We were lucky to catch up with Justine Ferrara recently and have shared our conversation below.
Justine, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s talk about keeping costs under control when growing. How have you managed to keep costs from getting out of control?
As you start to grow, one of the most important factors to monitor is your cash flow; how much is coming in and how much is going out. Pay attention to what’s working and lean into that. Sometimes your favorite product isn’t your best seller, but it’s important to see the whole picture and let your business tell you where it wants to go. Viewing your business as a living, breathing, evolving process helps you stay in the flow and be ready to adapt and change as needed. Keeping good records is essential. If you are great at tracking and recording your business finances, that’s great. If not, so many business owners I’ve spoken with say that hiring someone to handle their finances from the beginning was the best thing they could have done. Ask for help where you need it.
Every business has its own relative startup costs. How much does it actually take to get your idea off the ground? In the first phase of any idea, trying to find every single cost you could encounter can be daunting. No detail is too small but don’t lose yourself in the weeds trying to ensure you’re going to know everything you need to know in order to account for all your costs. Give yourself at least a bit of a roadmap on where you want to go and develop a system to tracking your finances from the start.
One really helpful tip I received when I started was to make sure you understand how much your product or products cost and price them accordingly to the market to ensure you’re making what you need to. If you don’t start out from the beginning with all your costs factored in, it will be so much harder to grow and sustain your business. If your products are too expensive, your customers will let you know, and vice versa. Continue to evaluate your costs and sources of your products, because the cost of goods is truly always evolving.
One of the reasons I think a lot of entrepreneurs do start their own business is that they are full of ideas and new concepts to bring to market and test out. As you grow and gain a handle on your process, then maybe it’s time to evaluate what’s next. What projects are worth investing in towards your future growth. Be realistic. I think the best question to ask yourself is, what am I trying to achieve? If I invest in an idea, will this bring me more lifetime customers? Will it be a quick sell? Do I have the ability to sustain this?
There’s also the hard lesson called, the cost of learning. What you thought was an excellent idea could totally flop. Or, maybe you need to keep going and simply evolve from previous learnings. It’s important to constantly check in with yourself and evaluate where you’re at and what your goals are. Try to have as much fun as you can along the way.
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?
When anyone asks, I always tell people, pasta found me. I left a career in ecommerce retail thinking that I would continue simply creating something that I had always done, but on my own terms. Turned out, to my surprise, I didn’t want to do that. I love farmer’s markets. The marketplace of the farmer’s market is such a unique space and I find the people who are ‘market folk’ are such authentic, genuine humans who truly love what they do. When I started, it was the customers that found me that really kept me going. It is so much fun to feed people, talk about what they made with their pasta, who they ate it with. It’s fun to feed people pasta, everyone loves pasta.
We are currently at the LaJolla Open Aire Farmer’s Market every other Sunday & have a strong local delivery clientele who order from our website. We have fresh, handmade pasta made with local eggs from Three Sons Farm (the absolute best eggs in San Diego) and use non-GMO, USA grown wheat. We do original fettuccine & capellini as well as fun flavors such as fresh spinach, lemon-pepper, organic pea, harissa and a number of other seasonal flavors. We have a fan following for our fresh basil pesto, which is vegan! We’re really proud of that one, you’d truly never guess there’s no cheese. We also make a classic San Marzano pomodoro and every week make fresh ricotta cheese that we also use in our seasonal raviolis.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
Being consistent and showing up for our customers – 100%. Making the connections that bring us back to the market, week after week and developing a true relationship with our customers. We know what flavor their kids love, when we haven’t seen them, hearing about their latest travel. It’s about showing up and being transparent about your product and who you are. People who shop at farmer’s markets are doing so for many different reasons, but I think the interaction with the person or people who make the product and supporting the local community is what it’s really about. We are doing just that.
How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.
We currently sell through our online store at dreamfactoryindustries.com. Right now that has been working really well for us because it gives us the ability to see how our customers are interacting with the website to directly manage our orders. With fresh pasta, or any perishable product, freshness is a key factory and we like to make sure we can communicate with our customers to ensure we are able to deliver their order with the best quality. That sometimes means working with customers to make sure they are home for their delivery.
We just launched our Dream Factory Pasta DreamBox, a pasta based dinner kit. We have been sourcing ingredients from other local artisans and farmers. By selling our dinner kit through our own website, we are better able to tell the story of the ingredients and special components in the box. It has been a big hit with our community and by selling directly on our website, we are able to fully curate the content and inform customers about what they are receiving in their dinner boxes.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.dreamfactoryindustries.com
- Instagram: dreamfactoryindustries
- Facebook: Dream Factory Pasta
- Twitter: dreamfactory123
- Other: email: justine@dreamfactorypasta.com – feel free to say hi!