Jarred pasta sauce brand Sauz is experiencing a meteoric rise, entering 1,900 Target stores across the US today, Sauz cofounders Troy Bonde and Winston Alfieri revealed to me. Additionally, Sauz will increase its shelf space in Whole Foods Markets, expanding from about 60 stores in its Southern-Pacific region to more than 500 stores nationally beginning in January.
The Gen Z cofounders, based in Pasadena, CA, launched Sauz in July of 2023 with two varieties, Hot Honey Marinara and Summer Lemon Marinara, during a test run in Los Angeles’ small upscale grocery chain, Erewhon. Come January, Sauz will offer a total of seven varieties, including Cracked Pepper & Parmesan, which hits Target shelves today in tandem with today’s announcement.
The Covid Kickstart
Bonde and Alfieri kickstarted the company before they even realized that they were kickstarting the company. While the childhood friends and University of Southern California classmates were home during their sophomore years due to the covid pandemic, they raised a pretty penny which soon became their seed money for Sauz. Bonde sourced a hand sanitizer machine which doubled as an infrared thermometer–selling it to public schools. “I put on a suit and a tie and I went to Glendale Unified,” Bonde recalls. “That evening, we had a signed purchase order that was more money than we’d ever thought we’d see…$15,000.” He met up for breakfast the next day with his best friend to share the news. Alfieri paid; Bonde never had a credit card before. “I’ll show you how to get a credit card, but let’s partner,” Alfieri told him. They relentlessly emailed more school districts, eventually earning nearly seven figures.
As they ruminated on ways to seize the momentum once covid died down, they would go to their local Whole Foods to buy ingredients to make pasta and red sauce, which became a ritual, perhaps due to Alfieri’s Italian roots, as the two became roommates. “I love making it homemade,” Alfieri says. “I thought jarred sauce was so weird.”
“We’d walk by the beverage aisle and see Olipop and Poppi and these bright, colorful, exciting brands.” In the pasta sauce section, Bonde says, “visually, there was nothing that appealed to us.” They took $200,000 of the earnings from the covid product to develop a brand that they felt would innovate the sauce section. “Our parents were like, what are you guys doing? Starting a tomato sauce? We’re like, yeah,” Alfieri remembers. “We think there is room for a new tomato sauce.”
A Product Infused With A Gen Z Mindset
The sauce brand that the pair set out to create was one that was fun and took a risk. They introduced color (aside from red) to the sauce aisle. Walking past it now, you can’t help but stare for a bit at Sauz on the shelf. The solid-colored labels pop out and draw the shopper in, inviting them to pick it up and take a closer look. They then feel the soft, matted label, and read at the bottom of the label, “Not your grandma’s pasta sauce,” a statement that pasta sauce brands often preach the opposite of.
These vivid labels, amid a sea of tan-colored jars, form a rainbow on the shelf and symbolize unseen flavors in this section of the grocery store. Bonde and Alfieri landed on Hot Honey Marinara and Summer Lemon Marinara after years of testing, later adding Wild Rosemary Marinara and Creamy Calabrian Vodka to the lineup. They’re familiar flavors that consumers would understand, yet unfamiliar in the medium of a pasta sauce so to provide a new experience. These varieties proved that Bonde and Alfieri had their pulse on the culture. As Brooke Gil, Whole Foods Markets Global Category Manager for pasta sauce, tells me, “the recipes were speaking to trends that I’d seen in other categories.”
Mike Messersmith is the former President of Oatly North America and an investor in Sauz through Coefficient Capital, and says, “you don’t see this type of brand innovation in a legacy category…I attribute it to their youth and defiance of traditional flavor conventions.”
Bonde and Alfieri aimed to create a health-conscious sauce that didn’t compromise taste. “The brands that were trying to innovate too much on the health-forward side were taking a step forward and then two backward,” says Bonde, leading to Sauz’s decision to stick with olive oil instead of replacing it with something like avocado oil, despite its fewer calories. The ingredients list on a jar of Sauz has no mention of any additives, a general anomaly in the sauce section. “One co-manufacturer wanted to take us to market with a tomato that included calcium chloride,” Bonde says. Although it would have cost less, “we said, no.”
A study conducted by YouGov on behalf of Whole Foods Markets released last month proves that the pair knew what they were talking about, revealing that 80% of Gen Zers feel that the quality of a product is important in order to buy it and 70% are willing to spend a premium on high-quality food.
Sauz’s Rapid But Strategic Expansion
Sauz prides itself on being a local brand–dubbing itself ‘Southern California Italian Sauce,’ which also speaks to the global fusion aspect that many chefs and restaurateurs are embracing lately. Bonde and Alfieri considered launching Sauz in farmers markets. But the opportunity to launch locally in Erewhon provided two variables they couldn’t turn down: data and awareness. “Erewhon is the place to be seen,” says Alfieri. “We started demoing in every store as often as we could…that was our consumer testing.” Erewhon initially ordered about 100 jars of the two varieties to place in the top corner of the shelf. Today, four Sauz varieties take up significant real estate in Erewhon’s sauce aisle.
Sauz launched in Whole Foods in April, right before completing its seed round of funding, in which the company raised $4.8 million. Dozens of H-E-B grocers in Texas and Raley’s grocers in and around Northern California have since starters carrying Sauz too. “Whole Foods is our natural partner. H-E-B was our initial test in conventional and Target is our test in mass,” says Bonde.
With thousands of Target stores now carrying Sauz, the brand is no longer one of coastal America. “We want to appeal to the consumer in the Midwest…that wants to excite their family,” Bonde explains. “75% of Americans now live within 10 miles of a jar of Sauz.” And while shoppers are in the grocery section of Target, the product is hard to miss–not just because of the colorful labels, but because they’re shelved on the prominent sidecap display.
For a year-old company of three staff employees to launch in thousands more stores is a steep task. ”I love seeing retailers taking chances on brands that don’t have massive infrastructure and taking bets on what they think consumers want,” Messersmith says. Sauz has had several months to prepare to scale, and seems to be ready for it, with tomatoes and other ingredients already contracted through 2025. “When a supplier is new to the scene, I like to start them out with a smaller footprint,” Gil says. “It gives them time to build that solid foundation to get comfortable with production, scheduling…for a greater chance of success when they do expand nationally.”
Both Target and Whole Foods worked with Sauz to collaborate on new flavors. While Cracked Pepper & Parmesan launches in Target today for an initial run, Sauz will also release two additional varieties in January that will be exclusive to Whole Foods through May 15. One variety will be another “innovative” red sauce while the other promises to be “indulgent” and “creamy.”
Competing With Legacy
In its first six months at Whole Foods in the Southern-Pacific region, Sauz is holding its own. “Sauz has outpaced a longstanding premium pasta sauce competitor in Whole Foods Market stores where both brands are sold, and with the same number of sauce options, selling 40% more jars than the competitor,” according to internal Whole Foods data.
Rather than simply competing with other sauce brands, Sauz believes it is driving a whole new demographic to the category, largely because of its Gen Z-minded presence on social media, led by Sauz Head of Brand, Camryn Frederickson. “They bring a lot of people in by telling their story on TikTok. I’ve seen these guys work the aisle, shelf by shelf, just talking to consumers,” Messersmith says. “CPG needs stuff like that.”
“People are looking for something new,” he adds. “[Bonde and Alfieri] are creating something that feels different,” which makes it compatible for Whole Foods Markets. According to Gil, “discovering new products is one of the top reasons that customers come to Whole Foods.”
Bonde and Alfieri are a legacy of their own; their grandparents were friends too. “We’re literally like brothers,” Bonde says. The legacy of Sauz is unapparent right now, but the story so far is one that very few others can relate to. As Gil says, “I see this brand going the full mile.”
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