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This story is part of Retail TouchPoints\u2019 ongoing \u201cSmall Business, Big Ideas\u201d series, focusing on smaller retail brands that have found big success and have even bigger ambitions.<\/em><\/p>\n For consumers looking for safe, healthy food choices, the grocery store has become a maze of marketing tactics and dubious claims: \u201cgluten-free,\u201d \u201corganic,\u201d \u201cplant-based,\u201d \u201cfarm raised,\u201d \u201cno additives,\u201d \u201clow-sodium,\u201d \u201clocal,\u201d \u2014 and that\u2019s just the tip of the iceberg.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is all kinds of trickery on food labels \u2014 there\u2019s trickery with ingredients, there\u2019s trickery with what the CFR [Code of Federal Regulations] allows and doesn\u2019t allow, and companies do whatever they can to work their way around it,\u201d said Anna Vocino, Founder and CEO of clean-label food brand Eat Happy Kitchen<\/strong> in an interview with Retail TouchPoints<\/em>. \u201cMany manufacturers will do whatever they can to work their way around it so that they don\u2019t have to fully disclose what\u2019s in [their products]. Or they\u2019re like, \u2018We\u2019re following the letter of the law. It\u2019s still not that great for you, but you\u2019re still allowed to eat it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n One example of this confusion is so-called \u201cgluten-free\u201d marinara sauces. There is no gluten in any<\/em> <\/strong>marinara, given that the core ingredients are tomato, basil, garlic, salt and extra virgin olive oil. \u201cAll pasta sauces are gluten-free,\u201d said Vocino. \u201cThere should be no need to say gluten-free on any brand, but now you have to do it so that people understand what they\u2019re buying.\u201d<\/p>\n With her brand, Vocino hopes to be \u201ca voice of transparency in that very confusing, muddled world\u201d at a moment when consumer demand for \u201cclean\u201d foods is increasing.<\/strong> In some cases that means playing by the rules (i.e. denoting that your naturally gluten-free product is indeed gluten-free) and in other cases it means looking past the established rules to get closer to truly \u201cclean\u201d food.<\/p>\n Vocino came to the \u201cfood disrupter\u201d role later in her life; in fact, her primary m\u00e9tier<\/em> couldn\u2019t be further afield \u2014 for decades she has been a working actress and stand-up comedian. As the granddaughter of Italian immigrants, food has always been an important part of her life, but it wasn\u2019t until she faced her own dietary challenges that she began to take a more active role in the food industry.<\/p>\n After being diagnosed with Celiac disease (gluten intolerance) in 2002, Vocino was dismayed to discover that \u201ca lot of the pre-packaged gluten-free foods out there were kind of garbage. I spent like $17 on a bag of cookies in 2002 and they tasted like dog shit,\u201d she said. So she started crafting her own gluten-free recipes, which eventually led to the publication of the best-selling cookbook Eat Happy <\/em>in 2016, followed by Eat Happy, Too<\/em> in 2019 and Eat Happy Italian<\/em> in 2024. A fourth book, Happy Hour<\/em>, is on the way.<\/p>\n Those books prompted outreach from a food manufacturer who himself had lost 80 pounds using Vocino\u2019s recipes. He wanted to package and sell her marinara sauces, which are now on shelves in more than 1,100<\/strong> stores across the country, including 650<\/strong> Kroger <\/strong>banners.<\/p>\n Somewhat unexpectedly, Vocino now finds herself in the role of a lifetime, bringing together her storytelling expertise with her passion for food, building a brand that\u2019s at the center of a movement in American food culture.<\/p>\n Eat Happy Kitchen now boasts 12<\/strong> SKUs, including the line of sugar-free pasta sauces, as well as spice blends and Cheese Bites, its first entry into the snack food category. Earlier this year, the brand launched a crowdfunding campaign that raised more than $675,000<\/strong> from over 400<\/strong> investors \u2014 made up primarily of Vocino\u2019s cookbook fans, early customers and podcast listeners (Vocino also co-hosts the Fitness Confidential<\/em> podcast), each of whom now owns a stake in Eat Happy Kitchen.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s all kind of grown from the idea of being a brand that you see at multiple touch points across the store, and you know a) it\u2019s going to taste amazing, and b) it\u2019s going to be the cleanest that we\u2019re able to make something,\u201d said Vocino.<\/p>\n Vocino is the first to admit that \u201cclean\u201d doesn\u2019t really mean anything when it comes to food. \u201cThere\u2019s no federal code that defines what \u2018clean\u2019 means,\u201d she said. \u201cOne person thinks plant-based is clean, another person thinks no seed oils is clean, and another person thinks no gluten is clean.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is my definition of clean \u2014 let\u2019s take whatever the recipe is and try to distill it into the things that will make it taste the best, make it shelf-stable and affordable to make with the highest possible quality ingredients.<\/strong> Sometimes this means you can get organic ingredients, sometimes it means you can\u2019t. For me, cleanliness means sourcing ingredients that are really good quality products.\u201d<\/p>\n In Eat Happy Kitchen products those ingredients include San Marzano tomatoes sourced two hours from where Vocino lives and really fresh extra virgin olive oil. \u201cOlive oil, since the dawn of history has been liquid gold, and there\u2019s a reason for that \u2014 the good stuff is the good stuff,\u201d Vocino said. \u201cBut in the past 10 to 12 years, people have been discovering that their olive oil has been cut, doctored, deodorized, sanitized, rancid oil is being revived with chemicals \u2014 again, we come to the trickery. The trickery of olive oil is something to be marveled at.<\/strong> The Italians say, \u2018young oil, old wine,\u2019 so for us it\u2019s about sourcing olive oil that\u2019s not cut, not rancid, it\u2019s fresh.\u201d<\/p>\n The flavor of Eat Happy Kitchen\u2019s products is crucial to Vocino not just because \u201cI\u2019m an Italian-American woman and the granddaughter of immigrants, so I just can\u2019t<\/em> be someone who sells a jarred sauce that\u2019s bad,\u201d but also because it\u2019s perhaps the best way to break into a category with so many established brands.<\/p>\n \u201cYou walk down any grocery aisle and there\u2019s a wall of pasta sauce to choose from,\u201d Vocino said. \u201cSome of it\u2019s going to be [distinguished by] pricing, some of it\u2019s going to be packaging \u2014 we redid our labels to be more colorful [once we started getting picked up by stores] because what looks great on a website doesn\u2019t necessarily look great on a shelf in the wall of pasta sauce. But all things being equal I can\u2019t compete with [larger brands] on many things; however, I can<\/em> make it taste like I snuck in your kitchen and made it for you. That\u2019s a big part of the marketing strategy.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n Vocino also has her experience as an actor to thank for the chutzpah<\/em> it takes to enter a crowded field and believe you can offer something fresh: \u201cYou walk into an audition for a sitcom, and you didn\u2019t realize that there were 50<\/strong> other ladies who look exactly like you,\u201d she said, and trying to break into the marinara category is not all that different. \u201cMy job is to go, \u2018Hmm, how can I do this \u2018Pepsi Challenge\u2019 and get people to try mine and convert?\u201d she said. \u201cHow do you break in? You just never shut up about it, that\u2019s my strategy.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n In that regard, Vocino also is aided by her other career endeavors, which have given her established publishing, podcasting, television and social media platforms from which to share the word: \u201c\u201cThe irony being that I\u2019m a woman who sells pasta sauce to a core audience of people who don\u2019t even eat pasta,\u201d she said. \u201cI appreciate that irony now that we are expanding to include the pasta-eaters of the world, which are way more multitudinous than my core low-carb army, my die-hards. \u201cThis is very much a grassroots business, built on the community level.<\/strong> My job is to educate people. I\u2019d be a terrible businesswoman if I didn\u2019t show people how to use my products.\u201d<\/p>\n As an example, Vocino points to Eat Happy Kitchen\u2019s newest sauce: \u201cI was like, we\u2019re gonna kill it with this puttanesca sauce because nobody\u2019s doing it. That\u2019s a differentiator, fabulous,\u201d she said. \u201cBut if nobody\u2019s doing it, there might be a reason, right? Which is, Americans aren\u2019t familiar with that flavor profile, so it\u2019s actually even harder to break in because we\u2019ve got to get that story out there of why you want to try this.\u201d<\/p>\n Which is exactly what she\u2019s doing, of course, while also being sure to maintain retail fundamentals like eye-catching packaging. In fact, Eat Happy Kitchen just relaunched its line of spice blends in vintage-style tins so they would stand out more on shelves<\/strong>.<\/p>\n And Vocino isn\u2019t looking to slow down from here. Next up for the brand will be dressings, because there\u2019s a \u201cdearth of clean dressings out there in the marketplace,\u201d and at some point she\u2019d love to tackle mayonnaise if she can find a way to do it the way she wants.<\/p>\n No matter what, \u201cmy job is to reach as many people as possible who are looking for clean, delicious food,\u201d Vocino said, and she takes this task literally, actually calling at least five customers every day when she\u2019s not traveling.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cSometimes they\u2019re cookbook fans, sometimes they\u2019re podcast listeners, sometimes they\u2019re Eat Happy Kitchen customers. It\u2019s very fun; it\u2019s an exercise in improv, that\u2019s for sure,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t necessarily have an agenda. <\/p>\n \u201cI happened to call a lady from Alaska two<\/strong> weeks ago, and she told me she can\u2019t get our sauces because they\u2019re too expensive to ship, which told me two things: one, she didn\u2019t know that we are now in Fred Meyer<\/strong>, which is in Alaska and it turns out was 0.8<\/strong> miles from her house; two, she didn\u2019t know that we have a new structure for our shipping so that she can actually order stuff,\u201d Vocino added. \u201cSo then I thought, well, let me call every customer who\u2019s ever ordered from the state of Alaska and talk to them all. It\u2019s not comfortable all the time, but you have to talk to people to grow a business.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nTapping into the Clean Food Movement<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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What it Means to be \u2018Clean\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Entering a Saturated Category<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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\u2018You Have to Talk to People to Grow a Business\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n