Marketing its sauces a tasteful endeavor for BP restaurant’s Pasta Too
Jim Gastgeb grew up in Bethel Park and still resides there. He was familiar with Pasta Too, a Route 88 dining destination since 1983, long before he began working for it.
Three years ago, he and owner Raymond Piacquadio used their noodles and acted on a plan to expand the restaurant’s visibility. “We had wanted to bottle sauce for retail,” Gastgeb explained. “Pasta Too sauce is such a staple.”
So in the fall of 2015, Gastgeb, the company’s vice president of retail sales, launched three varieties of sauce in 26-ounce jars: tomato, roasted pork and vodka. They were placed on the shelves of 100 Giant Eagle stores in the Pittsburgh division, and a few Shop ‘n Saves and independent groceries.
Their endeavor started modestly, then the jars took off like cars – race cars. Vroom. Pasta Too, Gastgeb said, had retail sales totaling $500,000 in 2016, then about $1 million in 2017, then … “We anticipate a 40 percent increase in 2018.”
Pasta Too, according to the vice president, is marketing its premium sauce in about 700 stores in six states: Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee. He said that includes 233 Giant Eagle locations, an expanded footprint with Shop ‘n Save and all Kroger’s outlets in West Virginia and Virginia.
Launching wasn’t easy, Piacquadio admitted. “This is a premium brand, priced slightly higher,” he said. “It’s tough to know how a consumer will respond when the product is an unknown and it’s on the shelves (with so many other brands). How do we catch their eye? We wanted a Ferrari. How do we stand out?”
He did say, however, “We were confident in our flavors.”
Their sauces survived that uncertain period and now thrive. Piacquadio and Gastgeb added a 41-ounce jar of those three varieties in June, in response to a demand for a family-sized selection. In January, they started to market two types of grated cheese in jars: Parmesan and three-cheese. The labels on all of those containers bear a photo of Rianna Piacquadio as a 3-year-old. She is now 19.
“We’ve always had sauces here,” said Piacquadio, a Chartiers Valley graduate. “They’re made very similar to what my grandmother made.”
Pasto Too, he said, started out as a pizza shop with a few pasta dishes on Pittsburgh’s North Side in 1977. The business relocated to Route 88 in Bethel Park in 1983, near where a Dairy Queen now sits, before moving to its current location about two miles south along the roadway in 2002.
The restaurant has a catering operation, served by a group of colorful company vans. Now its footprint has expanded to the items topping Pasta Too’s signature dishes.