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CATCHING UP WITH THE CONTESSA
The Barefoot Contessa keeps changing my eating habits. When Ina Garten opened her food shop on Newtown Lane in 1985 many of us who worked in East Hampton Village forgot about the things we were supposed to be doing in the morning, the responsible things, and began hanging out at a bench in front of the shop, drinking coffee, eating cupcakes, talking about the Zen implications of lobster salad, and waiting for lunch.
Garten then gave away the secrets of why her particular style of easy, relaxing food modifies our behavior. Well, she didn't exactly give away the secrets. In 1999, she published her first Barefoot Contessa cookbook, and it got us a lot closer to the stove than our destiny had predicted. In 1996 she turned over the Newtown Lane store to two key employees (sadly they closed it in 2004) and focused on her writing. Last November she published her fifth cookbook "Barefoot Contessa at Home" which immediately became a
#1 New York Times bestseller. She now has over 5 million books in print.
Starting in 2002, she made her easy entertaining recipes even more accessible though her show on the Food Network. Filmed in and around East Hampton, it has almost 6 million viewers a week. She also writes a monthly entertaining column in House Beautiful magazine.
Now, with a new line of packaged foods called Barefoot Contessa Pantry, the seduction is total. Any resistance to cooking melts as readily as some of her Decadent Fudge Sauce in your mouth. I recently caught up with Garten and Frank Newbold, her partner in the food business, to find out what is really going on in and out of those colorful boxes.
She and Newbold, who have been close friends for years, developed the idea over lunch one day, and less than a year later had their products on shelves all over the country. Manufactured and distributed by Maine-based Stonewall Kitchen, the 50+ products in the line are the ready-made or easy-to-make versions of Garten’s classic recipes. By last fall, before their first anniversary, they had sold over one million packages—in an industry where only one business in ten ever breaks the million dollar mark. And based on the orders at last month's Fancy Food trade show in New York, this is just the beginning. The products are now sold at over 3,000 specialty food stores nationwide, in Canada and even at Bon Marche in Paris.
The theory behind it is elegantly simple. "Sometimes even the Barefoot Contessa doesn't have time to cook," says Garten. "With our products, you add a couple of fresh ingredients and pop it in the oven. Your house smells fantastic and your family thinks you're a genius." The partners did actual blind taste tests and couldn't tell the mix from the baked-from-scratch. The best seller by far? Her iconic Outrageous Brownies. Other favorites are Coconut Cupcakes, Indonesian Ginger Chicken marinade, and Blood Orange Marmalade. The Homemade Marshmallows paired with Sinful Hot Chocolate mix were the surprise hits of the last trade show.
Newbold, who is a top-producing real estate broker at Sotheby’s (referred to as "his day job") handles the marketing end of Barefoot Contessa Pantry, although he and Garten work so effortlessly and informally as a team that you can hardly talk about lines of responsibility. "I get to taste the brownies. Who wouldn't want that job?" he says. The two partners still have their business meetings at the round table in Garten’s kitchen, usually sampling versions of a new recipe.
Garten’s entertaining philosophy carries over to her business life. "Do something you love. Do it well, do it with friends, and have some fun. How easy is that?"
See the full line of Barefoot Contessa Pantry products at barefootcontessa.com.