Alison Roman's Plan to Conquer the Tomato Sauce Market

Alison Roman (0:02)

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Joe Weisenthal (0:18)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:23)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:24)

So Tracy, we're recording this on February 4th, and a lot of tech stocks have been getting clobbered lately, but you know what's doing really well?

Tracy Alloway (0:32)

What?

Joe Weisenthal (0:32)

Companies that make consumer staples, all of the core staples that you'd see in your pantry, et cetera, like your Pepsi colas and all this stuff. Companies that might make jarred sauces and stuff. People are returning to sort of the old style basics that people buy in the stock market.

Tracy Alloway (0:48)

Who would have thought that food is lending? Amazing.

Joe Weisenthal (0:52)

Food persists. No, but it's serious. It's like the only place to hide right now in the market. Like I look at my screen and everything is bright red, and the only thing that people feel comfortable betting on right now seems to basically be food. Pasta sauce. Pasta sauce and the stuff that people have eaten for all time and probably will be eating for as long as there are people on earth.

Tracy Alloway (1:14)

I find this business really interesting because I joke that food is lindy in many ways, but food is essential, but it's also constantly changing, it feels like. So I'm always very curious about how consumer brands actually make pricing decisions, branding decisions especially because it also feels like an area that's very crowded. You walk into the supermarket and there's like 20 different brands of, I don't know, flour or something.

Joe Weisenthal (1:44)

No, totally. One of the things we've done various CPG episodes over the years, remember we did some episodes about Celsius energy drink and stuff, and one of the themes that we sort of, maybe I hadn't appreciated prior is like that competition for shelf space, the distribution aspect, getting on the shelf, getting a spot in the truck that delivers the beverages to the grocery store or to the bodega or whatever. Like so much of the game is, yes, the brand, yes, the product, and then just the sort of logistical aspects of it. And I think like that sort of, we don't talk about it enough, but as a theme, I love like learning about this space, how the CPG business works, especially with regards to pricing and so forth. It's so illuminatory about how the whole economy works. Is that a word? Illuminating.

Tracy Alloway (2:29)

Illuminating. Very good. Well, we do have the perfect guest.

Joe Weisenthal (2:32)

I'm very excited to say we do have the perfect guest today. Someone who is in the tomato sauce business, but really known for so much more. One of the, I would say, most famous people in the food world these days. We are going to be speaking with Alison Roman. She's a cook and the author. She has a grocery store called First Bloom that I missed when they had a pop-up Manhattan location. I missed it. Hopefully, that'll get reopened at some point. And tomato sauce business called A Very Good Tomato Sauce. So Alison, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots.

Alison Roman (3:03)

Thank you for having me. This is a pleasure.

Tracy Alloway (3:05)

Joe, can I ask you a question before we start, which is I know you love fresh tomatoes. Do you also love tomato sauce?

Joe Weisenthal (3:11)

Yeah. You want to establish some baselines here?

Tracy Alloway (3:14)

That's right.

Alison Roman (3:15)

There is room for both.

Joe Weisenthal (3:17)

I'm glad we got this in. All right. Where to begin? So you are this genuine celebrity of the food world. People are addicted and they love your recipes. I just did home two nights ago. My wife made your, I think it was like a broccoli cheddar soup that you have a recipe for.

Alison Roman (3:33)

That's a deep cut.

Joe Weisenthal (3:35)

It's a deep cut, old school. You've had your famous chickpea stew that went viral. You've had multiple recipes go viral. But how did you decide to get into, why a tomato sauce?

Alison Roman (3:46)

I think I, well, I got my start working in professional kitchens and I worked in editorial and then I went off on my own writing books and doing miscellaneous things. And my whole career as a recipe writer, cookbook author has been teaching you how to cook and being like, why would you buy anything when you can make it yourself? As the person who their pantry is lined with ingredients rather than things. So it's funny that I then got into tomato sauce business because I've written recipes for tomato sauce and I'm very proud of mine and I think it's delicious and easy to make and anyone can do it. And then the older I got and I married a man who does not cook. I had a baby, the baby does not cook yet either. Unfortunately, I needed to eat more. I needed someone to cook for me. And it just became sort of this question I had of like, why am I so allergic to the tomato sauces on the market? Why am I not embracing of the things that are currently available? And I realized it's because I'm, well, A very picky, B probably very snobby. C, I just was sort of, you know, like I do want to make it myself. I do want the sort of control here. So I made it myself. And when I had opened the grocery store first bloom, I decided to start including it as like a line of things that we would keep in the freezer, or chicken broth, beans, tomato sauce, things that we would make in the store to sell to people at the market. And very soon the demand exceeded supply. And I, you know, for all the things that I do, I did not want to be full-time making tomato sauce. There was just, I didn't have the equipment, I didn't have the time. And so I was approached by somebody who is in the tomato sauce making business. And she was like, why don't you just outsource it and have somebody make your recipe? And I was like, well, how is that gonna work? You know, like, how won't people know the difference and how could it possibly scale? And through a lot of trial and error, I figured out we can scale it.