Chef Scott Martino hasn't had a regular paycheck since March, when he lost his job as executive chef and general manager at the Black Horse Restaurant in Denver.
It was his second recession-related job loss in a year. He had been executive chef at the Restaurant at Doneckers in Ephrata when that business closed in July 2008.
But Martino hasn't been sitting around his Lancaster apartment moping about his situation. He's seized it as an opportunity to crank up a part-time business he started back in 2007, selling his own brand of marinara sauce.
"The sauce was in pretty high demand, so I said, 'You know what? I'm going to chase this dream because in 20 years, if I don't, I'm going to regret it.' "
That meant contacting retailers, redesigning the label, incorporating the business and ramping up production.
Jarring transformation
Even though Martino had long dreamed of having his own business and had already laid the groundwork for Cortazzo sauces, the decision to pursue that dream after he lost his executive chef's job took some thought.
"Both Doneckers and Black Horse were good opportunities for me, so when they came to an end, it was discouraging for me," he said. "I took about a month off to figure out what I was going to do."
Martino traces his ambition to have his own business in part to his grandfather, who turned a service station in Peekskill, N.Y., into a large car dealership.
Even while pursuing a career as a chef by studying for a culinary arts degree at HACC, Martino said, he was also taking courses for a business degree, completing both associate degrees in 2005.
Apprenticeships under Gunter Backhaus at The Loft and then Greg Gable at Doneckers prepared him to become an executive chef.
Along the way, Martino started dabbling with the idea of selling his own brand of sauce.
"There was one summer [about five years ago] when I had a ton of tomatoes that I made into sauce, so I jarred it," he said. "I went out to A.C. Moore and bought Ball jars."
The brand name, Cortazzo, was the maiden name of their grandmother, Marianita Cortazzo, who died when Martino was a youngster.
His spicy Cortazzo Arrabbiata sauce is made from his grandmother's recipe and features a photograph of her on the label.
At first, Martino simply gave the sauce away.
"I had been giving it to my doctor, dentist and just people who I thought would enjoy it," he said. "I [have] probably handed out 1,000 jars of sauce — on me."
In 2007, Martino started making the sauce in the commercial kitchen at Your Meal Ticket and selling it there, founding the business at that time as a sole proprietorship to account for taxes.
Four months ago, that was changed to a limited liability corporation with Martino taking on the title of CEO. The sauce itself is made in another certified commercial kitchen in large batches as needed.
The 39 cases, or 468 jars, that he made in mid-December are now nearly gone.
Martino said there are some big differences between being a chef and developing a commercial sauce.
A chef can constantly experiment with ingredients as he prepares meals from day to day, whereas a particular brand of sauce, especially one that retails for $6.99 for a 28-ounce jar, has to be consistent.
"I can tell you what's in each pot of sauce to the gram," he said, and his labels now include complete listings of nutritional information.
Currently, Martino is selling just two products, his grandmother's traditional sauce and a marinara he developed himself. But he does have four other products in development, including a roasted eggplant caponata and two barbecue sauces.
Martino says he still tosses things in as he tries to refine those new recipes, but now he precisely weighs everything before tossing.
Getting the correct flavor is just one consideration. The sauces also have to be thick enough to stick to pasta rather than settling to the bottom of the plate, and the jar they're sold in has to be designed to easily pour a product of that consistency.
"Once you want to retail it, there are lots of things you have to do," he said. "I just set out to figure it all out."
Martino hearkens back to one of the lessons he learned under the tutelage of Backhaus and Gable.
"There are things that are good, and things that are great," he said. "Attention to detail, that will take you from good to great."
So far, Martino has been investing all the revenue from his sales back into the business while trying to hold his costs down as much as possible.
"Once consumers trust our products, they'll want to try other products," he said.
Eventually, Martino wants to buy a production kitchen and bring his label-designing sister into the business.
"Eighty to 100 cases a month will at least get us on the right track," he said, with the long-term goal being thousands of cases a month.
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