We were lucky to catch up with Carmella Alvaro recently and have shared our conversation below.

Carmella, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I grew up in a traditional Italian-American family in Syracuse, NY. I was the first in my family to be born in the United States and after I moved to North Carolina, I longed for a connection to the country every other member of my family was from. After years of watching my mother, Giuseppa, make homemade Italian food from what my father, Giuseppe, grew in his garden, I wanted to share the Italian tradition of food made from scratch with care and served with love to family and friends. At the time there weren’t many people making fresh pasta in the area – a lot of restaurants do now though we are the only company focused solely on making fresh pasta and nothing else – so I saw I as an opportunity to share Italian food and culture with my new southern neighbors. I travelled to Bologna, Italy to supplement the Southern Italian cooking lessons of my mother and learn the Northern Italian tradition of fresh pasta making.

After coming back from Pasta Making School, I kept my day job which was too boring and started making pasta as a hobby. Our first farmer’s market was in Wake Forest in November 2010 with a few dozen handrolled pastas in rickety packaging from the Dollar Store. In the spring of 2011, with some help from her college roommates from Colgate, I got ready for our first spring markets in Wake Forest, Cary & Carrboro.

We started out in a 400 square foot garage in the back of my house with some of my neighbors coming in to help with packaging. Since we couldn’t keep up with demand making pasta by hand, we purchased a small old line of pasta making equipment from another pasta in Charleston, SC – Rio Bertolini’s Fresh Pasta. I spent time in SC learning how to use the machines. I didn’t realize I would evolve into a machine shop that makes pasta. The biggest challenge was learning how to keep the machines running – the pasta making part was much easier with a rolling pin!

In 2017, we moved to to a larger space in Durham so we could also be open to the public. We knocked down all the walls so customers could come in and see us making the pasta. We are able to have a little retail space in there too.

Melina’s Fresh Pasta remains true to its mission of honoring the traditions of Italian food – Fresh, Local, Seasonal & Simple – to make the best and most delicious pasta; offering a product that is easy and fast to prepare so busy customers don’t have to sacrifice quality for convenience. Our pasta is like a hug from Nonna!

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?

Growing up my the Italian community was strong at the time and every holiday and personal milestone was celebrated with lots of people with huge tables of food – all homemade, all grown in everyone’s backyards with homemade wine brought up in jugs from the basement.

When I was younger I would spend Saturdays going to the local Italian butcher to get meat, then to the Italian bakery to get cannoli (both were named Nunzio) – that personal touch was lost for awhile but local food made such a big comeback that owning a local pasta shop made me feel a connection back to the times when everyone knew the names of everyone who made their food.

I want to stay true to the Italian food traditions – which I found out isn’t so different from the food traditions of the south – using fresh and local ingredients. There isn’t much a difference between an Italian Nonna and a southern Meemaw when it comes to food. The flavors might be different but the care and love that is shown through food and sharing and providing a meal is the same.

While the rolling pin proudly hangs in the pasta shop and small pasta machines are used to press the ravioli together and cut the fettuccine, Melina’s Fresh Pasta is still a small producer and we stay true to the values of freshly made and seasonal food. I’ve seen smaller pasta companies grow large and then resort to using more fillers and less real ingredients. i do not have any dreams to expand and grow larger – as long as we can meet demand and take care of our employees I am happy with where we are now.

Any advice for managing a team?

One of the biggest challenges has always been staffing. Not many people have “pasta making” as an experience. Usually people apply out of a passion for food. Many of my best employees were customers first.

There was a period of time I was not a great manager – especially during the pandemic with the added challenges during that time. I was burnt out and not a very good teacher. I wanted everyone to follow the system I had in my head but was not spending the time on training. It was frustrating for everyone. I realized that while businesses like to promote how customer focused they are…they really should be employee focused. Everything starts with employees – I cannot do this alone – there is too much work from production to packaging and doing dishes much less trying to do the things needed to run a company like marketing, accounting and, for a pasta business, routine maintenance. When you can create an environment where you can teach people to work within the system you created, it saves time and frustration. Then people can start to contribute in their own way. I find myself slipping and calling my team “co-workers” instead of employees because that is what it feels like when everyone is engaged and feels like they can contribute in their own way. I have always had great people working for me but it took some time to work on myself and my management skills to get to where we are today.

Do you have multiple revenue streams – if so, can you talk to us about those streams and how your developed them?

Our business model is to focus first on selling our pasta direct to customers at farmers markets and our shop. We have a unique product and want to be able to tell our story and answer customer questions about how the pasta is made and how to prepare it. We know people have an emotional connection to our pasta especially when they have Italian heritage. They love to tell us about their Nonna or aunts and uncles from Italy and the pasta meals they shared with their families. While we do wholesale to local stores, we only do this because we have the production capacity to produce more pasta and it also keeps my employees working full time and making a living wage or more.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.melinaspasta.com
• Instagram: @melinaspasta
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/melinaspasta