In this episode of the Knoodle Founders Hour, host Rosaria Cain sits down with Niccolo Fraschetti, the founder of Alive Ferments, to discuss his journey of bringing accessible, flavorful fermented foods to the masses.
After dropping out of high school at 15 with just the equivalent of $5 in his pocket, Niccolo traveled the world as a scuba instructor, eventually visiting six continents and learning six languages. He eventually landed in California, where a job at Whole Foods opened his eyes to massive amounts of pristine produce being thrown away. To save the food, he started fermenting these discarded vegetables in vats under his porch, sparking a neighborhood movement that eventually became Alive Ferments.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
- The Power of Living Foods: Why fermented foods are the ultimate gut-health hack, and how Alive Ferments focuses on accessible everyday pantry staples—rather than funky health foods—to easily integrate into daily diets.
- Solving the Food Waste Crisis: How a shocking amount of discarded produce at a major grocery chain inspired a sustainable community effort and business model.
- Escaping the Retail Trap: The hard truth about why rapidly expanding into 60 grocery stores became an uphill battle that drained profits, and why shifting to a Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) website model gave the company back its revenue and control.
- Navigating Founder Fallout: The clarity and resilience required to keep a business moving forward as a solo leader after a co-founder—who was also his brother—left the company overnight.
- The Unconventional Path: How teaching scuba diving globally and skipping traditional education built the resourcefulness and adaptability needed to hit the ground running in the startup world.
Food and beverage entrepreneurs, leaders looking to pivot their sales strategies, and anyone forging an unconventional path to success will all benefit from this deep dive into building a resilient brand.
Full Transcript
Rosaria Cain 0:00
Welcome Niccolo Fraschetti, the man behind Alive Ferments that does fermented foods for people that are interested in a healthier diet. Welcome to the podcast.
Niccolo Fraschetti 0:11
Thank you so much. Rosaria, it’s a pleasure to be here.
Rosaria Cain 0:15
Well, how did you get started with fermented foods?
Niccolo Fraschetti 0:18
I’ve always liked cooking, and since I was eight, I was already in the kitchen, making stuff, and everybody always told me, You should open a restaurant. And I thought, never will I open a restaurant. I want to enjoy cooking for the rest of my life. And fermentation is a nice in between. It’s a slower process. You have less pressure of like getting things out that second and the flavors it develops. That was my primary kind of magnet. And then as I grew older, I discovered the benefits. And I thought, this is a game changer for everyone, and it should be something that people just adopt unconditionally.
Rosaria Cain 0:58
Well, what are the benefits of fermented foods? What does it do?
Niccolo Fraschetti 1:01
Well, the main benefit that you know is quite white, known is like, gut health. So it supports gut health, and that translates into, like, better mood, better immune system, you name it. It just balances out your body. But besides that, it’s also the way the food is preserved. So fermented food will keep food alive, and that way it’ll stay fresh even over a year sometimes. And said that industry trend is to kill the food so then it doesn’t go bad. But then, you know, our body would like the living food more than the dead food, for sure. So those are the main benefits, I think, yeah.
Rosaria Cain 1:40
Well, tell me about the different flavors and foods that you have. I know it’s a broad range of flavor profiles.
Niccolo Fraschetti 1:46
Yeah, we have products that go from like a kimchi that’s a bit funkier, maybe more of an acquired taste, to our gut shots and seasonings, which you wouldn’t even tell they’re fermented so and that’s kind of more of our focus making food that doesn’t feel too funky for people to adopt it easily. So we go the most common flavor is like the tanginess, but also that depth, the umami depth that happens during incrementation. So think like soy sauce starts with the soybean and then becomes a very flavorful condiment, and so the flavor profiles, yeah, go from very funky to fresh and bright, and it’s something that you can eat as a side dish, or even just integrate in your daily diet, or substitute, like you can substitute raw garlic with fermented garlic, and your body will really appreciate that, because it’s already it’s much more digestible than a raw garlic, for example.
Rosaria Cain 2:50
Oh, that’s great. So tell me about your top sellers. What’s selling right now really well?
Niccolo Fraschetti 2:55
The kimchi and the beets are actually the top sellers, and the garlic too, I think. And mostly I believe it’s due to SEO, because people are searching for that, so they will find it. So it’s just because they haven’t discovered the other ones yet. And I think beets, they just look healthy, that purple, the deep purple, and they have a really good rep. So I think that’s the main reason. But it will change. We will make a change.
Rosaria Cain 3:28
Nope, that makes that makes perfect sense. So how are you, how are you positioning it is, are you positioning Alive Ferments of food that sells fermented foods that are flavorful, or are you presenting the health benefits first? How are you presenting it and marketing it?
Niccolo Fraschetti 3:48
We position it as something accessible and so not necessarily as a health food brand, because we want to include everybody, even people that think, “Oh, I don’t need to eat healthy food.” It’s like, no, this is flavor, and then the health benefits are like an amazing add on. And so positioning as like something that can become a pantry staple, like a substitute to what something that you’re already using, not an addition to what our lives are so busy with so many tasks and things to take and to eat and not to eat. That’s not our goal, our ability to make something that just silently, just merges into our daily routines.
Rosaria Cain 4:29
Now you can cook with fermented foods, right?
Niccolo Fraschetti 4:32
Yeah, there’s actually a lot of research coming out about the benefits of the probiotics that are not alive. So, bro, you know, for the most part, we always think, Oh, the living products, how many are alive? But the truth is that even if they’ve been cooked, so they usually die or dehydrated or pasteurized, like some other products, there’s a lot of benefit. Your gut really likes that. So you. Yeah, cooking is fine, yeah, even heating them up, don’t be held back by that.
Rosaria Cain 5:06
That’s great. Now, is there a lot of competition for these types of products? Because I don’t remember seeing them in the store all that much, or all that often.
Niccolo Fraschetti 5:13
Not much. Yeah, there’s not much competition. It’s not very saturated yet. There’s, like, the bigger brands that you’ll see in grocery shelves, and usually it’s sauerkraut, kimchi, sometimes the pickles, but there’s nothing very… It doesn’t go much beyond that, at least in regular grocery shelves. And you’ll find more nuanced products with smaller, independent brands across the country, and very few have such a wide range from seasonings to gut shots, I understand why it’s a lot of work, but, yeah, it’s not a very saturated market, and I think it’s a really good place to be in.
Rosaria Cain 5:56
How did you stumble into fermented foods?
Niccolo Fraschetti 5:59
I have to thank my mom for this, because she was always, she had this little Crock ecosystem on her counter that was kind of a ongoing world of her ferments, and she would tend it like a goldfish, you know, kind of give it new produce from her garden, and that have little nibbles of it consistently and always. And as kids, we were not fans of it that much, but she would always find ways to make us eat fermented foods without us even knowing it. So she would put a little bit of fermented brine in a salsa we liked, and we wouldn’t even notice it and that also made us acquire a taste to it so slowly, kind of training us to like them, and not telling us this is good for you, because as a kid, you will be like, I don’t want things that are good for me. I want risky, unhealthy thing, for example, and so very silently, discreetly incorporating to our diet, and then now noticing that, you know, probably at, you know, last time, 10 years ago, looking back, you think, Oh, thanks, Mom, that was really cool of you. Not, you know, let us have our way on diet.
Rosaria Cain 7:15
So, but how did it happen that you went back to fermented food so it was part of your diet when you were young,
Niccolo Fraschetti 7:21
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 7:22
And then you probably did some other things between when you were really young and you started your fermented food company. What was that evolution?
Niccolo Fraschetti 7:29
Yeah, I I traveled most my 20s and mid 30s as a scuba instructor, so I got exposed to a lot of different cuisines, and noticed that every single country on this planet has at least one permitted item that’s part of their diet, whether they know it or not. It could be even coffee, for example. And so when I got to California, I decided California needed its own kimchi because meaning a permitted product that goes with your everyday meals, like kimchi in Korea is a little side. And I thought, Okay, what do we eat in California every day? And that’s like, pretty much hot sauce or salsa of sorts. And I was already making that, and I just saw that gap in the market. And I thought, Okay, this has to become a reality, you know, something that everybody will appreciate having it the side without, you know, making it a task. I’m sorry I lost the thread of the question there.
Rosaria Cain 8:26
Oh, no, we’re talking about how you got, how you got into fermented foods.
Niccolo Fraschetti 8:31
Exactly.
Rosaria Cain 8:32
You traveled around the world.
Niccolo Fraschetti 8:33
Thank you. Thank you. And what triggered me starting this company was actually, well, I was working at Whole Foods for about a year and a half in 2017 the amount of produce that was wasted was beyond imaginable, perfectly pristine produce that was maybe just, you know, had like one small blemish, and it was the pre Amazon time, so they would let us take it home. But still, you know, after you fed your household, there’s not much else you can do. So I started fermenting it. I could experiment. I had unlimited produce available, so I started experimenting with whatever came to mind, and started really supplying my neighborhood with jars of fermented experiments. And the feedback was incredible. And so it felt so good to create this kind of community effort, as people would give back, you know, you would give somebody, you know, you make friends. And it was a really nice way to bring people together. And also it was solving this huge food waste problem, basically preserving the life in these amazing vegetables that were just going to go to waste otherwise. So I just saw so many benefits converging into one unit. And I thought, this has to happen. And and then, thank God. You know, I had time during Covid, and I was able to start this because I was working in restaurants. So. Yeah, those were on, and I had the bandwidth to actually set it up and get it going.
Rosaria Cain 10:07
So you literally started in your own kitchen.
Niccolo Fraschetti 10:11
Yeah, under my porch, to be precise. Because fermenting your food in your kitchen gets old quick, because your whole house kind of starts it off, gasses, quite a lot. So I had this, I had the deck, and I would put my vats under the deck, and also the resilience of it. I would sometimes forget a vat, or just it would get lost under the deck, and I would find it like, Oh no, that that vat was, you know, who knows how long it’s been there, to only open it and realize, oh, it’s been probably like six months, and to realize the flavors were even better. So just that resilience with the lack of care, because the poor thing was, you know, lost, but the the end result was fantastic. So that really showed me something.
Rosaria Cain 11:02
And then how did you go from there to selling it, I mean, to a bigger market?
Niccolo Fraschetti 11:07
Yeah, I just, I guess a lot of it is stubbornness. And, you know, I had a vision. The thing is that I had a vision in that moment at Whole Foods, you know, in 2018 and it didn’t happen until 2022 but I saw the end point. I knew what I wanted it to be, and every step I took from then until now was towards that goal, even if it was just writing half a business plan or a paragraph or an idea on a note, you know, and I wasn’t able to actually fully commit until 2020, but that’s, that’s how I got there. That’s how I got here. Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 11:51
Well, you have an interesting childhood, because we’ve talked about it, and so I know a little bit about it, living in New York, but being originally from Tuscany, correct?
Niccolo Fraschetti 12:02
San Francisco. Yeah,
Rosaria Cain 12:04
San Francisco, but one of your parents were from, from Italy, and one of your your parents were American, right? Your mother?
Niccolo Fraschetti 12:12
My mom, moved to Italy after after school in the 60s. I mean, she didn’t plan to move. She actually was visiting, and then met my dad and decided to stay and raise us there. But then also said, Wait, I also want to give my kids some of the other part of the world. So also brought us to California when we were very young. And then also decided, well, we also have to go back to Italy. So it was always a back and forth, but it was, I guess we were able to absorb the best of both worlds, and each one of us kind of chose our our favorite, I guess.
Rosaria Cain 12:50
Right, right? And when you were young, were you ever entrepreneurial, then? Did you ever know you would have your own business?
Niccolo Fraschetti 13:01
Looking back, yes, I think when it was a teenager, I didn’t even understand what that would mean like. But looking back, yes, I think I was born when I would always think of different ways of doing things, or what was missing in something, or I never really took the conventional path of learning and always created my own path somehow, not intentionally, just that’s the way things went. So looking back now, those were actually skills that helped me get to where I am today, I think.
Rosaria Cain 13:39
When did you know, was there a special event or a person that made you know you were going to start your own fermented foods company? I know it happened during covid, and it was kind of an evolution when you were younger. Did something happen to make that decision more real for you?
Niccolo Fraschetti 13:57
I can’t think of a person or something. I think just coming back to the US, you know, Italy is beautiful and traditional, but everything moves very slow. Europe in general, is very, very slow system. And when I moved back to California in my early 30s, all the dynamic environment of everything moving fast, everything happening, I just hit the road running. I don’t know how do you say it.
Rosaria Cain 14:25
Yeah, you hit the ground running.
Niccolo Fraschetti 14:31
Hit the ground running exactly. I just took that momentum and that just, I never let it go. So I think I tend to adapt to the kind of circumstances very easily. And if it’s Italy, and the things happening, I’ll just be like, Okay, I guess I’ll just,
Rosaria Cain 14:50
Well, it’s also hard to open a business in Italy.
Niccolo Fraschetti 14:53
Yeah, next to impossible, yeah.
Rosaria Cain 14:56
A lot of, lot of red tape,
Niccolo Fraschetti 14:58
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 14:59
A lot of rules.
Niccolo Fraschetti 15:00
Exactly, and so you resort to cheese and wine and driving around the countryside and not even
Rosaria Cain 15:07
There are worse things.
Niccolo Fraschetti 15:08
Yeah. Instead, in California, it’s like, this is what happens. Here we do stuff, we go, we make stuff, we build things, and it happens. It’s possible. So I think it kind of unleashed that spirit that was waiting for the right terrain to kind of thrive.
Rosaria Cain 15:27
And California is considered a difficult place to start a business, generally speaking for U.S.
Niccolo Fraschetti 15:34
True. Yeah. And I always say, because you haven’t been to Italy, maybe we should do like workshops, like go to Italy for six months and then come back to California and tell me about it.
Rosaria Cain 15:44
Yeah, no, I’ve heard other people say that as well. So you’ve had some highs and lows, probably since covid with this company and getting things going. Tell us about some of the good things and the not so good things that that have kept but through it all, you’ve kept it moving. You’ve kept Alive Ferments moving in the right direction. I know you went for retail strategy for a while, and now you’re doing much more online and getting and moving people to your website. Talk about that.
Niccolo Fraschetti 16:17
Yeah, a lot of the you know, at the beginning, you just kind of see a framework that’s like, okay, farmers markets, then stores, and then Whole Foods. That’s kind of what everybody thinks. It’s like, no, you can’t just set that path and follow it. You really need to take steps and then assess every step, what you should do accordingly. So we launched, we did two farmers markets, and then we launched in retail, and within six months, we were in 60 shelves, and we only had four products at the time, and that was amazing. We thought, this is so incredible. How are we already in 60 stores? Amazing. And then we realized, well, it takes a lot of effort to stay in those stores, money wise, resource wise, also just mentally. And we kind of made it go for a while, and then realized it was really an uphill battle that was with no end, unless you’re able to have a full team of people that can manage that. But it still gave us the confidence to keep going. Because we thought, okay, this is a clear signal that this is going to work. So and then we realized that having control of your customers is extremely important, because if your store is, if your product is somewhere else, it makes sense when you’re certain size, I think, but I think when you’re small, knowing your customer personally and having that connection is very important, because it gives you perspective on, like, what you’re doing right, what you’re doing wrong, and also it creates that dialog, or at least it leaves the path open for dialog, and gives you control on your pricing and on just your general supply chain. And so those were the upsides. And also creating these partnerships with, you know, industry leaders and people that are very prominent in this space, as soon as we gained some exposure, was really encouraging to, you know, you have people that are very well known and very successful that reach out to you, and you think, Oh, wow, that’s we’re nobody yet, but we already have interest as some pretty prominent individuals. And I’d say the hardest points were realizing that we had to pull out of all those doors we had in retail and making the actual move to do it, because it’s kind of, you’re so deep in that it’s it’s always painful to pull out, but it’s the healthiest move you can do. And also the biggest drawback was my co founder leaving overnight in April last year.
Rosaria Cain 19:02
He’s your brother, correct?
Niccolo Fraschetti 19:03
My brother, yeah. So that was a big one, and it took about six, seven months to kind of pick up again. But now looking back, even though it was really rough, but it shows how resilient I am, and it’s a big boost in confidence, and it’ll be even more so once everything falls in place.
Rosaria Cain 19:33
Now it’s, it’s mostly just you running your company, correct?
Niccolo Fraschetti 19:37
Correct, yeah. And then I have a lot of people that come and help as needed.
Rosaria Cain 19:42
That’s nice.
Niccolo Fraschetti 19:42
For like, production and I have really good people standing by microbiologists that are like, I’m ready when you are I’m here. I got you. We’re not leaving.
Rosaria Cain 19:56
That’s nice.
Niccolo Fraschetti 19:56
So it’s really good to have these big players standing by waiting for the time they can move in.
Rosaria Cain 20:05
So it sounds like from your story, which is really great. I’ve always been attracted to your story. We’ve known each other for a couple of years. Putting product in 60 swords was more of a status symbol, and it made you feel really, really good. But at the end of the day, it was very difficult to make money that way,
Niccolo Fraschetti 20:30
Exactly, exactly.
Rosaria Cain 20:32
Because it was absorbing all your profit to stay in those stores.
Niccolo Fraschetti 20:35
Exactly.
Rosaria Cain 20:37
How is it different, taking it and putting it all on your website, putting all of the products on your website and selling direct to the consumer?
Niccolo Fraschetti 20:46
You feel ownership, and you feel in control of it. You know, nobody will someday just decide that, oh, you discontinued, or we’re gonna change the terms and you’re left, you’re basically at their complete mercy. You know you, of course, when you sign the contract, you read it and you understand, but you never understand until you’re in it,
Rosaria Cain 21:06
Right?
Niccolo Fraschetti 21:07
So not having that doubt of like that depends on, on the whole supply chain once it leaves your door. I mean, all that can’t go wrong is like UPS loses the box. Okay? No big deal. We just hit a new box done, you know, not like, oh, the palette was left in the sun in Chicago in summer, and now you have to do a recall. Like, those things can escalate so fast. So it’s always it reduces the amount of stress in every move you make, so.
Rosaria Cain 21:38
You have a lot more control.
Niccolo Fraschetti 21:40
Exactly, exactly.
Rosaria Cain 21:42
Okay, all right, how much product are you selling on your website, and how many states is it? Is it people from around the country and around the world? How broad is it?
Niccolo Fraschetti 21:52
Mostly it’s nationwide, because anything further shipping wise gets a bit problematic with fermented foods, because they tend to off gas and expand. So we ship everything chilled, but yeah, we ship coast to coast.
Rosaria Cain 22:09
That’s great,
Niccolo Fraschetti 22:10
Yeah. And the volume now, now that we’ve been shifting our focus fully on the website, it’s pretty good. It’s pretty it’s comparable to what retail was, but the difference is that the revenue is going in our pocket.
Rosaria Cain 22:23
That’s great. No, I understand what you’re saying. A lot of people have negative things to say about those situations.
Niccolo Fraschetti 22:30
Yeah, and it’s not that distribution or big retail is bad. It’s just it needs to come after your success, unless you have piles of cash to burn. But that’s, yeah, even that I would not burn it. You need to create the momentum first, and then almost have those stores come to you and maybe say no the first time.
Rosaria Cain 22:52
Right?
Niccolo Fraschetti 22:52
Otherwise, when you’re in the different in the other position, you’re at their mercy, and they know that, and then you end up begging for business, which is not the position anybody wants to be in.
Rosaria Cain 23:03
No, well, are you in the process of looking for investors and capital?
Niccolo Fraschetti 23:09
Absolutely.
Rosaria Cain 23:10
Is that part of the plan? Okay, okay, all right. What are you looking for in investors?
Niccolo Fraschetti 23:15
Somebody who doesn’t just drop some cash in and walk away and come back when it’s ripe, somebody who really can be a stakeholder and, you know, give advice and be a part of the company would be the ideal one. But we’re open to somebody who’s also, you know, in line with the idea, and wants to just help us move forward.
Rosaria Cain 23:44
Your leadership is really tested when you’re in a situation like this,
Niccolo Fraschetti 23:49
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 23:49
Because, now it’s mostly just you. You have a lot of supporting individuals that are helping.
Niccolo Fraschetti 23:57
Exactly.
Rosaria Cain 23:58
What characteristics make a good leader?
Niccolo Fraschetti 24:01
Resilience and clarity, and being able to transmit that resilience and clarity to the team or whoever you’re working with, especially when you don’t really have a team that’s always there to train as you would normally, it’s really important to be able to not pour your whole vision out at once, because that’s going to go wrong. So being able to just focus on what’s happening now and give clarity on that and consistency.
Rosaria Cain 24:36
Has it been harder than you expected, or easier that you expected, or exactly what you expected?
Niccolo Fraschetti 24:43
Definitely harder, definitely harder. Yeah, I remember in my mind when I launched a product in 2020, end of 2021, I just thought, “Oh, by June, we’ll be profitable. Great.” You know, it changed a lot. But I think. I don’t know anybody who thought it was going to be easier. I would like them.
Rosaria Cain 25:04
Yeah. How have you been approaching your marketing? Because I’m sure that’s a key part in driving people to the website.
Niccolo Fraschetti 25:15
Yeah, it’s been tough. At the beginning, we were just kind of DIY without much skill in person, marketing in stores was our most successful because it just takes a lot less skills to actually. I mean, besides just being yourself and showing your product,
Rosaria Cain 25:36
Because you can sell it probably better than anyone, because you know that product inside and out.
Niccolo Fraschetti 25:40
Exactly, exactly, and then, you know, also finding people that would kind of mirror us and do the same. That was the biggest like results, as far as units, just because we didn’t have the skills to do like digital marketing. I tried it a few times, a DIY approach, and just wasted significant amounts of money. And thought, Okay, I don’t, I’m not the right person to do this. And so that was the Yeah. And now we’re seeing results from, like, our kind of DIY social media, going and creating, you know, leads that, there’s no certainty they came from there. But, well, you kind of do one plus one. You see like, Oh, we’ve been doing social media for a year consistently. Oh, and look at the results. Like Rosaria reached out to us to do a podcast. Probably she saw a post on Instagram, and, you know, all the other partnerships were forging. So it’s not a, you don’t get immediate results, for sure.
Rosaria Cain 26:44
Are you seeing, like a steady increase in your in your site traffic and sales?
Niccolo Fraschetti 26:51
Yeah, definitely, definitely, since the focus has shifted more towards digital, you’ve seen a pretty good I mean, haven’t even started, we have a bigger plan lined up, and we haven’t even started that yet. So it’s all very exciting. We’re like, ahead of the way, kind of like, take your breath through your stretching. So almost time to jump in. I think I kind of a warm up now, I think.
Rosaria Cain 27:23
It tests us all when you have your own business.
Niccolo Fraschetti 27:26
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 27:26
And I think, I think when you don’t have a lot of team around you, it it’s all you, and so you have to be on all the time. I know you’re doing a lot with the startup community in San Diego.
Niccolo Fraschetti 27:39
Yeah.
Rosaria Cain 27:40
And the investment community in San Diego, have they been supportive about your problems?
Niccolo Fraschetti 27:44
Very supportive. Yeah. The startup community in San Diego is very supportive, even though it’s mostly biotech focused. But it doesn’t matter. It’s not definitely not backstabbing. It’s very inclusive, and it’s a bit more like my success is your success attitude.
Rosaria Cain 28:02
That’s nice. What advice would you give others that are embarking on the same path?
Niccolo Fraschetti 28:10
I would say just don’t wait until it’s perfect to start and learn by doing is the best way. Of course, you want to have a rough plan to follow, but waiting till it’s perfect, you don’t know what perfect is, so go and then, you know common sense is not always common sense as well. That’s a very good one to keep. Common Sense is not it’s not very common.
Rosaria Cain 28:42
I love in Italian that there’s no such thing in common sense. It’s because common sense is not common, right?
Niccolo Fraschetti 28:50
It’s not. No.
Rosaria Cain 28:51
It’s very unusual. So I give you credit for that. As you’re looking ahead in the future, what do you see happening in the next few years?
Niccolo Fraschetti 29:02
I see the company growing substantially, with a lot of good players coming on board to really make it take off where it’s supposed to be, and becoming somewhere in between supplements and food. You know, like food as medicine is kind of a position in between food and biotech and pharma and supplements, but not as we you know, supplements most of the time. It’s all like fillers or marketing claims, something that does not need marketing, something that people say, I don’t need you to sell this to me. I know this is good for me. Thank you. That’s the goal.
Rosaria Cain 29:43
Is there a lot of press on fermented foods right now? I’m not seeing a great deal.
Niccolo Fraschetti 29:52
More and more so, yeah, not much, but it is getting more mainstream than it was, for sure. I’m not sure how long trends take to take off, like kombucha. I remember kombucha when I was a kid. It was this kind of gross looking blob on my mom’s fridge, which we thought was vinegar.
Rosaria Cain 30:11
She was an early adapter, it sounds like.
Niccolo Fraschetti 30:13
Yeah, but nobody liked it. It was vinegar, we thought why. And then suddenly, now it’s in every liquor store, and so I haven’t pinned down where that shift happened or how long it took for it to become this weird vinegar jar to a pop soda.
Rosaria Cain 30:37
Are there any trends you see that worry you looking at either the national marketplace or the current way people are doing business, is there anything that gives you concern?
Niccolo Fraschetti 30:51
Um, I haven’t seen anything very… I see mostly I see very good trends kind of brewing in consumers, especially after covid. I see a lot of kind of shifting back to the roots and simplifying. The only trend I could see, which I actually already acted on, is just retail space and bigger kind of channels becoming harder to get into. The barriers to entry getting higher and higher. Because, like, if you look at, for example, Pepsi, they have their chips aisle in a store. There’s no other brand, they say no, like you put a kettle chip in there, like you’re out, like you can’t do that. So I see retail space, especially the ones that we see as premium natural space is becoming more and more saturated with bigger players that don’t want the smaller ones in. But then again, with digital and online shopping, that is something quite easy to navigate around.
Rosaria Cain 31:55
I think it’s never been easier. So when you’re not working, which is all the time, right? I mean, how many hours are you at right now?
Niccolo Fraschetti 32:05
100 a week? I think I haven’t counted or estimated.
Rosaria Cain 32:08
I thought, yeah, like whenever you’re away, you’re working.
Niccolo Fraschetti 32:12
Yeah, pretty much.
Rosaria Cain 32:14
Sounds like it. Is there anything you do to keep you grounded with all this. It’s so un Italian of you.
Niccolo Fraschetti 32:22
I know, but remember, I was raised by a California mom in Italy, so.
Rosaria Cain 32:27
Well I know, yeah, yeah.
Niccolo Fraschetti 32:29
And my entrepreneurial spirit has been waiting all its life to do this, so it just wasn’t in the right spot. But yeah, I just exercise is the biggest sanity keeper, or, you know, the biggest activity in hot yoga, and what I call meditating by doing, you know, I’m not really able to stop and meditate. It’s more like doing something I enjoy that could be tempting a plant or cooking or even a DIY project, anything that’s you’re able to focus on that thing only that really clears my mind more than any attempt to meditate quietly.
Rosaria Cain 33:16
Makes sense. What do you think you’ll be doing 10 years from now?
Niccolo Fraschetti 33:24
I see myself keeping this project growing so like now, I say, lay out this groundwork, and let’s say we’re at level one or three, and in 10 years, I just see myself evolving it in ways that I don’t even know yet, but, you know, kind of adapting it to the current environment. So, for example, from medicine to food as medicine, and, you know, maybe in the future, there’ll be some other trend in people, and trying to just integrate fermentation into it somehow, or just the benefits of the microbiome.
Rosaria Cain 34:14
Do you see yourself being more of a CEO where you’ll have full teams under you so you can just make decisions and think about things?
Niccolo Fraschetti 34:26
Yeah, I feel like more of a connector. I mean, I’m a doer, and I mean, I will always be a doer, but I think my spot is the connector. And, you know, connecting the right people to create the right things and having ideas and making them happen and running them by someone who will demolish the idea so we can rebuild it stronger. Yeah. But for now, you know, I’m making sauerkraut, mopping the floors, cleaning the house, doing the marketing. Plus all the ideas. But that’s how to do it, because then you know from the ground up, you know exactly what every step means.
Rosaria Cain 35:06
Right?
Niccolo Fraschetti 35:07
That’s also, I think, a huge part of being a leader, is knowing exactly how to ring them up, right, but also how to, you know, set up your infrastructure during all that.
Rosaria Cain 35:21
I think so too. What about you would surprise people?
Niccolo Fraschetti 35:25
I think the biggest surprise is that I didn’t go to high school. Dropped out of high school, 15 years old, and I started traveling in agreement with my parents. They kind of said, okay, just go, like, if you have to be here,
Rosaria Cain 35:40
I remember that. Didn’t you leave with, like, $20 in your pocket?
Niccolo Fraschetti 35:45
Five, five, yeah.
Rosaria Cain 35:46
Five dollars in your pocket!
Niccolo Fraschetti 35:48
Yeah, 5000 equivalent. Well, actually, $2.50 the exchange rate. But yeah, because I just knew that I could do it. I worked a couple of times in the summer, and I realized, Oh, this is pretty easy. And yeah, school just wasn’t. I didn’t have the vision of me finishing school. I just couldn’t see it happen. So I thought, I’m not wasting my time doing this. And it took a while to make my parents agree with heck, when you’re 15, you don’t leave. You keep trying.
Rosaria Cain 36:22
How? Well at age 15.
Niccolo Fraschetti 36:24
Yeah. And so it was a few months in negotiations, but then I just made them understand, like it’s not happening, like you can keep me here, it’s still not gonna happen. So let me go.
Rosaria Cain 36:36
How many continents did you visit?
Niccolo Fraschetti 36:39
I’m just missing Australia.
Rosaria Cain 36:43
That’s it? You’ve been to, all the other continents.
Niccolo Fraschetti 36:47
Yep.
Rosaria Cain 36:47
That’s incredible.
Niccolo Fraschetti 36:49
Yeah. And it was all working with scuba. Or, you know, rarely I would go on, like, on a wee vacation. It was always, like, two or three months.
Rosaria Cain 37:00
How did you become a scuba instructor? Isn’t that hard to?
Niccolo Fraschetti 37:03
Not really. I literally picked it because it was, I was on an island in the Caribbean, and I thought, okay, what can we do here? And it was either A, B or C. And I picked scuba because I thought that sounds better than B and C. It took about a year of working in a dive shop and getting the education and to become good, yeah, I’d say about a couple years of time underwater with people.
Rosaria Cain 37:27
And you were a scuba instructor all around the world.
Niccolo Fraschetti 37:34
Yeah, yeah, from Yeah, mid 20s to late 30s. And that allowed me to, yeah, it’s travel and learn everything you know languages.
Rosaria Cain 37:41
Right? How many languages do you speak?
Niccolo Fraschetti 37:49
Six as of now, yeah.
Rosaria Cain 37:52
So impressive.
Niccolo Fraschetti 37:53
Yeah, fluent in five. And unfortunately I don’t there’s not much space to practice French and German in California, but yeah, and that was teaching scuba, but we’d have to teach people in different languages and sometimes at the same time, so it kind of became all one big language.
Rosaria Cain 38:16
That’s amazing. Well, it sounds like Alive Ferments is going to be easy compared to speaking six languages.
Niccolo Fraschetti 38:25
Yeah, I don’t know.
Rosaria Cain 38:27
And aliveferments.com is how people can look at what you have to sell and order
Niccolo Fraschetti 38:34
Correct
Rosaria Cain 38:34
what they need. And I really appreciate you taking the time to walk through your incredible story and your accomplishments and where you’re headed and fermented products and why people should really look for that.
Niccolo Fraschetti 38:49
Me too. Me too. And thanks so much for this, for guiding me through this really good experience.
Rosaria Cain 38:56
Okay, bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai