Hello, and welcome to the Making it in Nashville Podcast. This is your friendly neighborhood podcast, where each week we sit down with an Asheville based small business owner, entrepreneur, maker of things, community member. Ask them what they are making and how they are making it in Asheville. And this is a very special season. This season has been entirely focused on e commerce businesses here in Asheville selling physical things products and sending them to people all over the country, region, world, city, town, universe. And so, really exciting season. Learned a ton, saw some really different businesses, saw a lot of similarities. And we are here in the waning hours of this exciting season with possibly the greatest guest on the podcast ever. My favorite guest by a landslide, Sarah Ubertaccio is here to join us, founder of QB Cucina, based right here in Asheville, North Carolina.
There's a lot of bias in your.
Statement, you might not have noticed, but my name is Tony Ubertaccio. I'm the host of the making it in Asheville podcast. This is my wife, Sarah Ubertaccio. It is great to have you back on the pod, Sarah.
It's great to be back.
So to do just a little catch up for anyone listening to the podcast, a, for the first time, or B, only listening since 2023. When we started the podcast, we were co hosts, and a lot has changed since. One of the biggest changes in our world is, well, A, we have a child now, so throw that aside, not actually metaphorically. The other biggest change is QB Cucina exists. And so we've just celebrated three year anniversary of QB Cucina. And tell us a little bit about what it is and where you're at today with the business.
Yeah, well, we're an online shop that sells pasta tools and artisanal kitchenware, mostly made in Italy, at the very least inspired by Italy. And then we also have an Italian cookbook club where we cook from a different Italian cookbook every couple of months, and our members cook different assigned recipes, we get to talk with the authors, et cetera. So, yeah, those are kind of the.
Two key points of our business that was very concise and very well done. And so Italian food enthusiasts line up from near and far to follow along and participate. What are some of the products? What are people buying? Why do they go to you? Can you get if you're not watching on YouTube, if you're listening on your favorite podcast player, consider checking out YouTube. There's a bunch of table toys here to help illustrate some of the points, perhaps, of what pasta tools are and what makes these tools particularly interesting or unique. But I think most people would like to eat pasta and Italian food.
Yes.
And then some subset of that has ever tried to make pasta or Italian food sauces. And so a smaller subset then is so enthusiastic that they want to buy tools talk to us about some of the tools. Talk to us about the community. Who are these people and where are they hiding?
Yeah, it's a very niche thing, for sure, as you kind of alluded to with. Most people want to eat the pasta, but maybe they don't make the pasta. But for the people that do want to make their own pasta, I would say, yeah, our best selling things are handheld pasta tools. So not talking about like big machinery or anything like that, but rather ravioli stamps and little boards that you can make noki, with little wheels that you can cut out your dough with and create more intricate shapes with. Those are for sure the best selling things. And then we also, on the other side, have a small selection of artisanal kitchenware so things like spotterware ceramics and really cool linens that are handmade in Italy and things like that.
I love it. We've had this conversation on the podcast before and not all that long ago. Calendar years long ago, not many episodes ago, but a little bit about the inspiration, a little bit about how it got started and then I'd love to transition relatively quickly into some of the exciting changes in the last several months for the business at least.
Yeah.
So where did this come from and why you why three years ago? Why?
Yeah. Well, it started during the pandemic. I was at home making a lot of pasta because I was bored and needed something to do. And also, living in Asheville, it's a lot harder to find good, fresh pasta. When we lived in New York, it was a lot easier to come by, so I didn't feel the need as much to make my own. But, yeah, I was making my own, and I was sharing online the things that I was making. And I remember a lot of people were asking me questions about not only how to make the pasta, but the tools that I was using to make the pasta. And many of the things that I had were things that I had gotten when I lived in Italy and I had brought back with me. And I just suddenly had this idea that it would be really amazing to make some of these things more accessible and to also educate people more on how to make good pasta. And then that sort of just expanded into, like, oh, wow, there's so many other really cool kitchenware items that people don't know about that are very specific to Italy or made in a very just interesting and unique way. And so I just sort of sat with that idea for a few months, and it was one of those things that wouldn't leave me alone. And so I just started working on it. And I remember actually reaching out to Gilly from where and asking her a bunch of questions about how to start a business and North Carolina and all these things, like how I needed to get set up, and she was really helpful in that. And then we launched in September, so it was like maybe five months, six months after I had the idea originally. And we just since then have slowly added more products and figured out what works, what doesn't work, a lot of testing through sales and product samples and things like that.
And I will attempt to fill in a blank for a new audience member. You said when I lived in Italy, so Italy has been it's not like this new thing that you're interested in or Italian foods. You didn't pick it up during the pandemic, right? You leaned into this part of you that was always probably a big part of you.
Yeah. So, Tony, you obviously know all of this, but for everyone listening, tony and I met in Italy. We studied abroad in Florence about 15 years. I keep saying ten years, it's been 15 years. And I would say even before that, I just always was interested in the language. I studied Italian in college. My grandmother is of Sicilian descent, so that was always just a really strong part of growing up. It was her talking about our family and making red sauce and just even like her mannerisms and things like that was just really important. So, yeah, I always had this interest and then studied abroad, got to know the culture a lot more and felt like I needed to go back. And so when I graduated from graduate school, I decided to delay getting a job and go to Italy and teach English for a little while.
And so getting a job is in air quotes in this case, because you did a job. Yes, I did.
Getting a job in my degree, which was accounting, which I really did not want to work in. I had done an internship and just didn't like it that much. And so I said, okay, let me go to Italy for a few months and just have that experience, and then I'll come back and figure out what to do next.
Five years later, what happened?
And so then I ended up staying, and I had to go through this long process of figuring out the legal implications of staying, which means getting a visa, and I had to get a student visa, which means I had to enroll in school there as well. But I also had a job at the same time. So I was working, teaching English part time, going to school, and I ended up staying for five years, all the.
While, like, running this travel food blog. Anyway, the headline is Lived in Italy for five years. Obsessed over Italian culture and specifically Italian food culture and have this background of consistently creating content about Italy and Italian food and food culture. Come back to the US land. What is probably the craziest, most perfect dream ish job for a tallow file, as I'll call it, someone in love with your content. You're on the content team for Italy, probably the largest Italian product retailer in the US. Or food retailer.
Yeah.
Supermarket concept.
I'm honestly still shocked that I got that job because I didn't have any real marketing experience or any formal content creation experience.
Formal?
I'll give no, no. I mean, I had the blog, and I think that was a big part of maybe what they hired me. And I also could speak Italian, so I think that helped as well because there were a lot of people, true Italians that were working there. Most of my managers were all Italian, but yeah, and then that job just taught me so much more about working with Italians and also creating content for a bigger company and what that entails.
Cool. So Pandemic comes and you lean into this side of you, this pasta maker that you'd already been, tools that you sort of already had, and there's this opportunity to not just educate, but potentially solve the problem. Where do you get this thing right if you don't know Sarah Uprotacco and QB Cucina, where are these in the US? Do they exist? Are they in, like, art?
Lot of there are a lot of, I would say cheap pasta tools and expensive pasta tools available on even places like Amazon. Like, you can get a yoke word on Amazon for not very much money, but a lot of them aren't very good. And a lot of them are made of aluminum, which is just not as sharp or strong as the brass tools that we carry.
It's very heavy, very sharp.
So what I mean to say is that you can find a lot of the things that we carry in our shop. Some things are totally unique to our shop. You can find other substitutions, but they're definitely not the same quality. So we do spend a lot of time making sure that the products that we source are unique, really special, really different, and that they actually work well. So we do a lot of comparing against other things heard. Yeah.
And so we've kind of gone through. And one of my intentions was to re listen to a previous conversation about cubic Kuchina, but we had a child that didn't take a nap, and so I didn't get to relisten. I know some of the early stage stuff like on attempting to source and launch. I'd love to kind of fast forward from, all right, we have this idea we're in the middle of the Pandemic to relaunch to what do you think is the next kind of inflection point in the business? What is like the next biggest mile marker after launch?
Thinking back, I think what we spent a lot of time on is seeing what is a bestseller, which really takes time. Took a year at least, of sales. And it's always something that we're paying attention to. But I think we really looked at that after the first year and said, okay, what things are selling really well and what things aren't selling really well? And we would pare down the selection a little bit. And then we also really evaluated our pricing. So when we first launched with our products, again, it was all new to us. We didn't know how much things were going to cost just running a business. But after having a year, two years of data, we are now able to really clearly see, okay, this is how much we need to mark up our products in order to be profitable. Yeah. So I'd say that was, like, the first thing that we really tried to get better at, and I think that took us to a next level point.
Cool. Yeah. We have heard some version of that throughout the season where it's like, how much attention to detail should be paid in the unboxing experience. Right. Because each added beautiful, thoughtful, recycled or recyclable thing adds cost. And how are we accounting for those costs? And typically not accurately when you start.
Yeah. And I mean, it's impossible to be that accurate when you start because, A, you don't know this packaging is one example. You don't even know if that packaging is the right packaging for you. And you're buying probably at really small quantities. And so the pricing that you're getting for those small quantities is probably very different than the pricing that you're going to get for larger quantities, et cetera.
So you're between a rock and a hard place. Do I make this giant order of a box that might not be the right size box?
Right.
Or am I going to get terrible, terrible rates on the 50 that I start with?
Got it. Yeah. And then for us, there's also these other factors, like we have to factor in the costs that it takes the cost from shipping from Italy to the US. Which is changing all the time. Right now, we're in a period of very high cost shipments from Italy. Although, fortunately, the exchange rate is pretty good between the euro and the dollar, which is the other factor that we have to think about when we're buying things is are we paying a lot more relative to the actual value or relative with what we spent last year? So our cost of goods sold are always kind of fluctuating, and it's something that we have to update quarterly, basically, for each product or every time we make a new order.
It's so interesting. I think of a buddy that's in finance, works at a hedge fund who does, I think, some foreign exchange stuff. And one of the things that I remember him thinking about was, should I leave money in this European bank account? Because the exchange rate right now isn't that good. And there's a whole game to be played on just the exchange rate and just attempting to time when you send money into euros. And when you pull money out of euros, and that assumes that you even have a European bank account. But making transactions as dollar value changes is a really interesting concept that I probably didn't spend time thinking about until just now. Cool. Yeah. Talk about the breadth and the shrinking, consolidation, expansion of product line. Right. So there was a moment where it's like, let's do everything that's cute and beautiful using a pasta metaphor. Throw it against the wall, see what sticks.
Yeah.
Which you should not which you should.
Not actually cook pasta, just taste it.
I imagine somebody does that, but yeah. So let's throw some of these ideas against the wall, see what sticks, what stuck. Imagine sales is the indicator of that it's not sticking. But how have you gone and thought about product lines and expansions, contractions, expansions, et cetera?
Yeah, so you're right. Sales is obviously the number one factor that we look at. And so we'll monitor things. And if over time we see things aren't really moving that well, then we kind of rethink it. Like, maybe it's time to just phase that product out. And then we have our best selling that just always sell, which, again, is mostly the pasta tools. So we're focusing more on investing more money and time into expanding our line of pasta tools. But the other factor is also just the fit of the product. So over time have realized some things just don't really fit in with the aesthetic that we're going for, even though it may be related to pasta, for example, we're trying to get better and better at what is that aesthetic that we want in our shop. And so that's an important thing. And then it's also just the pricing with the vendor. Sometimes we just can't make it work where they're offering us a certain price and we want to respect the artisan, whoever we're working with. But we know that in order to actually be profitable on that product and to stay within a competitive range, sometimes it just doesn't work out with all the other shipping costs and things that we have to think about.
And one of the things that stands out to me as we kind of walk down that line is that it seems to me everything you sell baked into it has some version of a story. And you all do a particularly, from my perspective, good job of storytelling around product. It seems like even a product that is special and has a story to be told about it, that's special launched to an audience that is niche and already enthusiastic, if the price is just very different than all of the what would be substitutions that are possible out there. Seems like it's a hard hill to climb. You mean like if you had a $400.01 of these?
Yeah.
No story about how cute the old man is that makes it and the town where it comes from could sell enough that the juice is worth the squeeze.
That's actually funny that you say that, because we do have a couple of products that are very they're on the higher end of price, but they've sold well and they have a very interesting story to them. So one example, I don't have it here, but it's this pasta knife, which is basically this giant long knife. It has a straight sort of rectangular blade that's not serrated, just completely straight. And then the handle is like this beautiful ivory handle. So anyways, it's a very high end product. I think it's like $250 knife that's used for a very specific purpose. And while we haven't sold like, hundreds of them or anything, it is something that people do buy. And I attribute that to A, it's very hard to find anything else like this than in the US. B, I think sometimes when you do go into that higher range, people perceive it as something even more special. And so they're willing to invest in it versus if it were lower, then they might question, how good is this actual product? Yeah, so it is a tricky line and it's not always predictable, even for us to say, is this going to work or not? Another example would be this weird pasta comb here. You can't find this anywhere else in the US. Right now. And it's made by this little old man in Italy. And it's a very old style tool. Looks like a loom, which is what it was basically designed after. And this style of tool has been around for hundreds of years. This little guy is like, one of the only few, I think one of the two people in the world that still makes posse combs like this. And we charge $70 for this one little tool, whereas this yoke board, which is essentially almost the same purpose, is $22. Both sell really well, and so price isn't always the factor, but the fact that this one has a really amazing story and it's just so unique, I think that that's ultimately what people buy into. Yeah, that was a long rant.
No, I love it. And honestly, I try to tee you up for that because there is something magic and everything is a substitute. Right. You can cut ravioli with, I imagine, most anything that's circular. Right?
Yeah. You could use like an upside down glass, metal, like cookie cutter that's round, and that works fine, too.
Everything is a substitute for the goods that you're selling. The question is, like, how do you then sell them? And it seems to me that it is a little bit of storytelling, a little bit of relationship building, a little bit of and this is a theme throughout the season, is people attempt to kind of outsource a portion of their brain. Right. It's like, I'm interested in this. What do I need in order to do this? Well, I can do all of the homework. And today, I think if you do the homework, you're probably doing it in some way and finding QB cucina or things that are, like, adjacent and more so to come, I suspect.
Yeah. When you're really into a particular hobby or something, you want all the gear, you want all the cool stuff. So I think our type of customer, our best customers, are the people that want to collect all these beautiful things and showcase them on a shelf in their kitchen. And they're almost like art in their kitchen in addition to being functional.
We heard that same concept from our friends at Sourhouse Eric. Is the idea of, can we make something beautiful and worthy of a part of what I think? So there's just like, purely aesthetic and then there's the other things. It's like the way you feel when you look at the thing, and all of these seem to hold within them the ability to make people feel a certain way. I know olive wood makes me feel a certain way.
Yeah. Like you were talking with your friend Davis the other day about you guys were in Italy and Tuscany probably, and you were looking at these really cool olive wood knives and how you've never seen anything like that before. And I think people, if they've been to Italy and then they come back and they're like, oh, man, I really would love to have that thing that I saw in Italy, that splatterware that I saw in Italy, and to order it from the artist in Italy can be a challenge, and the shipping can be a ton. So we're just trying to make that easier and more accessible for people to do.
Sure, yeah. Outsourcing the importing, outsourcing what products are worthy, and outsourcing what products are sort of required.
Also, because many Italians are very old fashioned and they don't have websites for their products, or they just don't even know how to do business in the US. I mean, that's changing as younger generations take over. But that's also another thing, too.
Yeah, heard Dang. Okay, so I'll say that that's a bow on the end of the milestone. Two or so what, perhaps are some of the recent inflection points and changes that stand out in the QB cucina story.
Yeah, well, we've been trying to find ways to scale up and find more sources of income that are repeatable and also have a higher margin for us with the pasta tools. They're beautiful, and I hope that they last people a lifetime, which is a really great thing. But it also means that having a repeat customer is a lot harder over time, because once you have the thing, you have the thing, and hopefully, like I said, it lasts you forever. You don't need to replace it. It's not a consumable product. So we were thinking a lot about that. And at the same time, I had a Instagram friend customer approach me, who she runs these Instagram cookbook clubs where she would pick a different cookbook and people would cook from the book every month. And they'd post it on Instagram. And it's this really cool thing that she's been doing. So she approached me and she said, hey, I really would love to do a cookbook club with QB Cucina. And I was like, this is perfect, I'm so glad that you reached out. And together we just sort of worked on it and eventually came up with the idea of this Italian cookbook club where we would cook from a different Italian cookbook every couple of months and speak with authors and really just expand it upon what she was already doing. And so that's been our second inflection point, is offering this subscription membership service and it's gone really well. We have over 60 members at this point and we're about five books in, so almost through the full year now. And definitely something that we'll keep doing as time goes on.
Interesting. And I'm going to attempt to connect some dots here.
Yes.
What stands out to me is that you have a customer type who is either enthusiastic or ravenous or interested. And then what you have are products that are like timeless and should last forever. And so what is the thing that gets these folks on the outer bound of a demand curve to continue to be a customer? It seems to me that there was always an opportunity to do some sort of continuity, some sort of subscription, some sort of like, let's be enthusiast together. And that would give a lot of value to folks who are ravenous and excited because now they have their tribe. And then it could also take the folks who are on that earlier stage of like, this is something I think I'm into, and give them a community to draft off of to say like, hey, here's what the on ramp looks like. You can do it, stick with it. We're all in this together. I've been very kind of excited to see that grow and really interested in the rollout that you've chosen. So technically, how did you attempt to set this up and how have you kind of communicated this cookbook club?
Yeah, well, the things that are included we'll start there, besides just being a member, is you have the option to choose if you want to include cookbooks in your membership or not.
Again, if you're watching YouTube, we got a couple examples of the beautiful cookbooks potentially in. You know, all cookbooks are sort of gorgeous, but modern cookbooks especially are just like loaded with beautiful photos and they're almost coffee table books. But we don't want them to be coffee table books, do we? We want them to be dog eared and pasta stained and messy and used and lived in. But continue. Okay, so you have the option to.
Add the books so the books can be included in your membership, so you don't even have to worry about sourcing the book or anything. You have access to a Slack group, which I think is one of the coolest parts of the club, and it's where most of the activity kind of takes place. So our members in there, they post the recipes that they're making, what they think about the recipe, any tips for making that recipe from the book. And then we have other channels in the group that aren't related necessarily to the book we're cooking from, but it could be things like, hey, anyone know where to find these really good tinned tomatoes? Or really good anchovies and people will share recommendations or where they source stuff. Anybody have any good Italian TV shows to watch? So it really has expanded beyond just what we're cooking in that book. And honestly, I've seen it just grow to the point where I don't need to prompt people anymore. They just go in there and share stuff and then people respond and it's like taken its own become its own thing, thanks to the members that are contributing there constantly. So that's a really cool thing. And then we have a virtual event every month since we have members all across the country. We meet virtually, and usually one event is more informal, like an apetivo, where we get together and people will make their Italian cocktails or their Italian appetizers and we'll chat about a particular topic that's related to the book that we're cooking from. And then the second event is usually some kind of author event where we either interview the author or they do a cooking demo for us, or we try to connect it back to the author, even if the author is not alive, for example. And then beyond that, all of our members also have a discount in our shop and they get free shipping on any products that they order, which is.
Meaningful in a small business.
Yeah, I mean, our shipping rate is 999 per order, flat rate for any orders under 150. So if members just want to go on and order one thing or order the book, if they don't have it in their membership, they can get a discount and free shipping, which is if you use that a lot, it's definitely worth it for what you're paying for the membership.
And if you're particularly money motivated, which is not the ideal customer, but yeah, you can make whatever the cost is back just on savings and shipping. Really interesting. And then is this. Oh, cool, I love it so much. Can I sign up today?
Sarah yeah. So unfortunately we don't have registration open all the time.
That's unfortunate. I think it's an interesting.
It'S hard, it's challenging from the point of view that operationally. Yeah. Like you might miss people like that opportunity when people are like, yes, I really want to do this. And then a month. Later, they forget and they don't check their email when we send them the reminder and blah, blah, blah, blah. But it does help us operationally and it does create that sense of urgency, I think. So we open it up every two months, which allows us to calculate okay, how many books will we need for the next round so we can order enough books for everybody and then just also operationally, there's a lot. Of manual things that we're still doing, like adding people to the Slack group and making sure everyone's on the right email list and they're getting the right flow of emails and things like that. So, yeah, that's what we found has worked so far. And we do have an email pop up when it is closed, so people can put in their email and get notified when registration opens up again.
Cool.
Hello. Are you watching on YouTube, listening on.
Your favorite podcast player?
If you're not on YouTube, perhaps consider it because behind us you would notice that we are in an absolutely beautiful space. And that space is our seasoned sponsor, ernest Readymade Warehousing. And so if you're not familiar with Ernest, it is fantastic. I am joined here by my wife Sarah Ubertacio, founder of QB Cucina and one of Ernest newest clients.
Yeah, excited to be back on the podcast.
Great to have you back. Episode 110 if you haven't listened before, but what we want to talk about today is why you chose Ernest and what makes Ernest stand out, let's say, compared to finding a new office space in town to fulfill from as a very high level. Ernest is a 30,000 square foot facility on Sweden Creek, just south of Asheville.
Huge facility, beautiful facility.
Why did you choose to go with Ernest instead of any other place in Asheville?
Yeah, well, I have a small growing business, ecommerce. We sell pasta tools and Italian kitchenware, and we currently outgrew the space that we were in and really needed a different kind of space. And so I love Ernest. I love the fact that as we grow, Ernest can scale with us. So they have different sized co warehousing spaces, so if we grow bigger, we can just quickly move over to a different space within the same building, which is a really huge time saver.
I also really love that they have.
Daily, sometimes multiple times a day pickups from Ups, FedEx, and USPS, so we don't have to worry about packages getting lost or stolen and our team doesn't have to drop them off at the post office. And it just saves us all a bunch of time and headache. And also they have temperature controlled rooms, which for a business like us, one of our products is pasta flour. It's really sensitive to temperature. This is really, really important for us to make sure that our products are secure and not getting damaged while they're being stored in our warehouse. And I love all the other amenities I love.
They have a photography studio so we.
Can quickly photograph our products. They have a full break room. They have coworking space that we're able to use for our meetings with team members and other people that may come to see us. And then just the sense of community being around other small businesses is something that we currently don't have, and I'm really, really looking forward to connecting with others here.
I love that Ernestready.com if you've not visited that before or you can check out Makingitinasheville.com Ernest. And we have a bunch of information about the partnership we've built for this season, as well as some perhaps special discounts and incentives. If you happen to be an ecommerce business or the right fit for Ernest, you should definitely check out Makingintashville.com Ernest. Ernest. And back to the episode.
That is a big change. So ten months ago, that had been like, no, I'm doing it wrong. Almost the start of the year. So was it December? Was it January?
When did we launched it? I think at the end of November with the concept that they would sign up and then it would start in January.
Cool.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah.
And part of me can see a future where it becomes its own big thing and has its own sense of momentum, even. I mean, 60 people in a community that are committed to the community is like it's huge. Like, congratulations. We've had runnerbox and rider box with thousands of subscribers. Totally different bees, totally different games.
We're still a very small business. So for us, that's that really meaningful. And to our numbers, too. This year has been challenging, and I think a lot of businesses have experienced a lot of ups and downs, a lot of volatility. And for us, our product sales aren't as good as they were last year. But because of the crook book club sales that's been able to buffer it and even bring us ahead of where we were last year.
I'm into it. I think there's some legs there. I can imagine 60 people, whatever percent say, yeah, send me the book. You have to represent for most cookbook authors, one of the biggest purchasers of their book if you I don't know.
But I mean, there's Barnes and Noble and whatever, sure.
But small retailers, I just think of like is Malaprops buying 30 of a specifically regional Italian cookbook? Maybe not. And I don't know many. That's my point. It's not Barnes and Noble I'm talking about. Compared to a boutique kind of library bookstore experience, you have to be in the mix. And so I can imagine quickly in the years ahead having some relative weight in the publishing space if this thing continues to grow like it is.
Yeah. I mean, my hope is that and this is already kind of happening, but authors have started to approach us and say, oh, hey, I have this book coming out, or I just released this book, and I would really love to be a part of your cookbook club. And that's really cool for me because I love cookbooks and Italian cookbooks, and being able to talk with authors of these books, they're like celebrities to me. It's really cool but it also feels good because we're able to support them in a new way that maybe hasn't been done before. And having their interest means that we have more buy in from them to do events with us and to also help know with our members and make that.
Heard. Is there a dream author? I have a guess who this person might be but are there any dream authors you have to guess?
Yeah. Well, Amiko Davies is a really big one in the space and we actually haven't cooked from many of her cookbooks yet this year, but we definitely plan to in the next year. She's actually an Australian Japanese cookbook author but she lives in Italy and has several books about Italian cooking. There are many others. I can't name them all.
I was going to get I don't want to stanley Tucci who's like a departure from your traditional cookbook.
I mean the reality is Stanley Tucci probably doesn't write his own cookbooks. They're probably ghost written and they take some pictures and maybe they are his family recipes. But yeah. Anyways, I would love to one day talk with Stanley Tucci. People who know me and know Kyuki Kushina know that I'm a little bit obsessed and.
Cool. Amiko Devis and I'll put Stanley Tucci in the ring as a dream all.
They're all so special, even the lesser known ones, they all have a really interesting story and interesting take. So they're all really cool stuff and.
There'S a shared passion for sure. Cool. I love subscription engines in a business and so that has given me a lot of excitement watching your business.
And Tony helped a lot with the subscription part. I will just have to shout him out. You advised me a lot on that process, both in how to price it, how to include more things in there to make it more valuable. You're a big reason why we have this cookbook club subscription.
Cool. Thank you. I support, support, support my business consultant. I appreciate we're team and what else has been a meaningful mile marker in the QB story? I'm trying to think about something comes to mind for me.
Yeah, go ahead.
Let's look around. Where are we in the world?
Oh yeah, we just moved. So when I started QB, we started storing all of our products at Tony and I's marketing agency's office. So we had an office downtown. I was making it creative and that's where he worked from. We had a small apartment at the time so I was like, I'm not going to store these things at home. So I stored them there and then slowly, slowly, slowly, QB just sort of took over that office space and making it creative moved out, essentially as we had a kid. And we're working from home more and more. And it got to the point where we were just running out of the right kind of space there. It was really more designed to be an office space where you sit at a computer and whatever, not really a storage or warehouse space. So we started looking around for another space and Ernest came up and we chatted with them for several months to see if it would be a good fit. And then we moved a couple of months ago. And so far it's been really awesome. It's just made our business way more efficient and made things a lot easier for our team. We're on a ground level now, which in our previous office space, we were on the second level. It was really hard for delivery people to find us. There's just a lot of factors. So now we're in a space that's specifically designed for ecommerce businesses. And so there's just so many more amenities and things that make our lives easier.
Yeah, 24 hours access is something that came up. When I was talking with Jamie earlier, I was like, oh, yeah, I just saw Hannah. And she's like, I don't even think I've seen Hannah. I think she comes at like six.
Or she comes in so early. Yeah, she has two kids. Hannah is our fulfillment manager. And also she does a lot of marketing stuff for us, too, which is wonderful. But yeah, she has two young kids, so her working hours, ideal working hours are like super early in the morning, which is great because she can just come in and she could do that at the old office space, too, but there were limitations on parking. And when it's dark, it's just a little less feels a little less safe. So, yeah, there's more people around and security and things like that.
And then I don't believe this episode will have the mid episode ad. Read about the ecommerce horror story?
I'm looking to conflict of interest.
Yeah, but there was the story that we tell in an advertisement about the ecommerce horror story. As we were setting up two giant there was a giant FedEx, 52 foot 18 wheeler FedEx truck that arrived. There was this other freight liner truck that had arrived and the ability to just take what needs to be shipped, put it into a shipping area just here using a wheelie cart. Not have to go upstairs, not have to go outside. Seems like a high value jelly deliveries.
Yeah, definitely. It's just a better setup. And for the long term too, I think if we want to grow, I hope we grow. It's just going to be a lot easier for us than being in a little cubicle kind of space.
Have you needed to use? I'll ask it as a question, like an answer in jeopardy. Question. Have you needed to use Earnest to support fulfillment yet?
That's funny you say that. I actually reached out to Chelsea today to explore some options in the holiday season because I am anticipating that things are going to be really busy. We have one employee, so if something happens, if she's sick or she can't work more than X number of hours a week, we definitely need a backup. So, yeah, I think there's a couple of options that I remember Chelsea saying. One is they can fulfill it in their fulfillment space and you give them the products and everything, or they can come into our space and fulfill it, which is probably what we'll end up doing.
And I also know there's a Italy trip coming up, so whether it's holiday or just a day while we're not here to have that backup and I was wondering if you had tested it yet. Not yet.
Haven't tested it yet. I mean, the other option that just kind of depends on what we decide, but we might also just hire a temporary person ourselves and train them on what to do. The option to have someone at Earnest fulfill for us is great, and I think that that's a really cool thing, especially if you're a one product business or something and you don't want to deal with fulfillment. I think they have a team here that can just do that for you.
Which is their pick and pack and ship engine is pretty strong.
Yeah.
Cool. I hadn't been certain of that and so glad to know. Now, the other thing that I'm considering as like, have you used it, have you done it? Is digital advertising. What is inbound audience growth? How are you thinking about growing demand for the business? So what stands out to me is like, your content. And I said digital advertising, but I'm thinking all things about growth. Right. So content has always been seemingly the heart and soul of how you build audience. Is digital advertising making? Is it showing up in Q Four? An appearance? That's the word I was looking for. Make an appearance in Q four. I know. I'm looking at our producer, John. I know that you guys have cooked some stuff up for QB cucina. Talk to me about what's coming down the pike.
Yeah, well, looking back, you nailed it on the head. Like, content and organic search has always been our strongest thing that's helped us, and social media as well, instagram specifically. And I think in part that's because that's what my background is in a little bit. That's the thing I'm most knowledgeable about with marketing. And so we've really leaned in heavily to recipes and how to guides and stories that relate back to our products in some way. The other point that really helped us in the beginning was working with influencers and pasta instagram people where they would create recipes for us and share it and we gained a lot of our, I would say base audience that way, and gained a lot of authority just because that built up our audience. And so now we have a bigger following on Instagram where I think people perceive that as, okay, these people are legit. Yeah, people know what they're doing. So, yeah, those two things really helped us so far. Now, as you alluded to, we're looking at other ways. So one is more content. So we made some videos with John that were focused on the basics of pasta making and what are the tools that you need and how do you make this dough and how do you make a few shapes with some of our tools. So we're going to be launching those videos on YouTube this fall, which I'm very excited about because I think that that is an untapped channel for us. And it also provides support for customers who have already bought from us. So if they're like, hey, how do you make your dough? Or how do you use that one tool, can you show me? We can point to those videos. And then just also the YouTube search engine I think is going to be the YouTube Google connection is just going to be really big for us. And then, yes, digital ads is something that we're coming back to. We dabbled in it. A couple of years ago, I took a course on digital ads for ecommerce and ran some ads myself. And then about the time that that course was ending, the new iOS update came out and we just weren't seeing as good of return. So we stopped for a year or so. But now we're coming back to it and I've hired an agency to help us with digital ads. So we're going to be doing Google search ads, google Shopping ads, and Facebook Instagram ads. So we haven't launched yet, but that's something that I really hope as we go into the holiday season, just bolsters everything and we get some new customers from that too.
Anything else?
What are you alluding to? Because I know you have something.
I was just thinking, it seems like the website that you currently have yes. Might be changing.
Yeah. So we built our website ourselves on WordPress, on WordPress, using WooCommerce as the e commerce platform. I set everything up initially because I was pretty familiar with WordPress and I can sort of finagle some design things. I did hire some folks to help me with some functionality and little design things that I couldn't fix. So we did have some help there, but it was really more like not bandaids, but just little fixes. I wasn't like a full website. So we've gotten to the point where there are just a lot of limitations. With our current theme on WordPress and the way things are set up, it's very slow for us to set up certain things. And there are a lot of limitations for the customer when they check out and the experience there is a little bit broken. So we've hired Dustin to help us refresh the website. So he's got us a new theme. The design is very similar. Like he kept a lot of the design elements and the look and feel but just made it a little nicer for us. And then he really worked on a lot of the functionality, especially when it comes to the checkout, making that an easier, quicker experience for the customer. So we haven't launched that yet, but I'm hoping in the next couple of months we'll have a new refreshed website that works a lot better and easier and makes our lives a lot easier too.
Yeah, lots happening in Q four.
Yeah.
Wow. It's exciting. I'm taking a moment like wow. Yeah. It went from an idea to like a full blown thing in this beautiful space with a ton of product in the back and someone fulfilling it's. Pretty rad.
Yeah, it is really cool. When I look back on the past few years and of course it's like easy to think about all the things that we haven't done yet and that we want to do.
What are they?
Well, I think a just figuring out how to scale. I mean, you know that the past few years have been, like, steady, which is great, but I just feel like we haven't unlocked that next level of how to have more revenue streams and how to have more customers coming in without us having to put a lot of time and effort into social media.
For example, the one to one you don't want twice the sales for twice the work.
Yeah, there's a way that is a little more hands off for us that can go which is where the digital ads piece comes in and potentially the content piece.
Potentially content in a new channel and the content.
Yeah, exactly. And then the other thing that I think is a dream of ours is to be able to offer more experiences. So trips to Italy, potentially thinking very much about pasta and food focused trips and tours is something that we are dreaming about. We haven't yet.
I think it's such a reality, it's so possible. Quick shout out to past guest Boomer who had we had a great so making in Nashville. Does money maker mixers. If you're not on our email list, I welcome you to join our email list. It's where the first people to hear about our monthly mixer dear friend of the pod, Boomer Sassman previous guest also has a version of that much smaller, slightly and intimate. But two of the folks there do tours and one in France, one pretty much all over that kind of region in Europe. Italy sometimes as well has a tour going that starts in Florence and ends in Pisa next week, which is cool and kind of funny but a meaningful portion of my conversation last night was about running a tour business based in the US. Working in Europe. And my sense, and I said it last night, I hadn't heard you say this in a while my sense is that that'll be a real part of our world at some point. Yeah, it almost has to be.
Yeah. No, I hope so. There's a lot of pieces in there that we have to sort out of. It's all about connections, really, too. So it's like having someone boots on the ground in Italy, which is something that we want to do more. We want to go to Italy more and more. But because the past two years, because of COVID because we had a just we haven't been able to dedicate as much time to that. So I'm hoping that in future years, there will be more time for that.
You just spoke it into reality, I'm sure. Are there any other wild hopes and dreams?
Oh, I mean, many. I don't know if this is something we'll actually do, but I've thought about sort of like a pasta masterclass course before.
I like that. Yeah, even like a baby version of that. That's just like the YouTube videos that you put out that is like intro to pasta. Seems piece of cake. And then all of a know if you wanted on the back end to have some sort of master class. I think that also you're teen yourself up to be local experts and own that whole customer lifecycle from the beginning. I'm interested. Or have someone that's interested. Another thought, and I'm answering your question for you, is, like, we have this amazing young human in our home, and you're an educator, so to speak, language educator. But a huge part of who I see you as is this person who is great at teaching things. It seems to me there's a version where there's like, kid focused pasta classes for families that gets the whole family cooking together. That shows up in my mind when I go like, what are the Venn diagrams? Concentric circles? It's like, yeah, teaching pasta? Yes. Intro course? Yes. Master class. What's the other angle on it?
Yeah, no, you've pointed to something. I think that I really love teaching. And some of that may come from my days teaching English in Italy. And I really love also teaching through content, too. It just sort of combines both worlds of loving to create content and develop it. And the whole process of that, even thinking about SEO, to me, kind of feeds that analytical side of my brain. And then the educating part is really cool because getting to connect with people is something that I don't get to do often. Being an ecommerce manager, I'm connecting people digitally, but I'm not doing that personally or face to face as much.
Speaking of personally and face to face, I don't know if this is going to be a big part of 2024, but you have done some pasta classes personally face to face in Asheville.
Yeah, we did a few partnering with the Chow Asheville group, which is sort of a subgroup of metro wines. We did a series of pasta classes with them last year and it was really fun. They were a really fun group of people hosted at this woman's beautiful house and everything. And yeah, that was really fun. The challenge that we face with that is a finding a space that's going to be really conducive, conducive to teaching pasta and then B, just finding ways to make it most worthwhile of our time because there's so much. Time that goes into setting everything up and bringing everything to wherever it's going to be that we need to be able to maybe have more people or something. So it's very fun. It's very tiring for me. So I have to uses your extrovert.
Energy, maxes it out. Cool. The only other thought that I have, I'm going to try and tee you up for it. Any other hopes and dreams in this?
No, just say it.
So I think that you're going to write a cookbook at some point. I'm confident that that is a part of your trajectory and it seems all but inevitable at this point to me.
Yeah, I definitely have dabbled with different concepts for cookbooks before. And I think in part, part of it is just like finding the time to write the recipes and kind of draft an introduction that I'd send to a publisher, for example. And then the other part of it is I go back to, is this the right time? Do I have the right concept for a book? I don't know. I think a lot about Elizabeth Gilbert and her story of I think remember she had, like, an idea for a book one time and then another author who's famous I can't remember her name wrote it. Wrote it like Elizabeth never sat down and wrote it. And then this other author wrote it, and it was, like, almost the exact same story. And Elizabeth was like, what the heck? And she attributes that to this creative spirit that came through her and then left her and went to this other author who actually wrote the book. And sometimes I think about that a little bit, like, okay, what is this creative calling? And have I found that yet? Because it has to be something that's also going to sell well that a publisher is going to accept, and it also has to be something that I really want to write and that I can see myself spending hours and hours cooking those kinds of recipes. I'm still waiting.
I would say to me, less important, will it sell?
Well, not will it sell, but will the publisher accept it? Because I don't want to go the self publishing route. I want to have a publisher publish it.
Heard. Yeah, I understand that. I hear that. And I can't even go so far as to say I agree with that. My thing is that the thing that's always stood out to me is that a publisher is going to make bets that they know are winning bets. And I think part of it is going to be a concept. The other part is, does this person have distribution? And you happen to be building a really powerful distribution engine, which is the community of people who have joined you in your enthusiasm for Italian food and Italian culture and Italian products. And so if it were any Joe Schmo who's like, I want to write a book about how Basil is used on all of these different dumb idea, if it's Sarah's saying, I'm going to use a book just on Basil, they go, well, maybe there's something yeah, yeah.
No, it definitely helps having an audience to speak with, but you also have to be able to communicate your idea and have something very specific and unique.
I get that.
Yeah, I get that. Yeah. There are lots of ideas.
Lots. So exciting. Anything on your heart or mind when you said, I'm going to be on the Making It In Nashville podcast, this regionally renowned podcast, was there anything that you were hoping we would talk about that we haven't so far?
No. But I will say if anyone here locally is interested in learning more about making pasta or you want to try out one of our tools, we don't have a shop physically in Asheville, and I sometimes do get asked, can I come pick something up? Or Can I come look at your shop? And unfortunately, we don't have that physical space. But if you are interested in something, we can definitely work up a local pickup so you don't have to pay for shipping. And yeah, I love connecting with other foodie s and people who love Italy. So if you're local and you're one of those, reach out because I'd love to connect.
Love it. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Thanks for having me back.