We were lucky to catch up with Lori Rizzo recently and have shared our conversation below.

Lori, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

Number one is resiliance – the ability to bounce back and keep moving forward – Success doesnt come easy for many and hard work and determination is just a few of the traits you need to get where your going

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I started my very first business at the young age of 16 in an unrelated field- I have always been a leader with a passion to be someone. I started out cooking as a way into my event planning career – I cooked my way through hundreds of cookbooks and became self taught with a knack for baking and cooking. Decorating and entertaining has always been a passion of mine and i started with family and friends. This blossomed into a cooking career as a personal chef and caterer for private clients and also for corporate lunches. I was looking to do something that would enable me to be home and raise my child as a single mom without working out of the home as I could not afford full time child care. This business grew into private and corporate parties and I learned as I went reading books on starting an event planning and catering business and how to charge the correct amount of money. I knew I made it when I started small for a major corporation and then landed one of their biggest events of the year for hundreds of people. I always stayed completely hands on as my business grew and I hired employees being the main contact person with every single client – my customer service was unparalleled and still is to this day.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

I always retained my staff and had very little if any turnover – these same people stayed with me for years. They have always said I am fair and dont act like the boss – I have been told I am the best person they ever worked for due to the fact that I get in and do things alongside with them and dont give orders. I treat people with kindness and not like employees but as if we are all working together which in essence we are. This fostered harmony and cohesive efforts amongst all

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

A dream of mine was to develop a food product and bring it to market – and I did! I came up with a butter brulee with 3 flavors that literally had a brulee crust on the top of the flavored butter. It was like nothing you ever had before. I learned how to get a co packer, nutritional label, upc codes and everything else needed which incidentally is a lot! I pitched Whole Foods thinking positively and they loved it – I did sample day and it sold out! They agreed to put it on the shelves to see how it did. My packaging was in a small 2 ounce container – I second guessed myself and thought it was too small and changed it to 8 oz containers (BIG mistake) what happened was people bought it and didnt buy it again for a long while as it lasted forever. It needed to move off the shelf in order to keep the shelf space so they pulled it off. I was devastated as I watched other butters in the original 2 ounce container replace mine.
I also learned it was a difficult product for co packers to make which also made my margins tight.
I am not done yet – 10 years later I am in development of another food product that just may make it this time!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.loririzzoevents
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