by TM Petaccia

Ten years ago, Melanie Cannizzaro-Tritten and her husband Andy Tritten started selling tomato sauce outside the old trolley barn at Atherton Market (now South End Farmers Market). A decade later, jars of Cannizzaro sauces can be found in small specialty shops and large supermarket chains from upstate New York to Colorado.

“I always made sauce,” Cannizzaro-Tritten says. “Always too much sauce. We’d give it away to neighbors, parents, everyone. Then, one day I was at Charlotte Regional Farmers Market and saw some empty stalls, and I said to myself, ‘How does this work?'”

That question led her to seek out more information from the Department of Agriculture and North Carolina State University on getting certified for acidic foods, meeting insurance and labeling requirements, and a host of other conditions. It took more than six months, mostly working weekends, to clear all the hurdles and begin selling at the farmers market.

“Regional gave us the idea, but it was all Lynn (Caldwell, Atherton Market manager at the time, now director of Farmers Market Management Services) who got us started selling at markets,” Cannizzaro-Tritten says. “Lynn was like, ‘Sure, you can sell your stuff here if you want to.'”

Thus began the Cannizzaro expansion, slowly at first, selling at other farmers markets. Then came its first commercial account, Pasta & Provisions. “I never thought they would do it,” she says. “They make their own sauce. Andy just walked in one day and asked,’Do you want to try this?’ And they let us in. That was our first account.”

More small specialty shops followed, then Andy Tritten made his first big move. “One day I just got a wild hair and walked into Whole Foods in SouthPark and asked if I could demo the store manager,” he says. “I set up our whole display and all my samples and told them all about us.” That got Cannizzaro Sauces into the Whole Foods system, expanding to Raleigh, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and Atlanta — all self-distributed. “Then we were picked up by a large distributor who flooded us into the rest of the Whole Foods in the Southeast,” Tritten says.

Recently, the couple signed a deal to put jars of Cannizzaro Marinara and Arrabbiata sauces in every Harris Teeter from Delaware to Florida, bringing the total number of stores selling their products to more than 500. “It took us years for Harris Teeter to even consider us and 18 months of grueling onboarding once they did,” Cannizzaro-Tritten says. “Now we just have to find time to do demos and go to all those Harris Teeters.”

For all the expansion, the Trittens still process every jar of sauce themselves with the help of a few part-time employees. At first, they were making sauce in the restaurant kitchen of the original Bonterra in Dilworth (now the site of the upcoming Leluia Hall). “We were only working on Sundays, 14 to 16 hours, because they served dinner Monday through Saturday,” Cannizzaro-Tritten says. “We could have never begun this business without J.D. (Duncan, Bonterra owner) letting us use the kitchen for those first few years for free.”

Six years ago, they moved into their own commercial kitchen on Westinghouse Boulevard, in southwest Charlotte. Tomatoes are still hand-cored, seeded, and roasted, then go into the pots for cooking. Basil is hand-picked off the stems. Up until last year, all sauces were made in two ten-gallon pots, running seven days a week. A recent addition of a 100-gallon kettle has dramatically decreased production time.

The Cannizzaro line currently consists of six sauces: Marinara, Mushroom Marinara, Vegan Marinara, Arrabbiata, Vodka, and Piccata. Recently a new limited-release product, Tomato Bisque, was added to their product list. In addition to store distribution, you can still find Andy selling sauce at the Uptown Farmers Market each week while Melanie sells at the Matthews Farmers Market. Another staff member sells at Davidson Farmers Market. Products can also be ordered online, where you’ll find a number of additional prepared food items.

For all the volume they’re cooking, the Trittens continue to buy from local farmers as much as they can. “I pride myself on getting the sausage from Whisper Creek Farm (Monroe, N.C.) and the peppers from Hot Pepper Herb Farm (Great Falls, S.C.),” Cannizzaro-Tritten says. During tomato season, tomatoes are primarily sourced from Cotton Hills Farm in Chester, South Carolina. Off-season tomatoes are sourced from a farm in Florida.

If you ask the couple what’s next, you’ll discover a slight variance in vision. “I would like to be across the country,” Melanie says. “I would love Whole Foods to take us national.”

“I think establishing ourselves more on the East Coast will help us out,” says Andy. “I thing we already established ourselves with Whole Foods. I would love to see us in Publix. When our ideas are crossed like this, we always sit down and we talk about it, we have our whole pros and cons thing. Then we wind up coming up with a solution.”

“She always wins.”

---

Recipes

Melanie Cannizzaro-Tritten offers up two recipes using Cannizzaro Sauces as a base: one savory sauce and one cocktail.

Puttanesca Sauce

1 qt. Cannizzaro Arrabbiata Sauce (or Marinara if you want it less spicy, or add pepper flakes)
1 small tin anchovy filets
¼ c. chopped Kalamata olives
2 tbsp. drained capers
Drizzle of olive oil

Heat a medium sauce pan, on medium heat, and drizzle olive oil. Sauté anchovies, smashing a little bit with a wooden spoon. Add the jar of Arrabbiata, olives, and capers and lower to medium low. Heat until hot and serve.

Cannizzaro Bloody Mary

4 heaping tbsp. Cannizzaro Arrabbiata (or Marinara if you want it less spicy)
3 oz. Vodka
1 tbsp. olive juice
2 tbsp. pepperoncini juice (or cherry pepper juice)
Dash Worcestershire sauce
Dash each of black pepper, celery salt, and table or kosher salt
Olives, to garnish

Put ice in a cocktail shaker. Add salts and pepper. Pour the remaining ingredients into the shaker. Shake and strain over two ice-filled glasses and garnish.