An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Being disruptive can be a bad thing when you start to see mashups of foods that don’t seem to belong to one another. Or when you see items endlessly piled on one another (like fast food burgers) which create something that’s really horrible for your body, even if it tastes pretty good at the moment.
As a part of our series about business leaders who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Scott Ketchum.
Sfoglini was founded in 2012 by chef Steve Gonzalez and creative director Scott Ketchum, with a vision of making high-quality traditional Italian dried pastas with American ingredients.
Overseeing all things food at Sfoglini, Steve pulls from his more than 14 years of pasta-making experiences in acclaimed restaurants such as Vetri in Philadelphia, the three Michelin star El Raco de Can Fabes Spain (where he ran the pasta program) and Co., Hearth, Robert’s, Frankies Spuntino, and Insieme, where chef Marco Canora tapped him to develop the pasta tasting menus. Meanwhile Scott, who worked as a creative director and graphic designer for more than 18 years in New York and San Francisco, oversees operations, marketing and all things not food-related at the company.
Thank you so much for your time! Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
When we started Sfoglini in 2012, the pasta selection available at most grocery stores was very stagnant. You would find the exact same options everywhere — rigatoni, penne, spaghetti, etc. There’s nothing wrong with these shapes, but there are so many other options available that seemed to have disappeared over the years due to the difficulties in producing them or their popularity at that time. We immediately saw an opportunity to bring some of these shapes back to the pasta aisle and spark new interest in the pasta shapes people can use to pair with unique sauces or other ingredients.
We took this a step further once we started selling the pastas to customers. We were creating recipes for our pasta offerings and always tried to tie in seasonal ingredients with each recipe. Since we were living in New York City at the time, we also appreciated the need to create an easy and quick meal at home, so we started to incorporate the seasonal ingredients into our pastas. Our first test was a basil pasta made with basil from a nearby rooftop garden. The basil pasta was a great option to have available in the summer for pasta salads and also worked well with traditional sauces. We then tried other experiments like mint, chili pepper, porcini mushroom, beet, stinging nettles and even ramps. Every two months we would introduce a new option. This eventually led us to try even more unique flavors like hemp and sriracha. Over the years, some of these became so popular that we started to produce them year round and they are now everyday offerings to our customers.
Now the pasta aisles have a spark of color and unique shapes that draw customers in and offer some new excitement when thinking about your next pasta dinner.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
When we started Sfoglini, we made only fresh pasta that we delivered directly to restaurants. Once we started to grow, we decided we would give pasta drying a try. We thought, how hard can it be? Didn’t the Italians originally dry pasta in caves? Well, it was not easy. We first attempted to dry the pasta in our shop while we worked. We brought the heat up to 100+ degrees and dried the pasta while producing and doing office work. That didn’t last too long since nobody wants to work in 100+ degrees everyday, so we decided to work with a construction company and build our own dryer out of walk-in refrigerator parts. We added a humidifier and heater to the unit and started to dry the pasta that way which didn’t work very well either. Some of our unique shapes were incredibly difficult to dry so I would spend entire days checking the pasta piece by piece to make sure it dried evenly and didn’t crack. Eventually, we honed our skills and were able to get our homemade dryer to work. After about another year, we ended up getting professionally made driers and then there was no more testing each piece one by one!
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
Steve (Steve Gonzalez, my business partner) had many mentors during his culinary career before Sfoglini that taught him hand made pasta techniques and he eventually became a Sfoglini (pasta makers in Italy that create pasta for their families or restaurants and share this tradition from generation to generation). Eventually, Steve was hired to create the pasta program at a number of restaurants.
When we started the company, we moved into an old Pfizer pharmaceutical building in Brooklyn. The building had been purchased by a developer and they made each room into a separate unit available to rent. So our first home was an actual laboratory room that we converted into a pasta “lab.” While we were one of the first companies in the building, other food and beverage companies soon followed. Our friends in the building (Brooklyn Soda, Madecasse Chocolate, Milk Truck Grilled Cheese, Brooklyn Kombucha) had all started their companies before us and were willing to help us out with any industry related questions we had, from how to find and work with distributors to what equipment would work best for certain jobs. Everyone was extremely helpful and the Pfizer building ended up being a great community of small business owners.
Brooklyn also has a rich history of pasta making, being one of the first cities in the United States where immigrants started to produce pasta on a large scale. It started with Zerega pasta in the mid 1800s and was followed by others like Ronzoni. The Demaco company and De Francisci’s even started making pasta machines in Brooklyn in the early 1900s. All these companies eventually moved out of Brooklyn, with Zerega moving to New Jersey and Demaco moving operations to Florida in the 1990s. We were fortunate enough to meet the current owners of Zerega and Demaco while we were working in Brooklyn and they proved to be good friends and colleagues ever since.
We’ve also received a lot of great advice from Kenshiro Uki, the President of Sun Noodle North America. Sun Noodles makes incredible ramen noodles that are used by top chefs around the country. Ramen noodles have a very similar manufacturing process to pasta, but we were not in direct competition with one another. Ken has always been there with great advice as our company grew year after year and we were able to offer insights into the retail grocery world as Sun Noodle expanded their offerings outside of food service.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
In our case, I believe being disruptive to the pasta industry in America was a great thing. Once we started producing and bringing back unique pasta shapes people really took notice. We received quite a bit of press as we started out. We were featured in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bon Appetit, the Today Show and even became one of Oprah’s Favorite Things. People started to pay more attention to the shapes of pasta they used and were more open to trying new and interesting recipes. We’ve seen many other companies follow suit and start using some of the same shapes that we reintroduced.
We also set out to become a premium “American pasta” that would be comparable to the artisanal brands coming from Italy. Most people think that top quality pasta can only come from Italy, but we’ve set out to show everyone that there are incredible wheats available here in North America that make a premium pasta when produced with care and proper technique.
Being disruptive can be a bad thing when you start to see mashups of foods that don’t seem to belong to one another. Or when you see items endlessly piled on one another (like fast food burgers) which create something that’s really horrible for your body, even if it tastes pretty good at the moment.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
- “DON’T TOUCH THAT!” — The move from design to food manufacturing is also a big move from sitting at a computer all day to being around large pieces of production equipment. You really have to watch yourself around everything and make sure you don’t get hurt. So far we’ve been major accident free here, but whenever we see someone reaching to grab something on an active piece of equipment, we scream don’t touch that!
- “Kill them with kindness” — When you begin doing large amounts of shipping for e-commerce sales, there is bound to be a number of things that go wrong along the way. Boxes open during transit. Deliveries get left out in the rain or don’t arrive at all. If someone has been waiting for their package for a while then any of these things can make them very upset. No matter how mad the customers are, we just do our best to understand their situation and make sure they eventually get the products they ordered as quickly as possible.
- “Be patient and persistent” — We’ve tried our best to grow as quickly as possible and to meet expectations, but sometimes the rest of the world just isn’t ready or willing to move as fast. Stores delay their openings and plans change when stores decide to add new items (especially during a pandemic). When you’re always trying to meet sales goals each month and year, having a delay in your product hitting the shelves can be devastating. I’ve learned to approach each situation with multiple scenarios of what could happen between the time we are accepted into a new store and the time we actually are on the shelf. Keep pushing and moving forward no matter what.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
This past year we partnered with Dan Pashman from the James Beard award winning podcast, The Sporkful, to bring a brand new pasta shape to market. Dan approached us with his ideas for a new shape and we thought it would be an incredible project to work on with him which fit in perfectly with our mission of innovation. After working with Dan for over a year, we finally came out with Cascatelli (waterfalls in Italian) in March, 2021 and it’s been a phenomenal success.
We’re also working on some new pasta flavors which will be introduced through our Pasta of the Month club in 2022.
Do you have a book, podcast, or talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us? Can you explain why it was so resonant with you?
Dan’s podcast, The Sporkful, has been a great inspiration over the past year. When Dan first approached us I was not very familiar with his show, but I was not an avid podcast listener at the time. Since then I’ve really enjoyed the show and how he focuses on the enjoyment of food in so many unique ways. The podcast helps me get out of my head and not just think about pasta, but think about why I chose to start this company in the first place — because food is amazing in so many ways!
How I Built This with Guy Raz on NPR is also an inspiring podcast. Not only do you hear about alternative ways to approach problems or issues that you have in your company, but sometimes it’s nice just to hear that others are going through the same issues and struggles you are.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
One life lesson I’ve heard in the past that seems to fit my life well is “rewrite your story.” I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit and desire to learn new things, so my career trajectory has changed often. After getting my degree in Graphic Design at Iowa State University (I grew up in Iowa), I moved to San Francisco with no job and really no plan. I just wanted a clean start and had a desire to forge my own path. I started my own web design company and an entertainment website called The Skinny. After 7 years I decided to move to New York City with the same passion to start something new and move to a place I always dreamed of. After 18 years in graphic design, I made a move again to start Sfoglini with Steve Gonzalez. The change from being a designer to food manufacturer was a pretty big learning experience, but I’m always ready for a challenge.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Part of our mission since starting Sfoglini has been to promote organic farming practices and increase the use of organic grains. Sfoglini has worked with the GrowNYC — Greenmarket Grains Regional Grains Project, an initiative to build the marketplace for grains grown and milled in the Northeast. Sfoglini developed new local grain based pastas as a means to introduce new ingredients that are available in our region to New York consumers and to build the market for local grains. Sfoglini’s whole grain pastas have played a significant role in helping to build the demand for local flours, while simultaneously educating consumers about Greenmarket Grains work to facilitate the production and processing of small grains in the Northeast.
Sfoglini is committed not only to producing quality products, but to supporting the larger network of farms and mills that provide our essential ingredients. These ties to regional farmers have anchored us strongly in the local food movement. We hope our continued growth will allow us to expand these initiatives to more areas in the United States.
How can our readers follow you online?
Visit our website at sfoglini.com or you can follow us on Instagram and Facebook — @sfoglini
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
Scott Ketchum Of Sfoglini On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
