My Biz: Pair's pasta business based on grandmother’s recipe

By Rebecca Groff, correspondent

Owners: Lisa Galassi, Craig Galassi

Company: Galassi Foods Inc.

Address: 2042 Glen Oaks Drive, Coralville

Phone: (319)339-7409

Website: www.galassifoods.com

Elevator pitch: Italian family recipe. All natural. Amazing flavor.

If you ask the two owners of Galassi Foods what makes their pasta sauces special, you'll get two different answers.

“It's our cooking process,” Lisa Galassi said.

Her business partner and brother, Craig, will tell you it's the ingredients.

Both know their way around the kitchen as well as the recipe they developed from the one their Grandmother Galassi used when she cooked for large family gatherings.

“We couldn't go ingredient for ingredient with it in our canning process, however,” added Lisa, but it served as the basis for their successful pasta sauce business they launched in 2009.

Galassi Foods produces four kinds of pasta sauce flavors - original, sweet tomato basil, cheese flavored and mushroom - in addition to their Italian tomato vinaigrette salad dressing.

They sell a wet spice rub for seasoning meats, and during November and December they produce and sell a turkey brine, which the family helps prepare in the second production kitchen Lisa maintains in the basement of her Coralville home.

The pasta sauces are produced at a facility in Shenandoah, Iowa.

“We use only top-quality ingredients that Craig and I have painfully gone through and tested to make sure they are the best for our product,” Lisa said.

Lisa, a former kitchen designer, and Craig, who left construction management, share the passion for cooking that both of their grandmothers possessed. And as with their late Grandmother Galassi, they invite family, friends and neighbors together for Soul Food Sundays, as Lisa calls it, which really was the genesis for Galassi Foods.

“When we cook, it is an affair,” added Craig. “There's enough for the whole neighborhood.”

“We prepared enormous amounts of food, and everyone fell in love with our pasta sauce,” Lisa added. “People told us it was so different from what they could find on the market, and one thing led to another.”

They began selling their products at area farmers markets.

The business is undergoing a growth spurt with a distribution deal this past August. It will put their products in more than 330 stores in an 8-state area.

“That doesn't mean that all of the stores will take all of the products,” Craig said, “but they will be available to more markets.”

The business employs 5 full- and part-time employees. Their sister does the bookkeeping, and Lisa's husband and their eldest daughter pitches in during heavy production periods.