Whole Foods took Jovial einkorn pasta nationally, but it failed to sell
Carla Bartolucci · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · Jun 7, 2021 · at 1:00:44
Carla Bartolucci, founder of Jovial Foods, describes launching einkorn pasta at Whole Foods.
0:00 / 0:07exact quote · 7.8s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“They took it nationally, and it was actually not too hard to get the products in distribution, but unfortunately, they did not sell.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Carla Bartolucci
Bartolucci: American food must move toward natural ingredients without additives
“America needs to be natural. It doesn't have to be, you know, hippie natural, but we can't keep eating all this, these additives.”
Bypassing middlemen to source directly from Italian factories spiked profits
“So we went there and found new factories and suddenly realized that the pricing that we had was very unfair, and so when we went direct, we made a lot more money.”
Bartolucci: Einkorn wheat lacks specific gluten proteins found in other wheats
“It has a very weak gluten. So there are certain types of glutinins or proteins. In all other kinds of wheat that einkorn does not have.”
Bartolucci rejected advisor pressure to make Jovial an einkorn-only brand
“A lot of advisors said, don't do anything but einkorn. You're the einkorn person. And I'm like, it's going to take years.
Guy Raz: To get people to know what it is.
Carla Bartolucci: I can't do that. I need to come up with, you know, something else.”
Einkorn wheat's thin margins wouldn't justify a launch financially
“If you looked at the margins on einkorn, they never would have happened unless I was crazy.”
Jovial refuses outside funding, financing all expansion strictly through cash flow
“I don't spend money unless I have it, so if I want to do a project, I make sure that we make the money that we need to cover it, because you can choose what supermarkets or chains or whatever you present to. You don't have to say yes to everybody.”