So are you like maxed out capacity wise right now? Are you like busting at the seams in terms of how much you can move in a given week or month? With tomato sauce? Yeah. Yes. That's great. Very much so. And it's good. And I think that to me, the biggest drawback there is that we launched in September. And also the reason it took so long is because I had a baby. I was like about to, we were going to launch it and push it. And then I became too close to the due date, which is good because I went into labor a month early. But I can't imagine having done that at the same time. So thank God I put a pause on it. I was like, and we also redesigned the labels. Like it was a good reset. It was almost like a false start. But anyway, we launched in September and I had these beautiful photos taken. And like I had all these ideas for campaign and marketing. And we sold out immediately. And I was like, okay, well, maybe I'll do it the next week once we're back in stock. We kept selling out at such a clip that I couldn't really ever talk about it. So I feel like in a way we haven't like fully even launched with its pull potential. That's great. That's fantastic. Alison Roman, can you come back in six months or a year and like after you've had all of these conversations, then we could do a part two on what you've learned when you're. When you get the Whole Foods contract, I'd be super interested what those discussions are actually like. Yeah, we want to hear about it. We want to hear about what the other half of the mountain looks like. This is a perfect diary entry of following a small business. I really am at the very, very start. And I think it would be really fun to come back if and when things change. And this has been great. I love talking about this stuff. Amazing. What a pleasure. Well, thank you so much for coming on. That was great. Thank you. Tracy, that was a lot of fun. I don't know. You've probably noticed this, too. We've probably talked about it. You know, if you look at the business section of the Apple Podcasts, like top podcast list, it's like dominated by like starting a business podcast. Entrepreneurs. Maybe we should pivot into, I love these conversations. Maybe we should pivot into, you know, Diary of an Entrepreneur type episodes. They're really fun. You learn a lot. You know what I want to do? Yeah. The All Thoughts Cooking Show. Let's do a cooking video. Yeah, that would be great. We'll get a recipe from Allison and we'll cook it live on TV. Bart from Buttersworth's and all the Zeno's pizza guys. Yeah, that's right. We could get all of them. Yeah. This is actually our book idea because we've never settled on a book that you and I have wanted to write together. But we could just do a food one where in each recipe, someone learns something about the supply chain for that business. That is a great idea. If you're out there in publishing and you hear this, hit us up. That's right. No, that was a fascinating conversation. One thing I hadn't really considered that much is the difficulty of deciding when to scale before you have that big distribution contract. Because as Allison said, it does feel like a chicken and egg problem because you have to pitch to the grocery store or whatever that you can actually produce this stuff at scale. And then you have to decide whether you want to invest at scale in order to be able to make the pitch. No, scale seems just sort of brutal in every respect, right? If you raise VC money, then you have a lot of money to pay back before you ever see a dime of profit yourself. Same, obviously, for lending. And that's probably particularly hard for this. And then just, you know, you have to get into a new facility, that chicken and egg problem. I'll say it definitely, it clearly doesn't hurt to have to be a celebrity. I know she sort of was hesitant about the word, but obviously a food celebrity. And the other thing, it didn't come up in the conversation, but something that I thought about right after, it's come up a little bit on our show is she doesn't have to pay the Facebook tax, right? Most companies that are in CPG, a big chunk of their money immediately goes to Instagram ads or whatever. And when you own a distribution list, you have a popular newsletter, et cetera, that you could sell out a run without having to spend like, that's a huge leg up. Well, as she said, like she hasn't even really been advertising it that much. Yeah, I know. Publicizing it. That's a huge leg up. And she's sold out. Yeah. That's crazy. All right, shall we leave it there? Let's leave it there. This has been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway. And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me at The Stalwart. Follow our guest, Alison Roman, on Instagram at Alison E. Roman. Follow our producers, Kerman Rodriguez at Kerman Armand, Dashiell Bennett at Dashbot, and Kale Brooks at Kale Brooks. And for more Odd Lots content, go to Bloomberg.com slash Odd Lots. We have a daily newsletter and all of our episodes. And you can chat about all of these topics 24-7 in our Discord, discord.gg slash Odd Lots. And if you enjoy all thoughts, if you want us to post recipes and do cooking shows and write a cooking book, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad free. All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening. This is Caroline Hyde. And I'm Ed Ludlow, inviting you to join us for Bloomberg Tech, a daily podcast focusing exclusively on technology, innovation and the future of business. Every weekday, we bring you the top headlines from the world's biggest tech companies. From finance to defence, AI to entertainment and from startups to the magnificent seven. We highlight the latest stories of the people and companies pushing the tech sector to new frontiers and the politics that shape global tech markets. We do this all every weekday, then bring you the most important conversations and analysis in our podcast. Search for Bloomberg Tech on YouTube, Apple, Spotify or anywhere else you listen. Join us every afternoon on your commute home and stay ahead of the tech news cycle. That's the Bloomberg Tech Podcast. I'm Caroline Hyde in New York. And I'm Ed Ludlow in San Francisco. Subscribe today, wherever you get your podcasts.