February ’09
Recipe and taste testing. Discovered that hand-made farfalle, (bow-tie pasta) was not a viable option! Back to the kitchen!
March ‘09
Lost our kitchen space (Nuestra Culinary Ventures closed). Had to uproot everything to commercial kitchen space in Pembroke.
April ‘09
Dry run for our first farmer’s market (set up our entire stand in Rachel’s parents backyard!).
May ‘09
Opened our very first market in Hingham! Went to market with white, wheat and wheat & ground flaxseed fettuccine (still our best seller) and white angel hair (made from 2 Kitchen Aid mixers with pasta attachments) Press took notice…
June ‘09
Made our first ravioli, completely by hand. Our “aha” moment started paying off because we were able to utilize local crops to make our pasta and fill our raviolis.
July ‘09
Now selling out of 60 lbs. of handmade pasta a week! Tried our recipe for Swiss Chard & Currant Ravioli, (an instant hit!) featured on Boston.com in full color.
August ‘09
Found our next pasta machine on Craigslist—an early 90’s La Parmigiana extruder. Now on the menu: wagon wheels, rigatoni, linguine and ravioli.
September ‘09
Switched from Semolina flour to Durum to improve consistency. Premiered at Prudential Farmer’s Market (to rave reviews) and continued to add farms to our go-to list for veggies.
October ‘09
Visited Spring Brook Farm (one of our favorites), and stocked up on squash for the winter. Spent a whole week cutting, roasting and pureeing. Got our old kitchen space back, now CropCircle Kitchen.
December ‘09
Got our wholesale license just in time for spring markets!
January-March ‘10
Went in search of packaging. Found recycled packaging made from coke bottles.
May ‘10
Unveiled our new packaging and labels at spring market.
June ‘10
Attended the Buy Local Mini Tradeshow. Put Nella on the map for locally sourced food!
July ‘10
Traded in our La Parmigiana for a brand new, state-of-the-art extruder and ravioli machine. Now on the menu: fettuccini, spaghetti and penne. (Unfortunately, the ravioli attachment never worked the way it was supposed to… back to the hunt!).
August ‘10
Became a finalist in DailyCandy’s “Start Small, Go Big Contest” Launched an all-out social media campaign to spread the news!
September ‘10
Found local wheat! at Four Star Farms in Northfield, MA. Added bonus: it’s grown and harvested by the nicest family ever.
October ‘10
Won DailyCandy’s “Start Small, Go Big Contest!” Hopped a plane to NYC for the DailyCandy Academy (where we met industry leaders, Marcus Samuelsson and Loreen Barber of Blue Hill Farm, among others) but not before we attended the first annual Boston Local Food Festival. Everyone—farmers market venders, patrons, DailyCandy staff, friends and family—all joined our quest to find the perfect ravioli machine!
November ‘10
Found local cheese! at award-winning Narragansett Creamery in RI. Headed down to tour the facility and meet the cheese makers themselves (hair nets, lab coats and all!).
December ‘10
Eureka! Road trip to PA to select our next machine to increase our production 10-fold. Trained in Arcobaleno’s test kitchen. The road trip was interesting (to say the least), but in the end we found the one!
January ‘11
Perfected our ravioli recipes, went back to the drawing board on our branding, and found FDA-approved packaging stock that worked with soy-based inks. Prepared (and oh-so-ready) to go big!
