Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Laura Vitelli. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Laura, thanks for joining us today. It’s easy to look at a business or industry as an outsider and assume it’s super profitable – but we’ve seen over and over again in our conversation with folks that most industries have factors that make profitability a challenge. What’s biggest challenge to profitability in your industry?
I believe the major food distributors, and to a slightly lesser extent the major grocery chains, to be the main challenge to profitability and success in general against small, independent companies such as mine — Jule’s Tomato Sauce. When we first started under the name Jar Goods, we had just one sku, Classic Red. And we literally went door to door to small, independent grocery stores, even Whole Foods at the time, to get them to buy our product. But if you want to grow and expand your reach, a national distributor is a must. A major retail grocery store will not talk to you without a distributor. The problem starts there though. The major distributors will not speak with you unless you have a major grocery chain under your belt or highly, highly interested. If/when you are lucky enough to land a major chain, then start the deductions. Some major distributors are more egregious than others but they all have them. Everything and anything they can think to charge against you, they will. Then there is the slotting/placement/free fills chains require. You literally have to pay to be on their shelves. And what makes this so egregious is that the distributor will buy your products at what they call “distributor” pricing, sell it to the retailer/grocery store and then charge you, the up and coming vendor at “wholesale” pricing. Just imagine having that charge against 2 or 3 products over 100 stores! It’s so hard to compete and even succeed when starting from such a deficit.
Laura, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Jule’s Tomato Sauce is a family recipe that made Jule’s restaurant in Jersey City, NJ a classic “red sauce joint” for over 40 years! That is where our dad, John Vitelli Sr. first made what is now our Classic Red. What a fitting name for such a classic tomato sauce; simple, versatile, and delicious. We knew the sauce our dad made was the best, made with simple, clean and quality ingredients. Every day we went into a grocery or specialty store, we faced a slew of other tomato sauces on the shelves that just did not taste nearly as good nor were they made with the quality and simple ingredients of Jule’s. As young professionals starting or own families, we know how hard it is to make a great meal during the week. We set out to prove you can get a great-tasting tomato sauce in a jar. From our Classic Red, we expanded and developed Class Spicy and Classic Vodka. A couple years later, seeing the trend for a non diary diet, we developed our Non Dairy Vodka Sauce.
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
We started with an initial $150 investment and just kept rolling that over and back into the company. We worked nights and weekends and boot-strapped our company to get things going. After learning the Classic Red recipe from my dad, we rented kitchen space in churches, commercial kitchens, wherever we could afford to make the sauce ourselves. We sold in Farmers Markets, seven days a week, often seeking out those that had the lowest entry fee. We self-delivered to all stores, funding the company ourselves as we went along.
Any fun sales or marketing stories?
I moved to Bergen County, NJ from the Upper Westside of NYC when my daughter was 3 years old. Coming from a super small apartment in NYC I regularly popped into the grocery store 3 to 4 nights a week on my way home from work. Once in the suburbs, I had a hard time doing the once-a-week grocery shop. I found myself in my local Whole Foods Market on a regular basis, getting to know the staff. We were still making Classic Red ourselves, on the verge of signing up with a small local co-packer to make the sauce for us. I was very nervous to make unsolicited sales calls, but I knew I needed to get over that fear if I wanted to succeed. With my four-year-old daughter and two jars of Classic Red in hand, I attended a Customer Appreciation Night at Whole Foods, yes, they had those then! We found the store Team Leader, started making small talk and eventually got up the nerve to present Classic Red to him. I told him it’s truly the best tomato sauce he will ever taste and he owes it to his customers to give it a try. I’ll never forget his response: “If I like it, it will be on-shelf”. Six months later, we got our very first Whole Foods PO! We were off to the races! We then went door to door to all the local Whole Foods using Ridgewood as our reference. We then introduced Classic Spicy and Classic Vodka to the stores and about 18 months later our three skus were put into their Plannogram (every Whole Foods Market in the Northeast had to carry all of our products.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://julestomatosauce.com/pages/why-choose-jules-tomato-sauce
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julestomatosauce
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/julestomatosauce/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-vitelli-a5a93399/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaJryTnof64mx3G_AiDP9w
Image Credits
John Vitelli – Cofounder