Latest / Talk Commerce / From Pizza Kid to Entrepreneur: Caroline D'Amore's Pink Journey
Transcript
- Brent Peterson (00:02.328) Welcome to this episode today I have Caroline D'Amore Caroline is the founder of pizza girl or is the pizza girl I should say and the founder anyways go ahead Caroline do an introduction for yourself tell us your day to day role and one of your passions. Caroline (00:18.214) Sure, I am the founder of Pizza Girl and the name came from growing up in the pizza industry. had a single dad who had to take us to all the catering jobs as kids, which I do believe I got my work ethic from, I will say. But he put us in these horribly embarrassing shirts that said Pizza Kid and I never lived down the name. So when I created my own business, of course, the name Pizza Girl worked out. Brent Peterson (00:46.052) That's awesome. And passion? Any passions in life? Caroline (00:47.886) yeah, so many passions. mean, obviously bringing, for me, I found that there was a huge gap in the market when it came to the Italian food space as a whole. It's super male dominated. Not that that's a bad thing, but I do feel like the millennial moms who are the ones actually kind of feeding their kids on a regular basis using these products to make dinner at home are not really represented on the shelves, brick and mortar pizza shops, direct to consumer. So I really wanted to kind of add that healthy, organic, feminine touch, hence everything being pink and clean and delicious. So that's my passion. Brent Peterson (01:28.879) That's awesome. maybe towards the end, can kind of that subject comes up a lot, even with podcast bookings, like in in I'm in EO, which is Entrepreneurs Network. I think that it's that women in general are are very underrepresented and and they make up half the world. Right. So I it's a great topic. And maybe we can kind of dive into that towards the end or in the middle of our conversation. Caroline (01:49.368) Yeah. Caroline (01:56.588) Amazing, I have a lot to say on the subject. Brent Peterson (01:58.752) Yeah, so before we do that though, you have a volunteer to be part of the free joke project I'm just gonna tell you a joke and all you have to do is give me a rating one through five And so as we as we as we talked about it's gonna be so funny. You're gonna love it All right. Here we go a priest a pastor and a rabbit entered a clinic to donate blood the nurse asked the rabbit. What's your blood type? I'm probably a typo said the rabbit Caroline (02:29.014) A typo. Got it. Okay. Amazing. No, no, it's not your delivery. You're great. No, it's... Yeah, I was just expecting a lot more to do with the rabbi, think. know, like the... Yeah, I don't know. I got confused there, but no. I would say it's like a three. Can I give you a three? Okay. Brent Peterson (02:31.33) Yeah, it's probably my delivery. Brent Peterson (02:53.604) You absolutely can. Three out of five, not three out of 10 though, right? Caroline (02:58.612) Yeah. Brent Peterson (02:59.448) Okay, thank you. Yeah, my producer asked me this morning, is it three out of 10 or three out of five? And I said five. Okay, good. Caroline (03:06.686) Okay, good, perfect. Brent Peterson (03:08.74) All right, so you gave us a little bit of your background in your introduction, but tell us the so tell me a little bit about your you've got sounds like you come from an entrepreneurial family as well. So tell us how you jumped from being the kid of a of an entrepreneur to an entrepreneur. Caroline (03:26.466) Yeah, so I definitely developed my work ethic at a very young age, having to help with all the catering jobs. My family had a shop called Demore's Pizza and we catered all the movie sets and all the TV show sets in Los Angeles. And I had to go and work. like I said, he put us in these shirts. And I think as I became a teenager, I actually grew really not into the moniker pizza girl. Everywhere I went people were like, where's the pizza at pizza girl? And I just really didn't wanna be called the pizza girl anymore. So I did everything I could to run away from who I actually was. I was literally the jack of all trades and the master of none. I tried everything to escape this pizza girl reality and truth. And then when it kind of hit me like a ton of bricks, was... you know, a DJ, I had a swimwear line, I did all these other very LA things to kind of keep up with my friends, you know, and kind of stay cool, I guess. And I really realized in one moment, I was at a DJ event and somebody held up a sign that said pizza girl. And I was like, my God, how do they even know that I'm the pizza girl? And then it just clicked and I was like, you know what? It's because I am the pizza girl. And it's so funny, we try to do all these things to not be exactly who we are when who we are is exactly who we were meant to be. And the moment I accepted that I was the pizza girl is when my whole life came together. I mean, the fact that I was able to get the pizza girl website, the pizza girl Instagram, the pizza girl trademark, it was just like waiting for me to wake up and really step into my power. And I think when I wanted to kind of do the things that I knew I was good at, which is branding and quality ingredients and products and marketing. You know, growing up in an Italian family, the young kind of teenage girl who was like, you know, a wild party girl trying to now come into her own. She wasn't taken very seriously, shall I say. And every time I tried to make these advancements for Demore's, I was shut down every single time. So Caroline (05:45.41) Truthfully, pizza girl grew out of the frustration of not being able to do what I knew was best for Demore's. It was kind of an F you to my family. I was like, okay, fine. I'm going to go off on my own. I'm going to show you what I can do. And while it started out like that, now it truly is just a part of me and bringing my daughter to all of these, you know, events. Now myself, I've totally come full circle. And I realized that pizza girl was very much so needed in this Italian food space. Brent Peterson (06:18.094) So tell us a little bit about the product that you're doing and sort of the basis for coming up with it and maybe some of the ethos that you've put into it. Caroline (06:20.416) Yeah. Yeah. Caroline (06:28.096) Absolutely. So I started my company with a jar of pasta sauce. My grandmother made the most incredible sauces. The red sauces were for everything. Even on Thanksgiving, like we always had a red sauce. And these red sauces were like a gravy. I come from an Italian family and it was like a gravy where you could use it on pizza, pasta, chicken dishes, veggie dishes, fish dishes, soups, whatever, you name it. A great red sauce would be on the stove and we would use it for all different things. And then I never... was a consumer of jarred sauce until I became a single mom and all these things. And I went in and grabbed one one day and I was honestly appalled. I was like, I cannot believe that America has to eat this garbage. I felt so bad. gives you this weird like kind of chemically aftertaste and just all the sodium and bad oils. And it just really made me so upset. I... got to work, I made my own jar of sauce, started with a marinara. I have three skews now, a marinara, a raviata, spicy, and a creamy vodka. And I kid you not, I walked into Airwon on Beverly and I just said, hey, who do I gotta talk to? It was like very Italian roots of me. I just walked in there, was like, who do I gotta talk to? They're like, that's not how you do this. I was like, that's how I'm doing this. And luckily at the time, Vicky Osana, I'll never forget her name. I mentioned her often. She gave me the time of day. And I swear to you, I had like taped labels on. It was a mess. And other people were in there with like, you know, their portfolios and things very organized. And she finally gave me a chance and she took a spoon out of her desk. She tried and within one bite, she gave me all the Airwands. And that was my first store, which is a very popular store. If you're an Airwan, you're gonna be looked at by other supermarkets. So then I got Whole Foods and Bristol Farms and we are continuing to stay in these kind of high-end stores that really care about top quality ingredients, which is very aligned with us. And then I saw another problem in the Italian food space, which was pizza ovens and at-home pizza making. Caroline (08:41.582) and my direct to consumer following, at Pizza Girl and my personal at Caroline DeMore on Instagram had really grown. And I found that it was almost unfair. It was like, if you didn't have a big backyard and $1,200 to spend, you couldn't get a really decent pizza oven. And also one that's cute. So we developed these pizza ovens. It's not rocket science. These are very popular in Australia and every other house has one. What I did was I upgraded it, I elevated it and I made it really cute to have on your countertop. So we have them in pink and white and you can get them at pizzagirl.com. They're only $179 and I am using these ovens for my catering jobs, which I'll get to. We also have a catering division. And these pizza ovens, like the other night, we did a hundred. on two ovens and they're small, they're countertop, but they work so well. And people are just loving them. You I solved another problem where like moms in apartments, college kids, like we actually sell them at a shop in a really cool RV park because people are using them on their RVs. they're mobile, they're awesome. They're just plug-in, they're indoor and you do not have to clean them. You buy this like scraper from our, and you just scrape it. And the more seasoned that stone gets, the better and better it cooks. I always say your first pizza will be your worst pizza, and then it just gets better over time. families are loving this product. So we have like the pizza girl starter kit and you get everything. You get your pizza paddle, your cutter, your scraper, your aprons. You can get it all at pizzagirl.com when you want to make your pizza at home. And then my dream, which, you know, investors had a hard time with for a while because my dream was brick and mortar. We call it the pink and mortar. And that's a really different jump once again. And clearly I have this entrepreneurial like ADD where I just keep doing different things. And I do need to be like honed in a bit, but I have to say I fought for brick and mortar and I got it. And we just launched our first one in June in Venice beach. Caroline (11:00.942) And the whole concept there is, again, I'm one of the only female Italian pizza shops. You know, it's all like Joe's and Tony's and all these like greasy pizzas that honestly make you feel bad when you eat it. So we are using Italian flour. We are using cheeses that have zero fillers and zero preservatives. And we are using delicious organic sauces. So it's something that you can eat and not feel like crap. People ask me, they're like, You eat pizza every day and I'm like, yes. And it's not vegan. It's not cauliflower. It's not all these things. It's just legitimate, clean food. And I feel like that's really missing in the Italian space in general here in America. You go to Italy and you're fine eating pasta, pizza, everything all day long. You don't feel sick. And it's, you know, it's sad what Americans have done to the food here. But I really feel. that we make the best pizza by the slice and pies that you will find on the west coast. anyone out there come on by. And the goal and dream, by the way, is to have pizza girl, pizza windows everywhere. And I'll explain to you a little bit about the model, but you know I can ramble. So let me know if I'm just going on and on. Brent Peterson (12:22.66) That's great. I've experienced the product side of it in just, well, let's just, I'll go to the pizza ovens. My previous background was in e-commerce and we had a client that made pizza ovens and I'll tell you, $1,200, they didn't even have anything starting below 3,600 or something. Secondly, I have used the sort of countertop, it was a Caroline (12:46.797) Yeah. Brent Peterson (12:52.548) propane style that had to sit outside, was fun. It also wasn't a hundred and some dollars like your other one was. Tell us a little bit about how, I mean, it's hard to get into a product like that and especially going from just sauces and to go into an actual product. Tell us about that journey. Caroline (13:09.016) supermarket. Caroline (13:14.315) Yeah, I think, you know, when COVID shut me down completely, I lost everything. I lost all my supermarket shelves and I had to restart the entire company. I think we really thought like, you know, we can't be at the mercy of say, supermarkets, we need to really own our customer and have a relationship, a direct relationship with our customers. So We started with selling the sauces and then we wanted to continue on creating an incredible experience making pizza at home. So just like one thing after another. And in Australia, two of my partners are Australian and their husband and wife and they're incredible. They're the first people that really believed in what I was doing. And they, in Australia, every other home has one of these countertop ovens. so they're like tried and tested, but we were wondering why they're just not popular here. I think. people really put this whole like kind of like pizza mafia on the whole thing. And I'm really like the antithesis of that when it comes to pink labels on the shelves, on my jars, when it comes to, yes, you can put pineapple and kale on your pizza. Like I. I piss off the mainstream Italian pizza people. because I'm just more about, you know, freedom in pizza and I think that really opened a whole new category and it made it so that college kids can make you know, they're having pizza parties at like UCLA and like have a bunch of these pizzas and they're tagging me and and they're all like having pajama parties and making pizzas and it's really cool to see So I think what happened was we really just You know developed an oven Tried it and like fell in love with it. And then We launched it last Christmas and our first truckload sold out in like 48 hours. It was really insane. just seeing that love for it and also that it comes in pink and it also comes in white for those that can't have a pink one. But I gotta say the majority of people buy pink. They're just like, I love this retro pink oven. and once we started using it for, we also launched a catering division alongside the brick and mortar and. Caroline (15:38.336) Once we started using them for these catering jobs, people were just like, holy crap. Like they can see it there. They see them making the best pizzas. They heat up to 700 degrees. You never have to clean them. You don't need propane. You know, it's like plug and go. And it's so fun for kids, you know? Like my kids, like they sit around, they're all making their own pizzas. They're really, really proud of themselves. You know, they're feeding themselves with healthy ingredients. And it's just like the gift that keeps on giving. So I don't know, we just kind of fell in love with the whole concept. Brent Peterson (16:09.668) The actual product development journey, so your partners have helped you do that. That's just a big undercating. So tell us, is it your distribution network is through your channels? Are you in distributors as well now? Caroline (16:12.95) Yeah. Yes. Caroline (16:25.378) Yeah, so now actually this whole past year, it was really just through my kind of outreach and pizza fans from pizza girl. And honestly, we never really paid for influencers. I was honestly able to really communicate the message, but we recently just got on Amazon with the ovens and we have an exciting. which I actually can't say. Yeah, was this close to saying it, but we're about to be in 250 stores nationwide, which we're really excited about. And yeah, I think 2025 is gonna be a really big year for Pizza Girl. Brent Peterson (17:03.62) If we look at the same, so if you look at the Mexican market compared to the Italian market, the sauces that are out there, the salsas that are out there, I was just in Tijuana this last week and you can experience more authentic sauces and things like that. Do you think it's just Americans that tend to ruin everything? Caroline (17:25.772) Yes, I do. mean, if you're looking at the climate and the food industry as a whole, it's like, once you see it, you can't unsee it, especially being on the side of the manufacturing side that I'm on. And I just don't understand why only in America they can use all these dyes that are, that are illegal in other countries that are not allowed. Like I just saw a bowl of Froot Loops in Canada. and a bowl of Froot Loops in America compared. I mean, the color is insanely different. The fact that they are coloring theirs with blueberry juice and, you know, healthier things. it's still like a sweet treat and it's fun, but it's just insane. Why does America allow people to poison us and poison our kids? But then they have to change their product for other countries. It's like, I don't know. It definitely bums me out for sure. Yeah. Brent Peterson (18:26.212) So you had mentioned that you're excited, you're gonna have some more stores in line. Is there other things you're excited about for next year that you could tell us? Do you have any new products that you're gonna launch? Caroline (18:36.462) yeah. Yeah, we're definitely looking into launching some new products. I think we're also super laser focused on this brick and mortar model, pink and mortar, shall I say. So our whole concept there is, again, I watched my father struggle for years. I watched all these other companies come in and go out. And I feel like what we're gonna do is we're gonna keep the high end quality of our products in low overhead tiny windows. in high-traffic areas, hotels, airports, places where we're gonna be in front of the people, but we're also not gonna have some massive menu and some massive overhead and just keep it really streamlined so that we can grow everywhere. I mean, my goal is to have a pizza girl window in Tokyo, you know, because I'm that crazy entrepreneur. But by 2025, we're gonna have two more locations, so. Stay tuned and hopefully it's just a never ending growth for pizza girl. Brent Peterson (19:42.66) How about the ingredients you mentioned earlier about the quality of the ingredients? Do you have a region that you draw from or is it an ethos? We had kind of touched on that on how you make your sauces and I think that. Caroline (19:47.416) Mm-hmm. Caroline (19:58.54) Yeah. Yeah. So we use Italian tomatoes. We use Italian flour in the shop. We do believe that, you know, Italy has one of the blue zones. If you know what that is, it's where people live the longest in the world. And I believe that's Sardinia and, know, obviously my Italian grandparents swear by, you know, everything in Italy, but also like we're using extra virgin olive oil, you know, we're using sea salt. if there's any salt. We're organic, we're all certified organic ingredients in the supermarkets and I feel like we go the extra mile to make sure that it's quality every single time. Brent Peterson (20:43.268) How about the ovens and anything else that's going to go around that? Do you have plans on bigger products or larger outdoor ovens, things like that? Caroline (20:49.827) Yeah. Caroline (20:54.892) I don't know about larger outdoor ovens, because we really love this countertop thing, but we are looking at a larger size countertop. And then we're also looking at, just so that they could fit larger pizzas. Right now it fits about a 10 inch really well. And we're also obviously going to add some colors, different color options to the ovens, which is really exciting. But then we're also looking to do some special stuff that you can put in the ovens so that it is more accessible. And you don't have to get it, you know, at one of our brick and mortars. So that is all in development now. And we are not sure when any of that will launch, but we are always looking for new ways to innovate and to kind of just keep pushing and finding better options for families. Brent Peterson (21:47.342) We talked a little bit in the beginning about how underrepresented women are in the space and in the entrepreneurial space. I'm in EO, Minnesota. I'm in Los Angeles. There's at least four or five EO chapters there. And traditionally, it has been a male forward. Can I say male forward? Forwarded community. Caroline (22:09.122) Yeah, that makes sense. Brent Peterson (22:16.822) I hear that it's been a challenge. do you see pushing past some of those barriers and breaking down some of those walls that are both in your space and that that Italian food space, but just in the entrepreneurial space in general. Caroline (22:32.984) Yeah, I really think we have to be proud to be women and girls because I really feel like there was this whole moment where women were really having to kind of present more masculine in order to be taken seriously. And I feel like we lost a lot of feminine products and feminine, you know, forward thinking, you know, rebranding of certain things. that's kind of what I really want to do. Like, I feel like I remember I had this one meeting with one of my very first investor meetings, and I really thought she would get it because she was a female. And what I was doing was different. And she said to me that she would never invest in a company with the name girl in it. And it just I get the chills every time I think about it, because I was just like, man, Why? Girls are awesome. You know what I mean? Like I have three girls, like girls are incredible and they need to be represented and they need to be appreciated. I do to her credit, I feel like that was right after a lot of the kind of me too movement and stuff like that where people were really trying to, I don't know, they were afraid to be women. And I think it made me so upset that investor meeting that I said, Okay, not only is my company going to be called pizza girl, but everything is going to be pink. And I just walked out of that meeting and everything is pink and I'm really proud of it, including my hair, which I'm not allowed to change according to my investors. So yeah, I just feel like being you and be proud of being you and we can adapt that same concept, you know. Brent Peterson (24:18.561) Ha Caroline (24:26.496) along, you know, across all different things. I'm really out there kind of reminding people that be really proud of who you are. And, you know, that's what people want. They want authenticity, they want the truth. They don't want you, you know, pretending to be something that you're not. So that's kind of where I am with that. Thanks. Brent Peterson (24:50.468) That's good. Going back to pizza, when my kids were younger, we did a pizza night and we made our own dough and made our own pizzas on the grill. And I turned up our barbecue grill as hot as it could go to try to get it. Never got to 700 degrees. And I realized that's one of the points that we need to get to. I think we have a bunch of pizza places where they say, Caroline (25:07.319) Yeah. Brent Peterson (25:16.42) It's a 900 degrees in 90 seconds or something like that that the Neapolitan ones do it. But do you have a good idea on how we should make, like the best way to make the dough so it comes out fantastic, especially in your ovens? Caroline (25:21.229) Yeah. Caroline (25:32.975) You know, for me, a really simple thing is making sure that they're not too big. In my ovens, you want to make sure that it's nine ounces, 10 ounces. I notice people are using, you know, 12 and, you know, larger dough balls, and it just makes it very thick and kind of like bubbly, especially if you guys can't really flip it and really stretch it and really get it to that, you know, great thin stretch. Then I say, smaller dough ball. And then I also say, I like to use a cornmeal or a semolina is what you dip it in. And it gives it this like, kind of more crispy, crunchy flavor and then the dough, you know, will be soft on the inside. So that's really, those are some of my secrets for sure. Brent Peterson (26:19.886) The, I remember John Stewart had this thing that you never use a fork and a knife, but you know, I've been to Chicago a lot and the pizza in Chicago is fantastic. It just comes in a big dish. You have to use a fork and a knife. Is there a, is there an LA specific LA style pizza now that's emerging? Caroline (26:30.423) Yeah. Caroline (26:38.412) You know, there's a couple of different versions out here. I feel like LA is just like an eclectic group of like things that it likes from all different places in the world really. And I feel like with pizza, you know, there's deep dish style, like more like Sicilian focaccia style, maybe Detroit style is what they call it. And then, and then there's the thin crust. And that's more East Coast style, I guess you would say, like Boston, New York style. And those are really, and then, and then again, and then you have the Neapolitan style on the fire, you know, on the wood fire ovens. And it's a very eclectic, I don't think there's one main style out here. I think we are people pleasers and we try to please everyone. And, you know, I just stick to what I do best, which is thin crust. East Coast style. And I have more people saying that their kids eat all of their crust when they eat pizza girl. It just blows me away. So I think we have the crust down. Brent Peterson (27:49.804) Yeah, I'm with you on the thin crust as well. If we're looking into next year, is, do you have some predictions just around the food industry and online in your specific space where you're doing direct to consumer with products that are consumables? Do you have anything that you think is changing now? Caroline (27:52.567) Yeah. Caroline (28:11.384) Well, yeah, mean, supermarkets for sure, especially with the new administration that's just come in. feel like somebody has really shined a light on the problems that we have in big food. And I do think that cleaner ingredients all around and no more, you know, I think there will be less ingredients on the back of labels that we don't understand. You know, I'm watching teenagers, awesome teenagers. giving recipes on how to make a healthy Dorito, you know, so when young kids are focused on, Hey, you just add some, you know, cayenne and garlic powder into a bowl and you, know, you put your tortillas in some, you know, slice it up like a Dorito. And they're really like, they're trying to make it on their own. So I think consumers are going to try to catch up and start offering these, these better options, which is why we just saw, I think it was Coca-Cola that bought that healthy organic chip recently. forget, is it Sientes or something? Sientes? I'm forgetting what it's called. But they're seeing the trend and I think all of our favorite foods are now going to be offered in a more healthy way. Brent Peterson (29:26.446) Yeah, that's a great analogy. think your typical tortilla chips are three ingredients, oil, corn, and some salt. And you do see healthier pizzas going in that direction. Even in the frozen pizza section, maybe not so much, I think that, yeah, not quite there. you had said earlier, the Americans tend to just freeze it and make it sit. It has to be shelf stable for a Caroline (29:44.386) Not there yet. Yeah, they're not there yet. Brent Peterson (29:55.246) couple years and then it's good to be in the American diet. The move towards organic and the move to making a healthier, more sustainable living is, I think you're right, is one of those important things that we're getting towards. Caroline (29:59.086) Oof! Caroline (30:13.102) Absolutely, and it's exciting and I'm all for it. The companies that are scared of this are because they're only concerned about the bottom line and not the consumer. someone like me is really excited about this, even in a business sense. Brent Peterson (30:30.478) So Caroline, we have a few minutes left and as we close out the podcast, I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug about anything they'd like. What would you like to plug today? Caroline (30:40.078) When is this podcast coming out? Because if it's coming out before holidays, I will say that the Pizza Girl pizza grill on pizzagirl.com is the best gift. Like your kids don't want sweaters. They want a really cool sleek pizza oven that does heat up to 700 degrees. So I would say go to pizzagirl.com and check out our incredible pizza ovens. And they're only $179. So your college kids are going to be stoked. Brent Peterson (31:08.728) Yeah, I think a New Year's present might be better than, we're right before Christmas right now, so we probably won't get it out by Christmas, that's a, yeah, that's a perfect gift. Yeah, thank you so much. Caroline Demore, thank you so much for being here today. It's been such a great conversation. Caroline (31:11.232) Okay, great. Okay. Okay, amazing, yeah. Caroline (31:25.23) Thank you so much for having me.