YouSaid · the spoken record

Carla Bartolucci

lines on the record: 105
first: 2021-06-07
most recent: 2021-06-07
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“We would have lost everything. I mean, and I knew that. And at the same time, Bioneture weren't getting along with their partners, so they were interested in a distribution agreement, but also a licensing agreement that we could start if we wanted to because they figured if things went bad with their partners, we could take control of the brand and they would get a royalty payment.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they opened a new factory and it was beautiful, but I was like, how are they going to pay for this thing? You know, I was sensing that there were signs We're overspending.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was trusting, and we actually didn't even have a contract, which is crazy. And at that point, things were getting a little, I noticed that these guys were, you know, they had brought on partner investors.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Always been humble, so I never was like, oh my God, I'm so great. You know, I'm the number one pasta The people in Italy, you know, the success really went to their heads and they were the total opposites of us.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think we had tomatoes at that time and olive oil and everything. And the next day I got a letter from him, and he said, I love your line. I want to work for you. Had a lot of experience, and he really helped us grow the brand. And so it took, I'm not sure how many years, but Bionature became the number one organic selling pasta in the United States.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So he came to Italy and we rented this minivan. We just randomly drove around Italy and stopped wherever we felt like stopping. And his wife and him were kind of bickering in the car. So I said, Hey, let's switch places. So she sat in front with Rodolfo and they got along so well. And I sat next to him. And at a certain point, I turned to him and I said, Neil, I really need to find a sales guy. And he said, somebody call me the other day. I think he'd be perfect for you. Let me get his name and I'll give it to you. So when we got home to Connecticut, I called this guy and basically I sent him a package and a priceless and I said, I really need help with these chargebacks.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we had begged this manufacturer to make the first organic balsamic vinegar on the market. And we went to the trade show and we exhibited these products. And at a certain point, the sky came by and he was from Spectrum Organics and he was the... He was the founder, CEO, and he said, I'm going to send a friend of mine, you know, a guy that works at our company by to talk to you about this organic balsamic vinegar. So his president, Neil, came by and said, you know, we'd really like to partner with you on this product and sell it under the Spectrum brand. So he came to Italy. And we visited the factory and then”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, to believe it or not, I actually answered customer service emails for like five years. and really connected with our customers and I think I don't know I personally felt like it made a difference you know I would just if we made a mistake I would say yeah we made a mistake I'm sorry or I would give them a glimpse of the education I had on food and they were like oh my god this is the best customer service I've ever gotten”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, basically, when you start to sell the product, there's all of these sales and promotions that you have to do. And we were getting charged back so much money, it was becoming hard to make money.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And a lot of people started to buy the semolina pasta because we pressed it with bronze dyes. It was made in an old pasta. I mean, it was really good quality.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Food co ops requested that they pick up the product. Yeah, wow And so basically, if you can get your product in enough retail stores, the retail stores can request that the distributor carries your product. And that's what happened to us. And once that distributor carried our products, a food broker called us and asked us if they could represent us. And then things just started to take off.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I couldn't lose my brother's money. So I was in my office, this little office we had. I put two chairs together. I laid down. And I just said, please, I promise that I will be a good employer. I'll share my profits with my employees. I'll always do right by my customers. Just please help me not lose this money”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think we managed to sell about five hundred thousand dollars the first year. And at the end of the year, I was really behind in the QuickBooks and putting things into the computers, but it was the end of the year. So I had. Put all the bills and all the expenses, and I ran our first P&L, and it was like negative two hundred.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What we were trying to do. I mean, we also had to pay for trade shows and expenses. We submitted the Bionature brand for the fancy food show. I think it's called the Sophie Award. And we actually won as best new product line.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it was basically in the northeast, and this distributor called associated buyers actually started selling our products to food co-ops. So there's a national network of food co-ops. Then it was all independent, but the food co-ops really embraced this whole wheat pasta. And that's how we really got started.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. So there was a gourmet shop in town, and I kind of clicked with the manager there. She took some, and I mean, eventually I figured out you need a broker and things like that.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, we rented a warehouse Little warehouse. It was actually in an old grain mill near my home, and the owner of the building, my landlord, he just really liked Rodolfo and I, so I can remember when the first distributor came to pick up the product. We loaded the truck and he said Okay, where's the bill of lading? And I'm like bill of lading, what's a bill of lading? So I ran to the landlord and I'm like, Frank, what's a bill of lading? He said, I'll help you. I'll help you. I mean, we had to learn every, we didn't know anything.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but I never really thought I would lose the money. I was just, this is going to work. I don't know. I never thought I wouldn't succeed. I thought I could do anything.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He had no money, but my brother had saved a lot of money working as a bricklayer, and he was just Tired of his life, and I said, If I have an idea, if you loan me some money, you can have a third of the company, and eventually when we make enough money I can hire you and you can manage our warehouse.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and they said that they had just developed this brand called Bioneeture, and they were thrilled to sell in the United States. And then we became friends with them afterwards.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so we had his father go. He bought a bottle of olive oil. He gave us the address. And we made up of facts and lied that we were a food distributor and that we wanted to sell the products.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, and so we opened the magazine and there was an advertisement for inorganic brand of pasta and olive oil and tomatoes and things like that. So Called his father and said Goat in Italy you have to write who is the co packer? So we said go to the store and figure out where they make this product.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And second of all, my husband really, really missed his hometown, I mean, moving to Connecticut was tough for him. So to make him feel better, sometimes we used to drive to New Haven where they had A newsstand that sold Italian newspapers and magazines. And he would load up and”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, first of all, I have to say that my father was always incredibly proud of me, and he made me feel like I could do anything in life. So I grew up with this confidence, like I could do anything. My husband isn't really like that. You know, it was me.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I was like, yeah, you're right. And one day we drive to Bread and Circus and I walked in there and I immediately went to customer service and got, they had a little pamphlet with their financial statement. And I was like, this is where the food needs to go. I mean, Americ needs to be natural. It doesn't have to be, you know, hippie natural, but we can't keep eating all these additives. And so that's really what I wanted to do. And I was like, this is it. I'm getting into this industry. And, you know, naturally we gravitated toward the pasta aisle. And at the time, I think...”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, it was. And, you know, at that time, my husband moves to America. You know, when he grew up, the bakery where his parents bought bread was owned by Luciano Pavarotti's father. He still talks about how good these little French roles were there, and he comes to the United States, and it's when everything is becoming fake. You know, so we would go to the supermarket and buy a loaf of French bread and he would just look at the ingredients and say, God, why can't they just make bread with flour and water? I mean, what is dough conditioner and all this other stuff?”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We did, we took care of her and started to kind of brainstorm what was our next move, and she really latched on to my husband. She loved him. It was like Carla who? And so they were always together. Started to do Italian lessons because we didn't have any money. And one of the women I taught I became really close with. She was an older woman and she had just lost her son to brain cancer. And so we connected and she She told me when I told her I was trying to help my mother with diet and she said You should go check out bread and circus in Providence. I was like what's that?”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She had multiple myeloma, so she was sick for about four years, so a lot of cancer going away, cancer coming back. I mean, it just tore me apart. It was terrible.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the phone rang and it was like the hospital. And they said that his brother had had a serious accident and was being life starred helicopter to the Bologna hospital to get there right away. So we took all of our money basically and helped his family renovate a bathroom and a little room in his house that was handicap accessible. And then once things started to get better with his health, I got a call. It was my mother and she said I have cancer. And I said to my husband, I just can't. I have to go back. So he came with me.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were trying to get something started, and one afternoon it was summertime, and we were all getting ready to go to the beach, and the phone rang.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It retails not my thing. I knew that right away. You know, I don't really like to be everybody's friend or talk to people. I'm kind of like a... Behind the scenes type of person After a year we decided to put the business up for sale. We just wanted to move back to Italy. My husband always wanted to own a farm or something We sold the business for about, I think it was like $25,000, and we had saved money because we were living with our parents. And so we took all of that money and moved back to Italy. Our idea was to buy a little piece of land and put up a greenhouse and open a nursery.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we also, my brother had loaned us $5,000. And we took 1500 of that and bought this old Faema cappuccino machine. So we were the first people in town to have a cappuccino machine. Know my husband was a pretty good looking guy who could barely speak a word of English, so I think people like to come and just for the novelty of getting a cappuccino from a real Italian. Then on Saturday, you could special order fresh touroni, talatele, all kinds of sauces. Can get homemade lasagna.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I was like, all right. All right. So we Found this man who made this really good Italian bread. It was like 20 minutes away. And so we would go, we would leave our house at like five in the morning, pick up this whole load of bread. And then I would weave in some Italian things so I made fucacia. I made spinach pie, and we found an empty store, and it was only $500 a month. We couldn't really afford a sign or anything, so I actually painted the windows backwards in red paint”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Love with my parents. I didn't have any with my mother. I didn't have any money. So we were in the kitchen. Brainstorming, and my brother and his friend were there, and I said, we're going to open a fresh pasta shop with like prepared sauces in this thirsty town called Mystic Connecticut. And they were like, you'll never make it. You need to make sandwiches and grinders and things like that.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The first business idea was to move to Miami and open a Piadina hut at the beach. So Piadina is like this flatbread that they make on the Adriated coast and they have these striped huts You know, you just stuff them with prosciutto or cheese or greens or tomatoes. And that was our idea. So we. Drove to southern Florida and we actually stayed in a campground in a tent. And it was very frustrating because nobody was going to give you the permit to open up a Piadina hut in Miami Beach And so one night I went to bed and I left my sneakers outside of the tent. And when I woke up in the morning, I put them on with no socks. And there were these little teeny fire ants inside the sneakers. And they bit my feet And it was so painful. I looked at my husband. I started to cry, and I said, Let's go back to Connecticut. I can't take it anymore.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did, and so I convinced my husband to go to the United States because one day I was like, God, you can open a business in the United States for like $200. He said okay”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just yelled at me and I just looked at him and said, I quit. So I've only had one job in my life and it was like two months. And we were already having a hard time making ends meet because in Italy, you know, people don't really make a lot of money. And if your parents don't have something, it's almost impossible to get ahead. And I didn't want to be like my parents always worrying about money. I wanted to have a family. I wanted to do things. So I was very motivated to get ahead.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He was working in this agricultural company, and I had my first and only job as a translator, but after a couple of months I got yelled at because I translated stainless steel to inoxidizable steel, and I think it was an important company. So the man who ran the place took me in his office and”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He actually had just finished military service and he had previously studied agriculture in Bologna, but his family had had some financial hardships, so he had to go work.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were just friends. I mean, we would go in Italy when you're that age, you have like this group of friends and they all go out together. So on Friday or Saturday nights, they would say, hey, do you want to come to Modena and go out with us? So the girls would sit on one side of the table, the guys would sit on the other, and they would just talk all night long. And I'd get bored. You know, they were talking about things like, oh, have you ever heard of band roll? They have these roll-ons now that work as deodorant. And I was like, oh my God. But they would always sit me next to him because he didn't have a girlfriend.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Rod Soon as I saw him, I was like, if I'm pretty enough for you, you're my man. I just knew it. He was just, I don't know, it just had this feeling.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, he was a friend of one of these distant relatives that I had that lived in Modena. And he said, oh, my mother said, you know, I should come and pick you up and take you to her house so you can say hi to her. So we went to his house and my husband had just pulled up because his best friend lived next door. He wasn't your husband yet.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He did a couple days before I actually started college. And it got to the point where you had to decide your major. So I was looking through the book and I said, let me look at Italian. And it said, if you majored in Italian and you have financial aid, you have to spend a year abroad in Italy and the program covers like your apartment. It gives you a stipend. And I was like, that's me. That's me. I have to go to Italy.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I went to Connecticut College because I wanted to stay close to home because I didn't know if my father was gonna be alive or not. So that's where I went.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“eighty five. And I also noticed that when we got to this apartment, like I was obsessed with turning over forks and looking at the tablecloths and everything in the house was made in Italy. And I was like, wow, this country sustains itself because back in Connecticut, everything was getting like huge supermarkets and this little downtown that we had with a butcher shop and a fish market and everything was all closing down. And then I had this one memory of it's called the Knight of San Lorenzo when there's a lot of shooting stars. So we went up unto the hills. You could see the Adriatic coast. And then we just sat there and the sky was so clear and there were shooting stars everywhere. And I just said, I wish I could live here someday. You know, I was totally hooked. I was thinking, why did my grandparents leave? This is paradise. Yeah.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, yeah. You know, we stayed with relatives. They gave us an apartment to live in right in front of the Gelato store. And first of all, I noticed just how good people looked. You know, it was a time in Italy before things got big.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now he died a few months later. He was also a little sick there, but the trip was amazing. That trip completely changed my life.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He was fifty six. But he had been to Italy to reconnect with these relatives on his own once, and his final wish was to go back there. So he was very, very sick, but he took one of my brothers and I, and we were there for a month.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I asked my mom to buy it, and then I came home, and I was like, Dad, I'm gonna cure you of cancer. I'm gonna cook, and he just was not interested”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, my parents sat us down in the living room and told us, and the next day I went to height, I was in high school, I went to English class, and my friend's father owned the funeral home in town, and I said, you know, I lean my father has cancer is not bad. I didn't even know what it was. And she just looked at me like, yeah, very bad. And so that weekend, I asked my mom to drive me to the health food store. There was this little teeny health food store I'd never been in, but I saw it when we were driving past it to go to the supermarket. And I walked in and, you know, it smelled like falafel mix and was kind of weird, you know, with all the bulk bins. And I went to the section where they had books and I noticed the macrobiotic, I think that time it was called cure for cancer. It was a long time ago.”
2021-06-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Jovial Foods: Carla Bartolucci · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT