Competing as a CPG brand in the digital retail space of today can be an uphill battle. But with today's guest, Edouard Freda or Talia di Napoli, launching a frozen pizza company amidst the pandemic is a success story like no other.
On this 89th episode of The E-Comm Show, Edouard will be sharing how he started Talia di Napoli and the strategies he used to stand out in the market and win against bigger players. Tune in as Andrew and Edouard break down the secrets to building a successful consumer packaged goods brand in today's digital retail world.
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Andrew Maff and Edouard Freda
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Edouard Freda
As CEO and founder of Talia di Napoli, Edouard Freda brings a strong marketing background and innate entrepreneurial spirit to the first-of-its-kind premium frozen pizza company.
Freda was born in Belgium but moved to Rome at age three. He spent his formative years immersed in the culture and lifestyle of Italy, particularly Naples, where he frequently traveled to visit family. He moved to the U.S. at age 14, eventually earning a degree in International Business at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
It was there that Freda was bit by the entrepreneurial bug. Drawing on his longtime fascination with luxury and excellence, he created his own student-run organization from the ground up: The Georgetown Retail & Luxury Association (GRLA). Freda’s experience in GRLA led to a position in fragrance marketing at Chanel, where he worked for two years before leveraging his passion for premium products to pursue his ultimate dream of starting his own business.
He brought Talia di Napoli to life after a trip to his uncle Guido’s new facility in Naples, where handmade Neapolitan pizzas were prepared by passionate Italian pizza chefs and shipped to homes all around Italy. Inspired by his uncle’s local business and the high-end standard of excellence he fostered at Chanel, Freda decided to bring the very best Neapolitan pizza to the U.S. market like never before.
With a few close friends at the helm of operations, Freda launched Talia di Napoli in 2019. Now at just 29 years old, he continues that pursuit of excellence through a hands-on, sleeves up, approach that honors his Italian background and his lifelong tie to the city of Naples.
Freda has been named one of Entrepreneur’s 15 Young Founders and featured in Forbes, Fast Company, Fox Business, and more. He lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where he’s still actively involved in GRLA. In his free time, he enjoys sports such as tennis, skiing, and car racing, when he gets the chance to travel.
Transcript:
00:02
You know, when I venture on websites I'm like this looks interesting but I have no reason to prove it. It usually never amounts to being a good purchase.
00:09
Hey Everyone, this is Nezaar Akeel of Max Pro, Hi I'm Linda and I'm Paul, and we're Love and Pebbles.
00:17
THi, this is Lopa Van Der Merch from RASA
00:19
and you're listening to and you're listening and you are listening to The E-Comm Show
00:30
Welcome to The E-Comm Show, presented by BlueTuskr, the number one place to hear the inside scoop from other e-commerce experts, where they share their secrets on how they scaled their businesses and are now living the dream. Now, here's your host, Andrew Maff.
00:50
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The E-Comm Show. I'm your host, Andrew Maff. And today I'm joined by the amazing Edouard Freda, who is the CEO and founder of Talia de Napoli. Edouard, are you ready for a good show? Good. Hey, thank
01:02
you for having me.
01:04
I love pizza. So I can't wait for this. This is gonna be great. Super excited to have you on the show. Also a very interesting backstory. I'm not going to ruin it. I like to make sure that I don't do that right away. So I'd love to give you the opportunity. Tell everyone a little bit about yourself, obviously about the business and we'll kick it off from there.
01:22
Yeah, thank you. So tally Napoli. So we started we launched operations, really, in E-commerce in 2019. And the backstory is, it's a bit out of a movie, I was doing something completely different. Back in the day, I was selling fragrances for Chanel. So here I am, in New York, and then in Paris. And I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. It's something I knew about myself. And on a weekend to visit my grandmother in Naples as Italians do. I stumble into this pizza factory where my uncle has also been involved in a family affair. And I walk into this room and I see at the time, it was like maybe five pizza chefs that were just flipping dough into the air and screaming at each other. And in the center. There was massive cryogenic machines, big thing like kind of a movie star wars with, you know, smoke coming out like was the Han Solo machine. They were freezing and my jaw drops are different, like, what are you guys doing? And they look at me as if I'm stupid, they're like frozen pizza, obviously. I'm like, What am I what they were doing is that it's what we have today, they wanted to make a restaurant-level authentic Neapolitan pizza, that could be frozen and shipped all over the world and sold in supermarkets and online. And so the backstory is I go back and you know, a few months and I wanted to go back to live in New York, I decided to leave Chanel, to go start a frozen pizza company with if you say like that, it sounds insane. And it was at the time my family was very worried. But I come back to New York, we, we fundraise. In New York, we create a brand that dimensioned Tom DiNapoli. And in 2019, we start kind of building the business. But at the time, we're thinking, well, we don't know much about retail yet, hopefully, doesn't know anything about us. So what's the best thing to do? And for us, it was e-commerce, and we realized that they were almost no one was selling frozen pizza online. Why would you buy frozen pizza online, you know, and we knew what to do? So we had a phenomenal product, we brought it over, we got all of our FDA licenses, and so on. We start selling on E-commerce, and we get to Gerry 2020, where we're investing most of our money into building national e-commerce for frozen pizza, which is again, why we're thinking about who's going to buy frozen pizza home in 2020. Right? Obviously tragic. The pandemic
03:58
was going Yeah, well timed.
04:02
Like I knew this board of directors, you know. And, essentially, what was interesting is that when the pandemic started, you know, today the world is and will always be full of foodies, journalists, people that go into restaurants and review that well think back to that time, march 2020, those people were all out of a job. So all the editors that are writing about restaurants, all of a sudden, they're scouring the internet, desperate to find something to write about so they can keep their job. And, more than a random person, one of the editors at Food and Wine, found our pizza and the beautiful article was like, I'm ordering frozen pizza from Naples and you should too. And this is like right when everyone was locked at home not knowing what would happen the next day. And we got flooded with orders and I remember we call Italy and we tell them hey Um, we're out of inventory. They're like, what for the week now we're out of inventory. It's like, okay, for the month, no, we finished everything in two days. And we had six months of inventory on hand, two days. And the beautiful thing that happened is that our team in Italy, essentially started going door to door to hire pizza chefs in Naples, Italy at a time in when the country was in a national lockdown enforced by the police. And so there was one company in Naples, that was going around the street hiring pizza chefs, giving them permits to go around and drive in the city to pick up ingredients because you couldn't get out of your home, they would stop you. And so here you had, you know, we went from 10 Pizza chefs today we have 29. And so when we build this team of 29 Pizza chefs that make north of 1000 pizzas a day by hand. And you know, the beginning was e-commerce 2020 21, then Whole Foods noticed us thankfully, gray brand and we started growing into they were also national sprouts. But you know, we have this kind of to-channel strategy that we're going to talk a bit more about. But yet the start of the journey was just a small group of people who thought we think it makes sense to sell it online. Not because, you know, because we thought that people want products from Italy direct to their door, and what better way than to do it via e-commerce where you have more storytelling? What we did an account for obviously, was just the fact that more people would be online than when we started. But yeah, that's, that's the backstory.
06:36
That is amazing. Talk about great timing. Yes, I gotta be honest, I was originally thinking the same thing, because I had seen obviously, you started the business before the pandemic started. And I was just like, alright, well, how was it doing prior to that? Because selling frozen pizza online? I don't even know how you would have done that. Obviously, you pulled it off. For the sake of this show, we'll probably stick to mostly business-related questions. But there is one I got to ask. There's such a strong difference or there are theories around such strong differences between Neapolitan pizza in New York pizza, Philadelphia and Chicago, and California. And I just came back from California worst pizza I've ever had in my life. So I'm going to ignore that one. But how do you define a Neapolitan pizza verse like, I know, you're based out in New York, which is also highly recommended in the States? So how do you clarify the differences between the two of those?
07:36
So you know, and I'll start by saying something, I don't think there is no politician pizza that is better, or I don't think there is a type of pizza that is better than the other one. That's actually, the thing people ask me most of the time is obviously Neapolitans because I know it's different. And, you know, the beauty about pizza is that it's become international. And, you know, the difference is Neapolitan sticks to a very clear set of rules authentic Neapolitan, we actually have there's a guide, it's, it's called, with Adela pizza, there's a specific name for it in Italian. And it's the rules of how you make it the pizza down to the tee, like though the type of tomatoes where they have to be from, and that is what makes up all the pizzas rounded shape, it's using a certain type of dough. You know, typically using water from Naples, which has a big concentration, limestone is preferable because that's what gives you the authentic flavor. It has to be a wood-fired oven that has to be around certain temperatures, and so on and so forth. So the whole preparation process is what defines an important pizza. And by the way, it's not a hit or miss. Like if you don't follow that process. It's not an airport, and it will just taste different. And that's okay. Like even in Rome, which is an hour north by train to Naples, the pizza is squared and fluffier. And that's a whole different thing. New York pizza, again, has different types of cheese, a different approach to the much bigger in size in New York size pizza is you buy a slice as we did in the ham that in Italy, the Nepali New York took that. And it's fantastic. I went to school in the US. And I had Dominoes at night. And that's fine. I mean, who does not ominous at three o'clock in the morning?
09:12
That's so interesting. I didn't know that. It's so it's almost like you would say how it's like champagne, in France, but then everything else was just sparkling wine. I didn't know that. It was like everything else. It's so specific of like, it's got to come from here. That's interesting. If I ever go anywhere, and they're serving Neapolitan pizza, and I asked him, I'm bringing that up. Yeah, give me my dinner conversations like Did you know
09:34
there are a lot of great developments in New York that follow that process. I don't know if they use water from Naples. But whenever you go to Nepal's 10 restaurants in the US, you'll see that some are certified from the authentic Neapolitan body of pizza. And that tells you not that you have to be but it's kind of that you know that verify that you would get on the same little blue checkmark. Checkmark a feature Yeah,
10:01
that's awesome. Yeah. Okay, so obviously, business takes off in, during the pandemic. Fantastic. Now we're headed on out of it. Yeah, that's a new issue. So what's the approach there? How are you? What are you doing to continue to grow it? What what's, what are you doing?
10:20
Yeah, it's a great question. I wish I knew the answer. But the main thing is, first of all, the difference between the independent so during the pandemic, you would put this is also before iOS 14, right? It was the end for digital media, you would put an ad on Facebook, and we would we did a fair amount of Facebook because we tend to skew towards an older audience. Because our business has been more expensive. And your return to your role will be through the roof, your return on ad spend would be you know, 1415, whatever. And, so you can, you could kind of cruise your way at the beginning, you're just using digital marketing fed this and capital. The other main vehicle for us was press PR, which remains a very important vehicle. And we were just learning how to get good on social and Tik Tok was still up and coming. But so between press and Facebook, and social and Instagram advertising with such high returns and low spend, we were growing solid, you know, like that was, and that was back in the day where, you know, digital media is rolling through and we like you want us to make you rich. And then today is you know, that that is gone. You know, iOS 14 Really put an end to that the return on investment really went down. And so we had to get very creative. The biggest one remains for us. Today's press is visibility, we have our biggest challenge. Is the first purchase the same in retail, e-commerce, or retail? Why would I buy this more expensive pizza, particularly on E-commerce where I'm asking you to spend north of $100? Because I need to send you six or eight for the business to make sense. So why should you do that, I need to have a good story, I need to have a good website more important than I need to have some kind of brand ambassador. You know, when I venture on websites, I'm like, this looks interesting, but I have no reason to prove it, it usually never amounts to be a good purchase. So most of us go by recommendation, even as you know, basic as Amazon recommends this right? This is the better shampoo, you're like I'm gonna trust that you know. And so the most basic kind of recommendation we can get to bypass the initial purchase approach is to press where we are having more challenges. And that's why we haven't cracked the code is on social and I know social influencers do a really good job at inviting people, especially in the world of beauty fragrance where I was, you know, influencers are just taking so much business online, in the world of food. I know in restaurants, food influencers foodies travel, and the world of frozen groceries, we haven't cracked the code yet. How do I convince you to go on Fresh Direct to go until enough with a camera to go to your whole foods and buy this brand? How do I track that? And so, you know, the beauty about digital marketing was that you could track everything. Press you can I can because if I'm speaking to you, and then I can see some people going on the website and so forth, traceable influencers if they have a link, you know, coupon or they make commission traceable. But other than that, the general awareness spending is terrifying, because you know, someone will come to you like, put 20k in visibility. And then you know, maybe you'll say left, maybe you want. And so the real challenge for us is, how how do we use social? How does it generate sales for us? And what is the level of investment we do there compared to PR compared to digital media?
13:50
Yeah. I mean, that's, yeah, you let me know when you crack that. That's a that's No, that's the biggest problem too, with CPG brands, just in general, because you, you can have the world's best, you know, return policy for any other product. But as soon as you try it, if you don't like it, you're screwed. So when someone buys something online, and it's food, it's always such a big challenge to get them to actually make that jump because if someone hasn't told them as you gotta get it, it's amazing. They're not really going to believe the business because like they're biased and they're just trying to sell their food. And then the return policy is like you can return it if you didn't need it and chances are you already ate it. So that becomes a problem as well. The influencer side is interesting. So you're you haven't been able to crack the code of influencers that are willing to do like frozen grocery.
14:42
So we found the display of influencers that can do a lot of great things. We haven't cracked the code financially. We don't see the return on investment like if I put x amount and influencer there's an argument that it creates greater visibility and notoriety fantastic. But at the end of the month? am I breaking even at this yes or no? No, then you might argue whether ever you need to spend money to make money. Sure. You know, it's been spent a few years. And so like, how do we kind of what are the activities which go over simply, hey, you should try this pizza like, is it brand partnerships? In my opinion? That's a big one. Is a collaboration like, how do I make it more so than just a post that is on your feed that tells you that you should buy this pizza? How do I generate that intrinsic attraction to a brand? And you know, I don't think we're too far. But it's, you have to find an angle through some kind of Ambassador to some kind of partnership that makes people want to do the job that we're very lucky in the sense that once you do make the first purchase, our retention program is very, very good. That's where you know, I five, our team every day, our open rate on EDM is on emails, and SMS is astronomical. It's in the region of 70%. Whenever we send a promotion, people just flood the website. And so our existing customer base is loyal. We have a very good customer service team. You know, we answer every day. So it's the very good community is how do we enrich the community, so much of our business returning customers versus new customers? You know, some companies might say, well, that's a great problem to have because we struggled to retain, I struggled to, you know, make you jump to buy a frozen pizza for the first time for 100 plus dollars online, and I get it, I wouldn't, you know, unless I had a really good reason, like, why would I buy $150 worth of ice cream from this brand from Italy? I've never heard of that plant. And it's not exactly healthy food, right? It's pleasurable food, but I'm not exactly telling you, this is gonna make it skinnier, it's pizza. So it's it, it's you need to have a lot of brand traction, which is what we're trying to create.
16:47
Yeah. What kind of partnerships are you exploring?
16:51
So, you know, we're looking at partnerships with the ones that are working best for us lately, or with other food brands. And so right now we're doing meet partnerships, like prosciutto and these kinds of things, which I think are wonderful because they enrich your purchase experience. Like why don't you put you know, for sure tonight, what you put in your salad or this kind of oil, so on and so forth? The ones that we're going to start to explore more roles. So, you know, what about this oven brand? What about this pizza peel? What about this, you know, kitchen accessories? And then you know, there's a world of what is something that goes well with pizza that isn't related to ice cream? Is it you know, how can you make this fun? How can you make the purchase kind of vibrating and interesting?
17:39
What's so you're also retail obviously you mentioned and your e-commerce, a What's the split like of the business? What's kind of the one that's doing better than the other? And then be like, what's it like operating from an E commerce and a real retail perspective, because usually tends to be really heavy on one for a while, and then someone ventures into the other. But even with where you're at, it seems to be a relatively like close split unless I'm wrong.
18:05
Yeah. So the split for us, actually, at this point in time is around 5050. Which is interesting. It used to be 80%, ecommerce, 20%. Retail. And to your point at the beginning, e-commerce takes an enormous time to set up. In our case, even logistically, because, you know, we have for the distribution centers around the country, that we had to set up three-year-olds, sync them to our Shopify or E-commerce platform, in order to be able to ship and the pizza right product. So the logistical setup in E-commerce was astronomical, in retail, in the beginning, retail is slow food retail for any business because they notice you, they need to accept you, they have reset, they only take you in at certain times of the year. And at first, when you're going into a supermarket, you're selling, you know, two, three units a day. And so the volume game isn't there yet. And so return requires an enormous amount of patience and much more time. But it's kind of a train, it's slow at the start. And then once you're at cruising speed you're going and so and retailers, you know, they not a lot of retailers like to be the first one which I can respect, you know, but so when you got into when we got into Whole Foods, we go to the next week, I was like, Hey, we sell at Whole Foods, and I'm like, oh my god, I bought you guys. And so, and then we got into sprouts, and that was like, okay, national sprouts. And so, and then you start to have meetings with retailers, and they hear of you and it's such a small industry. And so over time, you know, retail, you know, skyrocketed during the pandemic, or e-commerce, then kind of plateaued and now is back at, you know, a more traditional growth. Retail was slow, so slow, and then you get those two, three accounts and it just goes off. They both require an enormous amount of maintenance because frankly, it's like running two different businesses in it. People with two different sets of skills. Our e-commerce marketing director is phenomenal at what she does. But it's not our job to know, you know, when do we submit for health reset? And when do we submit a promotion, different jobs, different industries? And so we have a retail team. And then we have an E-commerce team. And, you know, in a perfect boardroom conversation, there is cross-pollination cooperation in the race, and we want the consumer in retail to also go into commerce and vice versa. But operationally, it's a different set of skills that require different readings, different maintenance, and, and very different strategies as well. And so we're one product two channels, and you know, two teams, and it's quite interesting, at the end of the day,
20:43
are you doing anything to cross-pollinate that I would imagine like, focusing retail on a bit more of a customer acquisition and having some kind of aspect, maybe within the packaging, or on the box itself to get them back to the site? Like, what's that whole approach for like, with, like, regard to packaging, that kind of stuff?
21:02
Yeah, and so this is, you know, this is where you can get in a lot of trouble. Because the moment someone says, you know, the goal of E-commerce is to steal consumers from retail, hopefully, the hope you're always sitting. But in our case, in our case, it's really not the strategy. Because on E-commerce, we have, you know, a lot of very high-end flavors that you would struggle to sell in retail, and we have to send you six or eight of them. While in retail, we sell our you know, best-selling flavors, Margarita mozzarella, day to day, and you can buy one or two. So they don't really compete, they serve a different purpose. And so on my packaging, I'm going to tell you, hey, check us out on our website. If you want more information and more flavors. On my website, I'm like, Hey, you only want to buy one or two? Here's where you can find them at your local store. And so that way they're complementing each other? Or if that answers the question, but yeah,
21:59
so from an advertising perspective, are you focusing on regions where you're only available in retail so that at least you're getting that brand lift? And you know, someone who's near like that whole food is doing it? Or are you still doing advertising nationwide?
22:13
So my advertising is really focused around big cities for E-commerce, big centers, where the consumer that wants this kind of, you know, the product is generally focused. And then, you know, we tried to capture states that are not as dense over time. For retail, it is indeed only targeted in the regions where I know I operate. So you know, in regions where I'm not in Alaska yet, unfortunately, in retail, and things and so I don't have any digital marketing there yet. In New York, northeast, you know, at the bastion of frozen food, you know, we put all of our advertising money for retail, a lot of it goes Yeah.
22:52
Beautiful. Edouard, thank you so much for being on the show. I don't want to take up too much of your time. I know you guys are super busy over there. This was great. Really appreciate it. I'd love to give you an opportunity here to let everyone know where they can find out more about you and of course more about business.
23:05
Thank you more from other businesses certainly on our e-commerce taliadinapoli.com and for me on my LinkedIn but you know, my life is pizza Italia, the Italian website is the right place to find so
23:16
perfect. appreciate it so much. Thanks for being on the show everyone else who tuned in, of course, thank you as well. Please do the usual thing rate review, subscribe, and all that fun stuff or head over to ecommshow.com to check out all of our other episodes. But as usual, I really appreciate everyone joining Eduardo, of course, you as well. And we'll see you all next week. Y'all have a good
23:35
night good. Night. Thank you for tuning in to The E-Comm Show head over to ecommshow.com to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform or on the BlueTuskr YouTube channel. The E-Comm Show is brought to you by BlueTuskr, full-service digital marketing companies specifically for e-commerce sellers looking to accelerate their growth. Go to bluetuskr.com Now for more information. Make sure to tune in next week for another amazing episode of The E-Comm Show.