Nudi Pasta.The start-up of a fresh pasta business.

Any person that knows me well, knows I'm always thinking of new business ideas. I could probably say I've been doing businesses (or at least researching about them) all my life. It started in kinder garden with silk worms, $1 each, 2nd grade handmade hair pins, 3rd grade a small bank where my parents would "deposit" pennies, a monthly newspaper that covered 4th grader things like school crushes, then I got more fancy with holiday presents like brownies and cookies all nicely packed and everything.

Sharing some home-made brownies in Kinder garden.

My mom was always very supportive, and I thank her for taking me to buy ingredients, bulk colorful necklace beads, and waking up with me at 5 am to pack cookies in nice little bags to sell that morning in school.

My dad, even though he never woke up at 5, he always listened to my ideas and inspired me in a way that felt like I could do anything I wanted.

Now I'm grown up and it's time to start new adventures. But this time, with a bigger market than 5th graders. So through this blog I'll share with you my story, of the start-up of a small artisan pasta business, everything from ups and downs, and maybe you can one day become part of my adventure too.

Karla



13.10.08

I've landed on SRE world!

Domenico is Italian, 64 I think, really funny, a great example of the American dream, and the owner of a company called SRE, and it is worth to say twice... really funny.

I found Domenico and his company SRE (Specialty Restaurant Equipment), while doing my search for a pasta machine supplier. To say the least, his website is truly interesting. He started it in 1995, and had as a goal to inform and entertain in the same time. Among my favorite things are the doors that open and close (which you click to enter different parts of the website), which he explained to me later "well, I thought, if Bill Gates has windows, I'll have doors!". Then there is the spaceship. You know when you enter a site there is the typical visitor number, well on SRE's site, it is your spaceship landing number. Click and see for yourself.

So, last Monday it was time for me to go beyond the website and meet Domenico personally to finally acquire my pasta machine. He picked us from the airport and then we went to SRE's facilities. SRE is gigantic, which I guess confirms the saying that "everything is bigger in Texas". It had wonderful copper covered coffee machines, granita machines, gelato displays... you name it. And after sipping some coffee, taking a tour (we found the spaceship! Domenico made it himself) and meeting the staff, we arrived to the awaited pasta machine room.


There Domenico and Bill chose a machine. It is a pretty heavy duty Italian extruding machine. To the difference of sheeter machines, which roll the pasta sheets trough rollers and then you cut them, extruding machines forcefully push the dough through some dies which extrude pasta in an infinite number of shapes. The machine included bronze dies, that become a little hot while you use them, which produce a rougher finish and less sticky pasta; compared to their silicone counterparts.

Love at first site... my machine comes out of the pasta room.



Learning the machine basics


Notebook on hand, we then went to try it and learn everything I could about it. I was literally amazed on how faster and better it comes out than the small machine I had at home. Soon, it will be also sitting in my pasta studio. And when it does arrive it will be time to try a million recipes.
Posted by Karla at 4:18 AM

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)