Alison Roman's Sauce Brand Hits 30 States Without a Dollar of VC Money

Alison Roman's pasta sauce is now stocked in more than 100 stores across 30 states, and no venture capital firm owns a piece of the business. One year after launch, the brand has gone national through Faire, the wholesale e-commerce platform, without raising outside money.

Roman, 41, started selling three sauces last fall: classic tomato and garlic, caramelized shallot and anchovy, and spicy tomato with fennel. The label was called A Very Good Tomato Sauce, named after a recipe in one of her cookbooks. The original plan was modest. She wanted jars people could pick up at First Bloom, her small grocery store in Bloomville, New York, about three hours outside New York City.

That plan lasted about a year. Last month, Roman rechristened and relaunched the pantry brand under her own name, Roman's, and expanded into wholesale through Faire. The platform is used by hundreds of thousands of independent retailers and carries buzzy food brands such as Fish Wife's tinned fish, Graza's squeezable olive oil, Momofuku's chili crunch, and BonBon's Swedish candy. It also moves celebrity products: Katy Perry's non-alcoholic aperitif DeSoi, Emma Chamberlain's coffee, and Safely, the cleaning brand from Kris Jenner and Emma Grede. Faire is pacing toward an annualized run rate of $850 million in revenue this year. Even on that shelf, Roman's sauce stood out.

What made the launch work on Faire?

Jennifer Burke, Faire's chief revenue officer, says Roman's has become one of the platform's "bigger launches in terms of sheer breadth." Orders have accelerated since sales started last month, she says, and she predicts high reorder rates for the brand.

One segment is doing the heavy lifting. Burke points to partial retailers, or "businesses where their primary revenue stream is something else" — think cafes and restaurants that keep shelf space for pantry goods or snacks. For those shops, "It was a very natural fit," she says. These partial retailers are driving much of Faire's 49 percent year-over-year growth, according to Burke.

The mechanics are simple. A cafe that already sells sandwiches adds a few jars by the register. No new storefront, no new customer acquisition. The sauce rides traffic the shop already has. That is why a brand born in a Bloomville grocery can reach 30 states in twelve months without a fundraising round.

Why Roman thinks shelf sauce was obvious

Roman built her audience nearly a decade ago writing recipes for The New York Times, including the viral shallot pasta and spiced chickpea stew, and publishing best-selling cookbooks such as Dining In and Nothing Fancy. She describes launching a packaged food business as "an obvious next step."

"If I was going to teach people how to cook and teach people how to make sauce, and there's still some people that are just never going to make their own sauce," she says, "I can still reach those people if I give them the sauce."

She credits her CPG ambitions to "a little bit of delusion" and a heavy dose of optimism. More products are on the way, she says.

Can the sauce stand out in a packed aisle?

The competition is entrenched. Conglomerate-owned legacy brands such as Hunt's, Ragu, and Prego compete on low prices. Newcomers like Smash Kitchen have ridden the better-for-you boom with organic alternatives. Restaurant-backed Carbone has canned its cultural cache into a $101 million brand, according to the source.

Roman's positioning skips the health halo and the celebrity-only play. She targets home cooks who can simmer a sauce from scratch but don't always have the time — the weeknight cook breading eggplant for parmesan, chopping vegetables, or rolling meatballs. The brand sells competence in a jar, not a lifestyle upgrade.

That bet is now on shelves in 30 states, and the reorder data from Faire's partial retailers will show whether it holds.