For all the times that I have been told I can’t! That’s why I want to be one of the winners of the Martha Stewart American Made Contest. In order to get the 825 MAIN Tomato Sauces out on the shelves I had to struggle through a lot of adversity. I was confident that the product is the best on the market. That is a fact. The problem isn’t with the sauce. It’s adversity with everything else that pertains to getting the sauce on a store shelf.
The first problem started with the name. I can’t tell you how many times I was told that it is a stupid name. ” Why cant you call it an Italian name?”, people would often exclaim. “I have my reasons!” I would say. I couldn’t call it by my family restaurant name (nothing to do with legal issues). I just didn’t want to use that name. I felt using the family name would be a crutch. I needed a name that I could relate to. Something that would show my roots. The name choice was really just for myself. The name actually keeps me grounded, reminding why I started this new business. I call it 825 MAIN, the address of the family restaurant that we ran for over 50 years.
Then the co- packer and the label maker urged me to just make a small batch because it was going to be my only batch. For 2 years now I have been bottling the sauce every 2 months. And I have used well over 10,000 labels.
A distributor told me I couldn’t get into Whole Foods because of the logo. I am in Whole Foods.
A grocery manager made me give him 8 cases for free and told me if I could sell those 8 cases then I could go in the store. It took 2 demos and he ordered 8 more cases.
I come across lots of “sauce snobs” when I do demos. They tell me that a jarred sauce can never be any good. I can’t tell you how many times I have converted a “sauce snob”!
I am a nominee in the Martha Stewart American Made Contest because I can!
Please help put out the vote. Click on my picture and click 6 votes!