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About this seller
Fabbrica was born as a retail line of pasta kits that are easy to make at home. The business has grown into several dine-in pasta bars and delis throughout Sydney. Head Chef Scott and General Manager Marlon share thoughts on how a restaurant can diversify its revenue.
Fabbrica General Manager Marlon Kigonya and Executive Chef Scott McComas-Williams.
Dive deeper into Fabbrica’s journey from restaurant to retail
How the idea for pasta packs emerged from the pandemic
Your pasta packs started during COVID as a way to keep your staff employed at your pasta bar, Ragazzi. Can you talk us through the decision to create the new Fabbrica brand and the intention for the brand from the beginning?
Scott:
Fabbrica (or Fabbs, as we refer to it) was created to separate ourselves from Ragazzi, which was always going to be a stand-alone venue. The initial concept with Fabbrica, which means ‘Factory’ in Italian, was a glamorous spin on a pasta production facility, as well as a dining experience. We soon grew out of the production space and moved that to a larger off-site warehouse, and [we] switched the King Street venue to dining in, for which there was a huge appetite. We’ve expanded into including our bakery brand, Fabbrica Bread Shop, too, because we had a gun baker in-house. So from where it started, it looks pretty bloody different. It’s evolved and adapted with the times, which is great. I love that not everything is set in stone.
The growing pains of breaking into retail
Scott, you’re a chef and restaurant owner. Having never developed a retail product before, what were some of the challenges or unexpected moments you came up against in the R&D process?
Scott:
As a chef who’s customer-facing, you can trial something within your space, chuck it on the specials for that day, and if it doesn’t work then so be it. Whereas when you’re coming up with products that are going to take huge quantities of product to produce, packaging with lead times and labour to put it out there, you can’t throw it out there and hope it works. You need to be much more thoughtful. Cost is something we really had to keep an eye on. Produce fluctuates throughout the year, so we have to be careful with what we’re using. It has to work [in packaging], as something that can be taken home, bulk-produced, and worked for the customer at home. Shelf life has been a big learning process. For example, we came up with a beautiful green sauce with spinach and broccoli with fresh ricotta for our Al Forno range, but we couldn’t get the shelf life up enough for anyone to take it. We don’t get 5,000 packs made now before testing those things out.
Any initial surprising moments you can recall?
Scott:
I was surprised at how great the shelf life could be with fresh pasta. As a chef we make and sell it the same day, and so I was surprised when we worked with a food scientist how easy it was to extend without using any crazy preservatives. It’s all-natural ingredients.
In restaurants we know our clientele, but with retail we don’t as much. A retail item needs to sell itself and scream, ‘Buy me.’ The product itself can’t be too experimental. I can put a pasta shape that no one has ever heard of at Ragazzi and no one will blink twice ordering it. Waiters will explain it, and the diners have the confidence in us to order it. But in-store the product has to be self-explanatory.
Marlon:
When people come to our restaurants, they’re here for an experience. If they were just hungry, they’d stay at home. Our retail products cater to that market. You can see from the product mix that’s available, the sauces and flavours we’ve selected for retail are totally different to the most popular ones in the restaurant.
In restaurants we know our clientele, but with retail we don’t as much. A retail item needs to sell itself and scream, ‘Buy me.’ The product itself can’t be too experimental.
From breaking in to scaling up
The packs were picked up by Maloneys and Harris Farm Markets, and they have recently launched in Woolworths Metro stores nationwide. Was this step-up stockist approach intentional?
Scott:
Cam, our distributor, has always been pushing to grow the brand, but we had to crawl before we could walk. You’ll never go straight into one of those big guys, but it’s an obvious direction. You can have more two-way conversations with the small guys, but the large retailers have always been a goal. The progression of starting small and knowing what our capabilities are was important. Once you get into the big guys, it’s a one-strike policy. If you can’t keep up with demand it’ll be game over. Though Woollies is very collaborative and so great to work with so far. It's exciting.
Talk us through the pack design. What were the challenges and learnings there?
Scott:
We wanted a beautiful pack that was still produced efficiently. You have to take a hit on one or the other sometimes. Things take so long that you can’t just toss it out and start again once you’ve committed to something.
Marlon:
Proofreading around packaging is so important too. A menu mistake is easy to change, but when you make a mistake on something that’s designed and shipped from overseas, the ramifications are a lot bigger.
How has the creation of a retail item assisted in the other areas of your business?
Marlon:
It benefits our entire restaurant operation because the factory produces pasta and sauce at such volume that we can get a really great consistency of product in the venues, and the upskilling of chefs and menu development for Scott is a bit more streamlined. We’re catering for Sydney’s OpenAir cinema this year, and there’s no way we could have done that without the factory. We can easily scale up when needed for projects like that. From a restaurant side we can look at spaces we could never have looked at before, with no coolrooms, etc., because we have the production facility. We can control delivery schedules seven days a week.
How Square helps, from running a restaurant to selling retail
Has the way you use Square changed as your business has grown?
Marlon:
Yes. Initially we were using Square’s online store platform to sell things like wine, takeaway pasta, groceries and our early Pasta Packs. But we’ve also used it for festivals or parties off-site when we don’t have our full setup. We can now take our Square app and transport what we do in a brick-and-mortar setup to a festival site seamlessly.
You still sell your packs directly via a Square Online site. Why is this sales channel important to the growth or visibility of the business?
Marlon:
It’s really easy to use and interact with from a staff perspective. All of our venues use Square in some sense. But the online version where we sell our retail packs is really intuitive, so there’s little training needed. It sits well embedded in our website too.
Fabbrica is a proud Square seller.
Square tools that help Fabbrica grow
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