My Business Elevates Aperitivo Hour, Sees $8K to $10K a Month

This as-told story is based mostly on a dialog with Joe Fiorenzo. Fiorenzo and his spouse, Sheela Prakash, co-founded Sfizi, a food company curating Italian merchandise in celebration of aperitivo tradition. They launched their first product, ring-shaped snack crackers called taralli, in December 2025. Now, their business sees an average of $8,000 to $10,000 in month-to-month gross sales, on monitor for $100,000 in its first 12 months, as it plans for product growth. The piece has been edited for size and readability. 

 I began the business with my spouse, Sheela. Sheela has studied and lived in Italy off and on for the previous 10 years. We’ve been collectively for all that time, and we’ve traveled in Italy collectively. During that time, we fell in love with Italian tradition. I also have an Italian American background, so I’ve skilled some of those Italian influences over the course of my childhood. 

Sfizi interprets to “whims” in Italian. We like to refer to them as little pleasures. The objective is principally to rejoice little pleasures of Italian tradition. We launched with Italian Taralli crackers, the small bagel-looking crackers. You do see them all through the United States. Quite a bit of occasions they’re in those clear cellophane baggage. They’re typically very dusty trying, at the backside of a basket somewhere in the cheese part. We wished to begin with that product because it felt like an straightforward segue.

Starting a self-funded business without a CPG background

Neither of us have a CPG background. I labored in company insurance coverage for 17 years. Sheela has a food background, but not in the CPG space. So we wished to begin small. We figured, if we can’t determine this out, then we in all probability are in the flawed business, so we should in all probability do something else. But it’s been good so far. We launched with three flavors; we wished to make them enjoyable, approachable and eye-catching. 

We began reaching out to model design firms in early 2025. At the same time, we reached out to numerous producers in Italy to see if they could accommodate what we were trying to do. The first in all probability six months were largely going back and forth on the model identification and our imaginative and prescient. 

We despatched out about a dozen cold emails to Italian producers to get a sense of what was doable. Then we spent two to three weeks touring the Puglia area of Italy, visiting producers and sampling taralli and other merchandise that they had, making an attempt to develop a rapport in that short quantity of time. Of course, there was a little bit of a language barrier, so we wished to make sure there was somebody on their group who could talk in English in case there was something that needed to be variety of articulated that we couldn’t essentially translate. So that was a enjoyable but long course of. 

We’re fully self-funded. Total startup prices were around $50,000. We are trying at potential traders going into next 12 months. So hopefully we have a little bit more support. We have a regular stream of income. We had a fairly aggressive launch and fairly good income stream the first few months. Then it variety of evened out a little bit, and now we’re fairly secure. Depending on the month, we’re averaging $8,000 to $10,000 product sales. We’re focusing on over $100,000 in product sales for the first 12 months. 

We have a social media individual who works with us, a contract employee who’s a good friend of ours. And we’ve been leaning closely on her for placing inspirational, artistic and enjoyable posts out. We have 10 to 12 posts go out a week to keep that curiosity going. Also, we’ve performed some partnerships with other manufacturers. We’ll do a collaboration where we give away both of our merchandise. There’s a lot of alternative in that space because there are so many totally different CPG manufacturers out there trying to gain publicity. We’re clearly prepared to accomplice with anybody who’s prepared to do the same for us. 

Now, we are totally targeted on the business, with the exception of some facet initiatives. My spouse is a cookbook author, so she’s been working on that as properly. And facet initiatives that I’ve been working on that are not CPG-related. The day operating Sfizi can be very time-consuming, but it can also be less time-consuming, relying on what’s going on. So you have to put other issues on your plate as properly. 

Navigating timing and order circulation for success

The greatest challenges have revolved around timing and order circulation, both in phrases of buyer ordering and putting orders with our Italian producers for our product. It’s troublesome because you can’t always anticipate what gross sales are going to be like. When we first launched, we had a comparatively small quantity because we actually had no concept and we needed to have a baseline. So just in case we weren’t ready to promote anything, we weren’t out of pocket a lot of money.

Luckily, we bought out very shortly — in less than a month. So from there, we ramped up manufacturing and scaled that manner. The timing of that plus the other components that go into delivering the ultimate product, whether it’s design for the packaging, printing packaging, and many others. — coordinating the timelines of all those totally different distributors — can be powerful. And then we have a third-party warehouse that shops our product and also fulfills orders.

It’s actually been a learn-on-the-fly course of because we didn’t have the expertise with it. But we have a much higher deal with on it now than we did eight months in the past. Now, we have enough order quantity that we’re snug with ordering more product than we might really need for the very foreseeable future. Our product does have a long shelf life proper now, about a 12 months. So if the product has to sit for a little bit, that’s wonderful. 

Expanding the product portfolio

We’re undoubtedly trying to broaden the product portfolio. At least for now, we need to keep within the Italian aperitivo angle because that’s well-liked in the U.S. People are always trying for new, enjoyable snacks or merchandise to go along with their spritz or negroni or whatever the drink of the week is. So we’ve reached out to a few totally different Italian producers for a few totally different merchandise, though we don’t have anything lined up definitively yet. But we’re fairly certain we’re going to launch at least a second full product early in spring of 2027. We just haven’t ironed out all the particulars yet. 

Down the highway, we would definitely like to dip into the pantry aspect of issues, whether that’s a enjoyable pasta, sauce or even flour. These days, there’s such a focus on good flours, bread and healthful snacks. So we’re in a great place for a lot of totally different instructions from a product standpoint. Currently, we don’t import in bulk, but that is something we would contemplate because we’ve gotten some curiosity from eating places and bars. 

Advice for other CPG founders

To anyone contemplating beginning a business in the CPG space, don’t be afraid to ask people for help. Meet with other manufacturers and firms doing related issues. Because what you actually come to notice is nobody knows that much, but somebody might know just a little bit more, or perhaps they’ve had a certain expertise with something that you haven’t. So choose people’s brains and just strive to perceive how they’re doing issues. You might be ready to apply what they’re doing to your business, even if it’s not precisely the same factor.

You can’t be afraid to fail. We went into this business with good intentions, but we really did not know how it was going to work out. So you have to have a little bit of humility. Don’t be afraid to be weak and ask questions. Because without the ideas from some of these other founders, I don’t know if we would be where we are now.

This as-told story is based mostly on a dialog with Joe Fiorenzo. Fiorenzo and his spouse, Sheela Prakash, co-founded Sfizi, a food company curating Italian merchandise in celebration of aperitivo tradition. They launched their first product, ring-shaped snack crackers called taralli, in December 2025. Now, their business sees an average of $8,000 to $10,000 in month-to-month gross sales, on monitor for $100,000 in its first 12 months, as it plans for product growth. The piece has been edited for size and readability. 

 I began the business with my spouse, Sheela. Sheela has studied and lived in Italy off and on for the previous 10 years. We’ve been collectively for all that time, and we’ve traveled in Italy collectively. During that time, we fell in love with Italian tradition. I also have an Italian American background, so I’ve skilled some of those Italian influences over the course of my childhood. 

Sfizi interprets to “whims” in Italian. We like to refer to them as little pleasures. The objective is principally to rejoice little pleasures of Italian tradition. We launched with Italian Taralli crackers, the small bagel-looking crackers. You do see them all through the United States. Quite a bit of occasions they’re in those clear cellophane baggage. They’re typically very dusty trying, at the backside of a basket somewhere in the cheese part. We wished to begin with that product because it felt like an straightforward segue.