We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Arielle Hoffman And Nicole Pelini a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Arielle Hoffman and Nicole Pelini , appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

Before we started our brand, we were two friends making eco-friendly crafts together and dreaming up how we could include more people. A friend introduced us to the concept of “Perpetual Stew” which neither one of us had heard of before. Perpetual Stew, which is speculated to have been heavily common in the medieval ages, is a soup pot that is forever cooking in the center of town. Members of the community bring the scraps they’ve collected to add to the pot in exchange for some stew for themselves. The pot stays cooking, food gets added back, nothing is wasted and it becomes, essentially, self sustaining. Depending on which culture you ask, there are many names – Hunter’s Stew, Hunter’s Pot, or Forever Soup. As we spoke, we realized we were making a big pot of Forever Soup but with items traditionally seen as trash (old clothes, scraps, paper, flowers) and by doing so, we’re growing a community of people who are as passionate as us! The best way to think of our brand is this: like leftovers and scraps put into a stew, we’re giving these item’s new purpose. With everyone putting in what they can, and taking what they need, the pot will never go empty. We finally thought: You know what? We can help facilitate a community of people that lead with generosity who believe that truly thoughtful consumption is the future. We have begun teaching classes through our new branch: SPOON-FED by Forever Soup Co. where even people who think they can’t make art will be spoon-fed by us. For those that have less interest in creating, our shop offers our creations and we’re always making more. Every piece is 1 of 1, we make what we can with what we have and that is always changing.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

We first met in 2012 through mutual friends in the FAU theater department and both ended up in NYC a few years later. We had always considered each other friends, but rarely hung out without other people tagging along. That completely changed in 2022, as we both hit turning points in our post-pandemic lives. We realized that crafting was making both of us feel artistically fulfilled, and that doing it together once a week could give us something to look forward to. Within a year we had committed to our idea of Forever Soup, and within 2 years we had our business license. We are both self taught, we enjoy learning and teaching each other new skills. Some of those skills are embroidery, sewing, stamp carving, rug tufting, button-pin making, flower pressing, etc. We mostly learn online, and once you understand the basics of something you can morph it into your own vision. Turning the love of crafting into a business is a complicated thing to do because it requires monetizing a hobby – and we are still very much the first phases of doing that. A lot of small business crafters have to spend most of their money on operation expenses to purchase the goods needed to create their finished craft. We have found a solution to that by having a system set up where our friends that donate their used clothing get money back in the form of a gift card towards our store – so there is an incentive to continue to choose us over the landfill. These donations give us the base for all of the clothes and bags that we upcycle and sell. Additionally, we are constantly collecting flowers and leaves that we press in our hand built flower presses – also something we learned how to do online using old textbooks. We buy old frames from vintage and thrift stores, we hold onto magazines and books that people are not interested in – all of these go into making one of a kind art pieces or jewelry like earrings or bolos ties. Our business model is simple: we are essentially using leftovers, scraps, and trash to make our products. We truly think that Forever Soup is not just a business, but a movement and we want EVERYONE to be a part of that movement. Everyone taking small steps together becomes a big wave of change – our art is rebellious and joyful. Our brand is giving our community something to hope for and grow with. It is a safe place to create, and to be their full authentic self by relearning that making art is cool and for everyone.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Everything about Forever Soup Co. is based in a giant global and personal pivot. We never in a 1000 years thought we’d be where we are now. When we met, we both wanted to be actors but life happened. In 2017, we lost a very dear friend, Kyle, who took his own life and sent all of us into a tailspin. He was Arielle’s highschool friend, had befriended Nicole in college, and, eventually, was the reason we met. Kyle was the linchpin in our friend group, he brought each of us so much joy and support. We were in our early 20’s and both going through extreme but different physical and mental health issues, which made the business of acting even more complicated. Then the pandemic of 2020 drove the world apart as Nicole and their partner chose to move out of NYC, while Arielle and her partner chose to stay. By the time 2022 came around there was such an exhausting feeling of whiplash. We were so young but felt so lost – so to find the joy of crafting, of friendship, of community, was thrilling. To regain the feeling that you can choose happiness. With the decision to jump into this world together – we’ve forged our own path forward. Our work will always be inspired by the love we have for Kyle, and that he had for us. It has been a long journey but now as people in our 30s we know Kyle would be proud of what we decided to do for ourselves and the world!

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

We are still in the early stages of building our clientele and finding our people, but we’ve found that being transparent about our processes and how we price has been the best way to do that. Most of our new followers, clients, and customers have voiced how much they appreciate that we’re not gatekeeping anything. All of the information that we’ve learned, all of our skills, we found online or through each other. We’ve taken a couple art classes and we want as many people as possible to make art with us! The more free classes and events we have, the more confident we feel that bringing people behind the veil is the best way to have forever customers. We’ve started engaging people in conversations about how things are made, how they can last longer, as well as ways to bring these practices into everyday life. At Forever Soup Co. we talk about how we price our products – which is a big discussion about how to pay yourself for labor and time (since the operational goods themselves are practically free) and that THAT is the hardest price to conceptualize. We make it our business to talk about why our brand matters, why we care so much about the planet, and how it’s totally possible to change it. Once you change your mindset towards lifting each other up and being inclusive – life gets a little easier. Trust us, we know.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://foreversoup.co
• Instagram: foreversoup.co
• Other: TikTok: foreversoup.co

Image Credits

Personal Photo and Gridded Art Class Photos: Michael Perdomo