From Grit to Growth

26. The Carrot That Disrupted the Pasta Aisle with Jacque Burklund

• Dundee Growth Partners

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Most great businesses start with a personal problem. For Jacque Burklund, it was heartburn in the pasta aisle.

In this episode of From Grit to Growth, Mark Hasebroock and Jennifer DiMotta sit down with Jacque, co-founder of Caranera, a carrot based marinara sauce that's quietly disrupting one of the most crowded shelves in the grocery store. What started as a spin on a Bloody Mary at a winter get-together turned into a product now selling in over 130 retail locations, with a soft launch on the West Coast underway.

Jacque walks through the full journey: testing recipes in crock pots at family holidays, walking grocery store aisles to study labels, tapping store managers on the shoulder to get a two-minute pitch, and building a sampling strategy that became the backbone of their retail success. She also gets candid about where they are right now, hand-making every jar while trying to scale production, managing viral momentum, and learning to hand their "baby" off to a co-manufacturer.

Whether you're in food, product, or any consumer business, Jacque's story is a masterclass in validating before you scale, selling before you pitch, and staying in front of your customer no matter how big you get.

Sometimes the most disruptive idea on the shelf is the one nobody saw coming.

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Dundee Growth Partners provides E-commerce leaders with the strategy, systems, and tools they need to face growth challenges and scale with confidence. With deep industry experience and AI-powered platforms, we help leadership teams scale in a sustainable way. Interested in learning more? Click the link below to get started. 


SPEAKER_01

And we found that saying, hey, come try this tomato free pasta sauce. It made people pause in their tracks and be like, what do you mean tomato free? What? So many questions. They're like, what's it made out of? Why is it tomato free? Does it taste like the real thing? And then we would have them um sample it.

SPEAKER_02

Hi, I'm Jennifer Damana, and I've got my uh co-host here, Mark Haysbrook.

SPEAKER_03

Good morning.

SPEAKER_02

Um, we've got a special guest today. So excited. Right out of Omaha, Nebraska. Very exciting. Um, our next our guest is uh Jackie. She's the founder of Caranera. And if you don't know what Caranera is, it is changing the face of marinara sauce. It is a carrot-based uh marinara sauce that I can personally say tastes amazing. Um I use it in my lasagna and I use it in my bolognese, and we're our Italian family. So um we are very happy with it. We love it. Um, it really rethinks a very classic pantry staple, the traditional tomato sauce, right? It's got a very bold ingredient in it and it's got a ton of flavor. So um, Jackie, before we just dive into the business and the growth, tell us a little bit about you and who you are, and then how you came about building Caronera.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, well, like you said, I've been in Omaha my whole life, born and raised. I'm married to my co-founder, Jake Birkland, and we have two little girls. Um, one is two years old, and then the other about three months right now. So we're in the thick of parenthood with young children growing a business. Um, and um, both of our families are mainly based in Omaha, so we couldn't run a business without having a great support system around us. The idea of Carinera came about actually, it started out as a cocktail, as a lot of good things do. We had some get together in the middle of the winter time because what else do you do here in Nebraska? But get together with your friends and have a good cocktail. So the goal was to come up with a unique new cocktail, and I did a spin on a Bloody Mary mix. Long story short, I used carrot juice instead of tomato juice for the Bloody Mary, and it ended up tasting really good and won our little competition. At the time, I really just wanted to have something as a creative outlet to work on, and I was really excited about bringing this carrot Bloody Mary mix to the farmer's market. But as we got a little bit older, approached into our 30s, we started having some food sensitivities, like many others do as they get older, heartburn being the biggest issue for us. And Jake and I were in the pasta aisle one night looking at our options, and you can probably picture it. It's a sea of red sauce with a white label saying it's Italian, their grandma's recipe. And we knew we either weren't gonna have pasta because the alternatives were pestos, alfredos, which are very dairy heavy, or we had to go to the pharmacy section and grab a bottle of Tums on our way out. So we really didn't like any of those options. Good delicious. Yeah, the light bulb went off. I thought back to that cocktail competition and was like, I wonder if I could do the same thing with that bloody Mary for a pasta sauce. Right then and there, Jake came up with the name Caranera, a carrot marinara, and we got really excited about it. And then I started going back to the kitchen and just working on my recipe for Caronera.

SPEAKER_03

When you first started, uh, what shocked you the most about getting the business going and the reception of the product itself?

SPEAKER_01

What we started out doing was doing some market research. We knew for our own selves, we eat pasta a lot. Um, we figured if we eat it that often, so many other families do as well. And as we started going to the farmers markets, doing some research online, we found that so many people also struggle with heartburn. About one in four Americans struggle with heartburn every single week. And half of those people take some sort of ant acid medication. And what we also found, which really surprised us, was when we were out in front of our customers doing samplings, is so many people are looking for tomato-free or nightshade-free options, and there's just not many out there, especially none that actually tastes like a marinara that gives you those same Italian flavors, same texture.

SPEAKER_02

So now you've got an idea. Now, how do you jump off the page, jump that make that idea jump off the page and move into like what's next? Do you start finding producers? Do you make it in your kitchen? Like, what do you what do you do next?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, we started out in our own home kitchen just using regular pots and pans that we had, and we worked on our recipe. We knew we had to have a really good tasting product if we were gonna actually go forward with this. At the time, you know, like I said, it was kind of my creative outlet. And as we got more and more serious, we were finding the research, we were hearing other people around us saying they were struggling with the same thing. We uh really wanted to nail down our recipe, and we have a big family, like I mentioned here in Omaha. So we would bring our trial batches to uh family Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas with like three or four different crock pots, and we'd have them fill out, you know, which one did they like the best as we tweaked our recipe to get it um as good as we could get it before actually taking it to the market. Um, so really just nailing down our recipe was our first step. And in the meantime, we're kind of working on our label. Um, you know, we don't have any background in that sort of thing. So we just took to the grocery store. We went to the aisles and we walked up and down them. Every grocery store we went to, we'll go to the pasta aisle. And we just looked at labels. We saw what people were picking up off the shelf and wondering, okay, why did they pick up that pasta sauce? And we noticed that, you know, like I said, it's a red sauce with the white label. We wanted to pop out on the shelf, and our sauce is bright orange. So we decided to do the opposite and do a black label. So all of those things we're kind of doing simultaneously, but we really just wanted to um get our point across as well as we could on our label, and we just started selling to friends and family. Um, we tweaked things along the way as we got feedback, but really that was our approach was you know, get something out there, get the feedback from people, and then readjust our process.

SPEAKER_03

So you were selling, giving away a lot, selling a little bit at farmers markets, right? Um we we did recently a show on talking to your customers and the benefit of having physical location. What did you learn in talking to people at farmers markets first about your business, the product, and then what it might tell you where you could go with the business?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, what we learned the most was how to sell our product. It is a different type of concept. People aren't very familiar with the tomato-free pasta sass. So being in front of our customers at markets and doing samplings, it really helped us nail down our sales pitch. Any product, whether it's a food thing or um technology, service business, you always have to be a salesperson for your business. So it really helped us tailor what lands best with our customers for it to click right away. Because in the grocery store, um, we found that customers have about seven seconds to see your product as they're walking by. And you're even lucky if they stop and look at your product. So you have to be very clear right away with the messaging. So when we were sampling and calling people over to our table, we just tried a lot of different things and figured out, okay, what's gonna land with our customers? And we found that saying, hey, come try this tomato-free pasta sauce. It made people pause in their tracks and be like, what do you mean, tomato free? What? I have so many questions. They're like, what's it made out of? Why is it tomato free? Does it taste like the real thing? And then we would have them um sample it. But when we would tell them our own story of, well, we struggle with heartburn, it clicked right away for people. So that was probably the most beneficial thing about getting in front of our customers.

SPEAKER_02

I bet that was pretty valuable information to then try to punch into that uh very difficult wholesale market that you've you've punched into. And I don't remember when we talked. Um, did you go from uh kind of farmer's market to that wholesale first, or did you go into direct to consumer, or did you go into both?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so starting out when we're very, very new, it was just um through friends and family, through social media at the farmer's market, direct to our customers. We took some of that feedback and we really wanted to figure out is this a product that people want? And that's why we went to the farmers market first. We needed to be have that validation before we approached a retailer. So after getting a lot of um validation at the farmer's market, we would sell out multiple times. We thought, okay, I think it's time to approach a retailer. So, you know, luckily high V is awesome about bringing in some local products. So we just walked in, found the manager, and you have about two minutes of their attention, and you have to be ready to tell them how is this going to bring value to their pasta set? So, you know, we just went door to door at high V's around town, some small local uh retailers, gift shops, anywhere that would be willing to take us in. And that's how we approached retail starting out.

SPEAKER_03

Okay. Yeah, I've I've uh I used to have a popcorn business, and selling into uh the grocery stores was probably the hardest, but uh also the the best experience you can have because you really need to refine your message. You know, and those grocers, like you say, they've got 30 seconds, and their store is already jam-packed with products. And so it essentially means you're displacing somebody else. It is pretty much a zero-sum game. So uh for for you to both get in there and then stay in there, what has been the biggest challenge for you?

SPEAKER_01

Really great point, and something that we always come back to is our sampling program is the most important, and we plan to continue that sampling program and strategy as we get into more retailers. Being behind the table, getting people to one, see our brand and two be able to try it before they buy it is huge. So people probably walk by a new product, you know, up to five, maybe ten times before they actually pick it up off the shelf. So we are in there, you know, pretty, pretty consistently, once or twice a month, doing demos to get our product into people's mouths.

SPEAKER_03

Nice.

SPEAKER_02

Have you so you've you've only uh been around for how many years now? Has Caronera been around? About three years. Three years in though in those three years, what have been what is kind of your your biggest peak, biggest kind of success moment or accomplishment moment for you so far? And then what's been a valley for you? What's been kind of the biggest black hole challenge that you've had to dig your way out of?

SPEAKER_01

I would say the peak would be, you know, we weren't going door to door at High V. We got into about um 25 just doing that strategy. And then we got a call from Lomar, which is High V's distribution um center, and they asked for us to be in Lomar so they can distribute to more of their stores. So that was the point where we kind of had that moment of saying, okay, this is doing well in retail, and we are scaling as we were hoping to scale. You can always hope that your business is going to go the direction you want it to go, but once you actually see it go that way, it's very validating and encouraging because it's not just our friends and family saying, Yeah, it's a great product, we love it. It's people that don't know us, they don't have any emotional ties to us or the product. They are not going to hurt our feelings. So, seeing that people that don't even know us and are struggling with these issues, um, wanting it in retails, that was very validating for us. So super exciting to get from 25 stores up to about 130 within just a few months.

SPEAKER_03

That's excellent.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, and probably a low for us. Um, I think we're we're going through it right now, to be honest. We are so much stuck in the business. We're still handmaking the jars. We are literally in the sauce right now, and we are working on scaling our production, and that just comes with a lot of unknowns. We're having to give our recipe, our process to someone else. And I say it's kind of like sending your child off to college, I would assume. I've haven't had to do that yet, but it's like your baby that you made in your home kitchen to now putting it in the hands of someone else. So having the trust, knowing the right questions to ask. Um, but also we're in this really exciting wave of momentum where more retailers are getting interested. We're having some viral posts on social media, a lot of buzz is happening, and we want to be able to fulfill those orders, be able to go to new retailers and sell. But we need to have that production in place to do that. So we're sort of in this. I mean, it's it's a low in the fact that we're just so busy and we're needing to scale up, but we're just not quite there yet. So it feels a little bit of like a low, but it's also a really great, exciting problem to have.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, you can grow yourself right into a ditch sometimes. And that's that's uh that's a challenge that a lot of founders face, you know. We we uh we titled this From Grit to Growth uh for a reason because you know you would be the poster child for that. I mean, here you are uh making it in your kitchen and just gritty and and figuring out what the label should say and look like and and taste and feel and and all of that, and tapping the grocers on the shoulders and then getting in the store and and and now has it dawned on you that's that this has turned from a product to an actual real business? And and if so, how are you gonna support how would you, I guess, advise people listening to this to support that growth? What's the biggest challenge?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think um when my husband and I we went full time at different points throughout it. Um we we really did it out of necessity when we both went full time. So when Jake went full time, it was about one full year into actually launching our product, and we were in about 25 stores. So we did need him to be cooking the sauce, going out and doing the sales, that sort of thing. And then when I went full time, we really crunched the numbers to figure out what actually makes sense for us to take that leap. So when we got into Lomar and our stores went from 25 to 125, that was the point we knew if we're gonna get into all these new stores, we need to maintain those relationships. We need to be nurturing those accounts to make sure that it stays on the shelf.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So that was really exciting to be able to go full time. And that's how we approached that as we grew. And we realized, okay, this is a business that we can continue to pursue. I think also innocence is bliss sometimes when you're starting a business. We don't have experience in the food industry or CPG consumer package products, and it it's tough. You really have to be out there selling, sampling your product, being behind your brand. Um and I would say um the second part of your question.

SPEAKER_03

Well, maybe to branch off a little bit, sorry, Jennifer, I'm gonna riff on this a little bit, but when you go into the store, you've got a different customer in the retail store. You also have a website. Yes. And is there a difference in those two customers?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Um, so for our sales breakdown, about 20% now is through our website, direct to consumer. We launched on Amazon. About 20% of those people are customers, and the other 80% would be through our retail distribution. I would say the biggest difference is just where people are located. People ordering on our website and online are in areas where we don't have a retailer that they can drive to and pick up a jar. So they are willing to pay. It's really heavy to ship a jar of pasta sauce, which unfortunately is the case, but they are still willing to pay for that upcharge of ordering through our website or Amazon because we're seeing so many people saying, I haven't had pasta sauce in 10 years. This is like changing my life. I can enjoy my favorite foods again. So that would probably be the biggest difference, is they just don't have a retailer yet in their area. And that's giving us a lot of insight of where to kind of focus our energy next in different regions to get into new retailers.

SPEAKER_02

What is where's your long-range vision for Caronara? Like, where do you see where would you like to see it go over the next three to five years?

SPEAKER_01

Oh man, we want to be everywhere. We want to be a pantry staple for people, whether they struggle with this issue or not. We are in a really interesting time where people are so passionate about what they're putting in their bodies. They're looking at labels. We from the start um decided we're only gonna put what we know how to cook with in our sauce. It's a superpower that we don't have a background in food science. We don't know all the extra additives that can go in it. Um, so I think that is what our customers truly care about as well. Um, and it's just a good tasting sauce. So we want to see caronera in all types of retailers, not just the natural grocers or the whole foods. Um, we we see carronera being in the Kroger's, the HEB, the Publix. Um, so we really want to scale it as big as we can go.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, well, uh for those listeners who haven't tried Caranera, where can they get Caranera? Let's just assume they're not uh near a store right now.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so right now you can order on Caranera.com, or we have our Amazon storefront where you can purchase through Amazon. Otherwise, our biggest retailer to date right now is Hive. We're in a few fresh times, and we're about to, we're actually heading to California next week to soft launch into a new retailer uh called Rayleigh's. So that is really exciting for us to be on the coast.

SPEAKER_03

Good for you.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, what a great story. Yeah, wow. I forgot about that, but I'm glad you uh I'm glad you brought that up because that does allow you to expand uh the visibility of your product and you know get it on that shelf like you've dreamed of doing. Well, um, thanks guys for listening. Thanks, Jackie, for being a part of our podcast today. Yes, impressive. We wish you all the best of luck. I know. I will be a long-term buyer of Caronari. It's a great product.

SPEAKER_01

Yes. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_03

Thanks, Jackie. Best of luck to you.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you for listening. If you like what you just heard, give us a like and leave a comment so that more people can tune in. Or go subscribe on YouTube. To learn more about Mark and Jennifer, visit DundeeGP.com.