As a mom from California with an incurable disease came up with a healthy pizza and earned millions
'27.09.2018'
Source: CNBC
A lupus diagnosis inspired Amy Lacey to sell a pizza base made from cauliflower. Now her company, Cali'flour Foods, is generating millions of dollars. The mother of three wanted to keep a beloved family tradition by baking pizzas in the evenings, but could no longer eat regular dough pizza. And then she came up with a real million dollar idea.
Every Friday night, Lacey, her husband Jim, and their three young children, James, Caroline, and Grant, snuggled up at their home in Chico, California, playing board games and eating pizza - usually with pepperoni, but sometimes with Canadian bacon and pineapple, says CNBC.
In 2008, at some point, Lacey realized that something had changed in her body. One day after the evening with her family, she woke up on Saturday morning with a strong pain in the joints and a red, bumpy rash that looked like traces of poison ivy.
Unfortunately it turned out to be something much more sinister.
In November 2010, Lacey was diagnosed with lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease that attacks healthy tissue, causing inflammation and pain.
“I went to town to research everything I can find about the disease,” says Lacey, now 48. “I learned that there are millions and millions of people in the world who have either a connective tissue disorder or some kind of inflammation that I believe can be caused by food.”
Classical medicine cannot fully agree with Lacey’s statement; according to The Johns' Hopkins Lupus Center, there is no specific diet prescribed to combat lupus, other than to avoid garlic, alfalfa sprouts and saturated fats (such as fried snacks and red meat). It is desirable to eat a healthy balanced diet rich in fatty acids. However, Lacey noticed that when she was eating processed foods (such as pizza), her inflammation increased.
So she revised her habits.
Cooking has always been Lacey's passion, and her daughter Caroline also loves cooking. Together, they experimented by changing the ingredients of popular dishes to come up with healthier options.
“It really had to do with getting together and finding ways to make the foods we love healthy,” Lacey says. “So we started to cook cookies, pancakes, waffles, pasta in a new way so that I could eat them”.
Deciding not to abandon the traditional Friday night with pizza, Lacey found several recipes with a cauliflower base where vegetables were used instead of dough.
Lacey and her daughter decide to try.
“It turned into a huge mess in the kitchen, a real disaster, everywhere there was cauliflower: in our hair, on the floor,” the woman recalls.
But the final product, which tastes like a country pizza with a thin crust, delighted the entire family - even her son James, who usually avoided vegetables. For the family's pleasure, Lacey began to increasingly make pizza base like this at home, as well as to treat friends and clients with it (Lacey started coaching in 2013 to help others with the same diagnosis). She had happy health hours once a month and served cauliflower pizza slices.
Then, in February, 2016, Caroline offered Lacy to sell the pizza base at the local farmers market. Lacey has always had an entrepreneurial spirit: she worked in medical and pharmaceutical sales, and even built and sold a business in the field of medical technology. Therefore, Lacey and Caroline rented an industrial kitchen, put on hats and gloves, and began work on improving the recipe for frozen cauliflower pizza base.
“I remember slipping, falling, and wiping ourselves over and over from bits of cauliflower on the floor or broken eggs,” Lacey recalls. "I'd like someone to film it."
Lacey also remembers trying to hide her author's recipe from other people renting places in the same kitchen. And although vegetarian pizzas were already on the market, the cauliflower base cooked on a commercial basis was not sold all over the place.
“We were sort of secret spies trying to do something,” Lacey says.
Recipe development took some time; Lacey worked hard to combine the ingredients with each other without the use of fillers, it all took many attempts and required large purchases of cabbage. On Mother's Day this year, the children of Lacey surprised her by starting work in an industrial kitchen as a gift to their mother.
“They processed 300 lb (136 kg - ed.) Cauliflower,” the woman recalls. "It was the best Mother's Day gift in my entire life, they worked so hard."
In April, 2016, Lacey and Caroline, and Dana Grant (co-founder that Lacey brought into business, but he stayed in business for only half a year), organized a shop on the local farmers market with their Italian basis for cauliflower pizza (the same recipe , on which the base is made today), the base with red pepper and zucchini noodles. They offered two pizza basics for 10 dollars and zucchini noodles for 3,95 dollars per pound. It all sold out cleaned every time. People started calling Lacey besides open watches on the market, asking if they could order noodles or pizza steaks and pick up food from her home.
Luck seemed to be on its own. True, the woman had capital from her first business, which would be enough for only one product to enter the market. She chose the basis for the pizza, which was, according to the hostess, the most popular. This is how Cali'flour Foods was born.
That December, Lacey went from selling at a farmers' market to selling online. However, by the end of 2016, the business was over $ 250 in debt. Hoping to boost sales, Lacey started selling Cali'flour Foods on Amazon in February 2017. Although there was really no reason to offer your products on Amazon - now only 10% of sales come from this site, where everything turned out to be much more interesting with Facebook.
There Lacey posted a story about a woman who lost 169 pounds (77 kg), thanks in large part to using the Cali'flour base for seven months. This story went viral instantly. Lacey, 50, says the advertising costs for the Facebook post were worth it: “After her story, I sold the basics for $ 124,” she says.
It was the catalyst of Cali'flour Foods, which is necessary to jump forward and up.
Lacey's 2017 year ended up with more than 5 millions of dollars in revenue.
The company now advertises its foundations as an alternative to bread products for people with diabetes, autoimmune diseases or celiac disease (gluten intolerance). Each gluten free base contains 6 g carbohydrates, 180 calories and 15 g protein. The basics are made from four ingredients (fresh cauliflower, eggs, mozzarella and spices), which makes them a popular choice among healthy diet lovers, low carbohydrate diets (paleo and keto) and clean eaters. Lacey says the pizza base can be used to replace everything from bread to lasagna, from noodles to crackers. As with most products, Cali'flour fundamentals are also criticized: general complaints include poor packaging of the product and the viscous consistency of the “dough”.
The company offers the basics in five versions, including cabbage dough with spicy jalapeno, the original Italian and vegan classic version. They are quite expensive: for example, five packs of the original Italian base will cost 64,50 dollars. But given the fact that 50 of millions of Americans suffer from autoimmune diseases, people pay for them: according to Lacey, the company plans to sell 20 million dollars this year. On Amazon, the original Italian version takes first place in the “pizza base” category (not only gluten free), surpassing the products of major brands such as Whole Foods'365 and Betty Crocker.
“I think people just appreciate the transparency of the ingredients and that fits with their lifestyle,” Lacey says. - People are now trying to eat healthier. Someone does it out of necessity, like me, because of illness; others do not want to get sick or are trying to lose weight; and someone just wants to feel better. "
The demand for healthy alternatives certainly did not go unnoticed by other major brands: for example, Trader Joe began selling its own cauliflower base in 2017, and other companies like Cali'flour appeared, such as CauliPower (founded in 2016).
This year, Cali'flour is largely focused on getting into more grocery stores: these are now 2000 outlets, including Whole Foods, Albertson's, Safeway and Kroger, as well as small chains, such as Hy-Vee. Lacey wants to get to 6 thousands of stores by the end of the year. The company currently employs 50 employees in a factory in Salinas, California, and 11 employees make up the Chico sales, marketing and research team.
“I made this product out of a personal need, but I'm so grateful that the idea had an impact on so many people,” Lacey says. “I never imagined how big the move would be after we introduced the first cauliflower pizza base to the market.”
Cali'flour Foods even has a cookbook that is planned to be published in the 2019 year: it presents 125 recipes of dishes that can be prepared using cauliflower base.
