From a $3 Million Loss to running a $80 million Brand, Eric Skae of Carbone Fine Foods

Jordan Buckner: [00:00:00] Welcome to start to scale podcast. I'm thrilled to introduce today's guest, Eric Skae, who is a CPG industry veteran with over 35 years of experience. Eric is currently the CEO of Carbone Fine Foods, the premium pasta sauce, offshoot of New York's iconic Carbone restaurant. Over his career, Eric has led and scaled multiple consumer brands across beverage, snacks, specialty foods, think new life, iced tea, Iceland spring water, Ralph's specialty foods, where he took over a CEO and led the company through a rebrand and exit.

And with that track record, Eric really knows a thing or two about taking the startup and scaling it to new heights. So in our conversation today, We'll be diving into actionable insights on everything from crafting growth strategies for emerging brands to the everyday experience of building a brand in 2025 and how it's changed over time.

This is going to be a dynamic insight pack discussion for any founder looking to scale up the brand. So let's jump right in Eric. Welcome to show the day. 

Eric Skae: Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. 

Jordan Buckner: We were just talking before [00:01:00] we hit record on how the industry has changed, right? You scale multiple brands.

I love to know from your experience how things are different now running Carbone Fine Foods than throughout the rest of your career. 

Eric Skae: So I think, you know, in today's environment, it's progressively gotten worse. You'd need a lot more money. that's really just the answer. there's no other answer.

Like I used to think, ah, you want to scale a brand. You want to want to build a brand. It's just back in the nineties ago, but go raise 5 million bucks, right? Now, like that gets you to start unfortunately, and it's an unfortunate reality. I mean, don't get me wrong, you can bootstrap and start smaller, but you gotta be crafty.

You gotta be smart. And the main thing I think that any brand has to think about is how do I build a data story? And that data story has to, it has to think about units per store per week. In the past, you could get there just on, you know. Open it up a a bunch of stores and you're selling a half a unit per store per week.

And no one was really doing the digging. Now they are. So now it comes down to that data story. So I don't care if it's one store. Go prove that one store can beat the heck out of your brand. Then go to two [00:02:00] and go to three. But the data story is critical. And it's look, it's why I'm on spins now, right?

And I'm big enough where I could be with another provider. But you start with spins. Why it's the place where you can build your data store. You, you know, you can go to the fresh market, you can go to sprouts, which are national big chains, but if you're fortunate enough to get in, it's a place to build a data story to prove the rest of the market that it works.

Jordan Buckner: Yeah. That's so important because I think that's just the core building in your brand is having that product market fit where you can see the velocity of the product moving, consumers are picking it up. And one thing I noticed just looking at the brands that you've worked with are the products are very.

Approachable, but also premium, right? They're not necessarily a me too product. They're like very high quality products that have a unique story behind it that can sell. Well, I've talked to, and even may talk to a lot of brands who have products that did not have so strong sell through. And even myself with my brand TeaSquare that I launched, there's a line of Tea infused energy snacks.

Right. And like, what the hell are those? I've been saying, I realized that like. No one came into the store looking for [00:03:00] a tea infused energy snack, and it was really expensive and challenging to get people to actually pick up and buy our products. And so, as you've looked and worked in different products over your career, how did you choose which products to you in which business to work for and which products to start yourself?

Eric Skae: No, I think with. Picking products, I was just fortunate starting my career, you know, my first real job, I started as a distributor, but sold that business, but I was a distributor for Arizona iced tea. It's where I learned growth and it went from 0 to 500 million in 3 years and in fast growth environments.

A lot of times people don't last, but it doesn't mean they weren't good at their job. It's just a different skill set. Right? So I developed this massive national network, which that was great. To have very early in my career. And that network has kind of just been good to me. So I ended up going, my shoulda, coulda, woulda, I went to Hanson's before monster.

I was one of Mark Hall's first recruits and went in as VP of national accounts. So I got one in, in a senior position and left because I was selling stuff that just wasn't working, you know, not realizing he was going to come up with a monster. But I, you know, Arizona T the one thing it did do is turn me [00:04:00] into a growth junkie.

So I look for things that I felt. Could grow. So like fresh Samantha was at about five million when I went there, but it was on fire and it was growing. And then two and a half years later, it was at 45 million. It's old naked juice. It was pretty evident. Like that one could work. I put the first bottles of naked juice on the shelves in the East coast.

But like, you know, imagine in 2001, you're walking around with a shirt that says naked on it and people are just looking at you like they're really reading your shirt, trying to understand what's going on. And like we did a naked beach ball at a NYU senior day and I got, I got caught. Like you got to remember this is 2001.

You didn't have the internet the way it was today. And I'm getting calls from all over the country from college campuses going, how do we get naked beach balls? You know what I mean? So just, I think , the feeling that I get from growing something fast kind of pushed me in the direction I have.

And then I started a couple of my own brands and Iceland spring was a slow grower and my partners wanted to go slow. So we became the number two imported water and natural foods nationally. And I was trying to find stuff to do because it was boring to me. So like, I ended up doing an own label deal with Walgreens going [00:05:00] to Walgreens today in 2005.

For I created Iceland pure with them. It is still on the shelves. I think if you go in a vitamin shop, you'll see a co branded Iceland spring new leaf, which I didn't do. I inherited that a guy named Steve Kessler who's in the industry and Eric Schnell made that happen with Iceland, but I inherited that.

I was able to kind of grow it and use that model for Walgreens because I had a fine growth. And then I did new leaf iced tea. And that's where I had my little crash and burn where, you know, I. Personally took a $3.2 million. I had $3.2 million in lost carry forwards as of 2012, right? You know, I, I thought I knew everything after 15 years and I could bootstrap it and newly, if I did create pace, I had it at $10 million annualized within a couple years, put on 137 distributors in two.

2008 came and I struggled to 2010, 11 trying to keep it alive. You know, and, like, this is where I feel for entrepreneurs of making that decision of what do I do? Unfortunately for me, my decision was made for me. My board decided to bring in someone they thought was going to turn it around, gave him a bunch of money.

And as far as I'm concerned, he did nothing with it, but neither here nor there. You know, but then back to [00:06:00] growth, I consulted and I looked for early stage, but I also looked for, for big stage and I consulted for five years. I did 45 different projects. And then I got the rails call, which was growth again.

And I went to Boston growth again, and then carbon growth again, 

Jordan Buckner: I love that. I mean it seems like something that you've been able to spot and identify. What would you say to founders who have their product and market, but it's just not seeing the velocity or sell through that they would.

With expect or that they need to grow , does it just need more time? Do you think they should critically look at like what problem they're solving? Like, how do they work towards correcting that? 

Eric Skae: I think you got, I mean, look, I start every project with doing a complete dive on what the category is and where my position in that category is.

And, you know, as you can tell from my history, except for Arizona, I see. It's always in the top of the market. And if you know, so like, I can't say I'm an expert across the board but on premiumizing categories and premiumizing brands, I am. So if you look at pasta sauce, for example, the category has been premiumizing for a number of years.

It was slow. When I took over Rayos in 2016, I didn't really have a competitor. Right. So that was [00:07:00] sitting there and it was waiting. So you've got to identify like where your space is in the marketplace. I mean, read Dr. Richardson's book, without a doubt, like really dive in and understand those four P's break down those four P's.

I do it now. I do it now consistently with Carbone and, you know, we're a company that's approaching a hundred million now, right. in less than four years, but I still break down where are we hitting the rails? where do we got to grow? Where do I see units per store?

You know, for a week slipping and like my team gets nuts with me because I'll do a spins review and I'll go eight hours. So I'll go six hours and I'll start asking questions about like little chains that they don't expect the questions from like McCaffrey's market would be a perfect one paid out of Pennsylvania, very small store.

But I'm on my team about where are we with McCaffrey's market? Luns above, but where are we with Luns and Bireleys? They're very important chains and , they're foundational chains. They build brands. So like pick your spot, figure out what your spot is, beat that spot until you feel like you're confident to go to the next thing.

And if it's not working, like really break down to four P's and find out why. 

Jordan Buckner: So here's a question that I had as well. You took over, ran, exited Rao’s. A [00:08:00] lot of people looking at that would say the pasta sauce market has, you know, premium. Leaders, right? A lot of advisors will say, look at the white space, go to something new where there's not competition, but you helped launch Carbone.

So why did you see there's still opportunity there in a space where pasta sauce was a, you know, high purchase category? There are a lot of competitors on the shelf. it's tight. Why did you still think there's opportunity to win there? 

Eric Skae: So, you know, just think about ice cream or craft beer, things that premiumized way before.

Pasta sauce did pasta sauce just started premiumizing with rails, which in 2016, when I took it over, it was a 25 year old brand or two, you know, 2017, it was a 24 year old brand. So, you know, I love to call these things 20 year old overnight success stories, right? They built this very, very, very strong foundation, but they had no competitor in the over 7 sauce.

Matter of fact, I think I was driving 52 percent of the overall growth in the pasta sauce category in 2017 and rails, right? Because. The, it was premiumizing, but no one had stepped up with a brand that was [00:09:00] working like Rao’s was right. You know, and it took us a while and I can't say we're working like Ra we're number six in food in the country.

We're number two in natural and that between us and Rao’s it's value brands. So we are a solid number two in the space and growing at a hundred percent year over year still that's the category. I would love to say that I'm a genius. That was a category that was premiumizing. I recognized it and went into it.

So if you're a premium item in a category that's not premiumnizing you know, I hope you're not first to market there. Like, I hope there's other people beaten on it because you really do also need that. Like I look, I go back to coconut water. I think the success of Vita Coco was and Zico and one were because all three of them came out at the same time when we're pushing on something new, right?

So it wasn't one company's dollars building a category. It was three companies dollars building a category. 

Jordan Buckner: That's so important. You know, that's one thing that you were just mentioning, like the category is becoming more premium and a change in a consumer shift that you're writing. I would say, you know, find a movement that's already growing with or without Jim and [00:10:00] jump on that.

Right? Hopefully something that has some staying power. There is a year early and no consumers even talking about it or thinking about it. Yeah, it's very small. It's going to be a lot. More expensive and take a lot more time to build versus something that consumers are coming into the store looking for.

Eric Skae: Well, even, you know, movements that you tie yourself to from a marketing standpoint, if you look at a Red Bull or a monster, they were involved in X games a lot. Earlier, the next games became this major thing. I mean, they were involved in the nineties, right? So they got onto something that was growing with them and that's where they put their sponsorship dollars and they grew with \ that movement as well.

So I think it's important to identify when you're marketing, like, is there something like that. tough mutter would have been a good one, like five, six years ago, right? Or whatever it was. So you look at what's hot and kind of tie yourself. I think rugby is an interesting one. Always like, how do you, you know, just because it's growing, it's growing in popularity.

It's still small, but like, how do you get yourself into that? You know, kind of environment and I always go back to coconut water. they went after yoga studios, hot yoga studios, right. And they grew on a movement that was growing at the time. So think [00:11:00] that's important. 

Jordan Buckner: I love that.

I think that's really good to identify that early on and to see. If you get that attraction, if you can get that interest in the velocity there, and if that has the room to grow, 

Eric Skae: What's interesting about these things, the tough mudder or yoga or whatever, you know, like I did high yoga for 7 years.

1 year. I did 300 classes because, you know, I was running companies and you're stressing it. It was a release when you. Do that. You tell everybody about it. So if you're going to the yoga studio and you're drinking coconut water, everybody's hearing about this because you're going every day and you're obsessed, right?

So that's why that type of thing is so good. If you're training for a tough mother, you're telling everybody about it. So if you're eating something or drinking something, you're telling everybody about that. So like, that's why I like these. Things that seem to be getting traction and if you can tie to them, it's great.

Jordan Buckner: Yeah, that's so incredibly powerful. I want to dive into just your experience at bootstrapping a brand, right? You came out of some successes and you decided to bootstrap your own brand. Tell me about how that started and what the journey was like. 

Eric Skae: So I was at a company and I had an agreement that allowed me to leave and get paid.

So it was the perfect [00:12:00] opportunity because I had a paycheck for a year to start a brand. So I went out and I started, I initially started with Iceland spring water. It was already in the U S they were looking for someone to take over the brand and negotiated a deal with the owners in Iceland and just, you know, became the owner of the brand.

And I was thinking it's Iceland, you know, it makes sense. It works for water, you know, water businesses stuff. It requires a lot of money. And my Partners were very conservative, but my partners were Pepsi Iceland, but essentially it distributed 65 percent of what went into supermarkets in Iceland. So if you're a hundred million dollar business in a country of 300, 000 people, you're essentially Microsoft.

So they had a nice business there. They weren't like crazy interested in growing the U S they more wanted a brand. So I had to find stuff to do. Like I did an own label deal with Walgreens. I inherited an own label deal with. You know, vitamin shop. So those are the type of things like they did , to grow.

But then I got bored and I started New Leaf Iced Tea from scratch, you know, a couple of misses on branding in the beginning, but then got it right and really started to grow and like, oh, eight came and when, oh, eight came, I had gotten Manhattan beer as a [00:13:00] distributor for New York did 125, 000 cases that year, will just couldn't get money.

You know, like, so you know, it's tough bootstrapping a brand. And the one thing that people have to recognize, like I've been here a long time, I've been doing this a long time. And prior to getting in this business, I used to buy and sell homes. So you're always going to have an 87 crash or an 89 savings and loan crisis or a 2001.

I hope we never have that again. Right. Or a 2008 crash or a pandemic, something's going to come. Just be prepared for it. And that's why the, you know, having enough capital to manage your plans, very, very important. And if you don't keep your plan smaller until you do, I made that mistake. I'm not doing it.

I ramped betting on the come, right? Like I'm going to make this happen. You don't want to do that. 

Jordan Buckner: Well, I've seen you. been through most of the multiple cycles. I got to your life. How are you planning for those in the next ones? Now, are you doing anything different? Now knowing that those can come.

Eric Skae: You know it comes down to making sure that I have the dollars to support my growth and my business is what it comes down to. And if like, for some reason if I felt some headwinds, [00:14:00] I'd slow down growth. That's what I would do is to conserve cash. That's where I would go.

I don't feel like we're there right now with this particular brand because it's growing at a hundred and some odd percent year over year. Doesn't seem to be slowing. So the idea right now is to push. Right. Because, you know, I'm doing call it 80 million through to register and rails is doing 900 million through register.

And I'm the number two in the table behind them in super premium. There's a lot of growth. 

Jordan Buckner: There definitely is. there's a lot of challenges and headwinds , that new brands are facing right now, right? There's between distributors and retailers kind of taking, looking for profitability themselves and like taking margin to just changing consumer trends.

What would you say it takes to build a successful brand these days? What are the things that founders need to look for beyond just the velocity and maybe even so like the mindset of a founder, what is it that they need in order to push through those obstacles and find success? 

Eric Skae: Well, I mean, look, there's going to be obstacles every way you turn.

So a lot of it just comes down to how you frame things in your head. So I talked to so many young [00:15:00] founders and they're complaining about their broker and they're complaining about their distributors and they're complaining about their retailers. You've got to embrace it. You got to understand their partners.

And if you don't understand the dynamics of their economics and doing business with them, guess what? That's your fault. That's your fault as a founder. I hate to say that. I've had to come to that realization myself. It took me a long time. I, you know, I remember when I took over Iceland spring and it was already in the country.

My wife called me up going, I got good news and I got bad news. And she says, what's the good news? She goes, well, we just got our first. Payment from X, Y, Z distributor. And I said, what's the bad news? She goes, the check was for 12. It was a 16, 000 invoice. Right? So I mean, I understand that reality and I hate that reality.

but the real thing is it's been their business model forever. So if you wanted this business, you better understand our business model, right? If your broker's not getting it done, like your broker really needs to become your partner and you have to manage and guide your broker. Brokers are not just going to do it for you.

You've got to give them your plan. You've got to articulate your plans. You've got to have it very, very tight. And I always like from a early stage brand. And this is [00:16:00] like, this is something I took from me from Arizona. I stay, and I think it's really powerful. You have to create a very simple mantra that you can tell your broker, you can tell you distributors, you can tell your team that boils your proposition down to something very simple that everybody understands, because at the end of the day, we were in a very hard business.

 We've got to sell a broker on taking our brand. We've got to sell a distributor on taking our brand. We've got to sell a chain on taking our brand. The chain asks you who your distributor is. The distributor asks you what chains you have, right? You go through all this. At the end of the day, we're selling a consumer that everybody forgets about.

But if you can boil down that simple proposition and make those partners of yours, your evangelists. you win So like I was on a webinar yesterday , for insurgents brands, you know, and I was asked something about high growth brands and at Arizona T I worked for a guy named Mike Schott and Mike was really an amazing person who I learned a ton from, unfortunately he passed, but at Arizona T if you could not say this.

What do you do at Arizona state? We got eye level on the shelf next to Snapple. We price it at 99 cents. We put three signs up in every store and [00:17:00] we back it up with quality service. If you couldn't say that you were fired, but that's what we preach to our distributors and our brokers and our retailers.

Like it was a very simple plan. We knew exactly what we had to do, like, you know, so I think if you can boil your proposition down to very simple, for me, it's easy now because I did that way back then. So what do we do at Carbone? We get eye level on the shelf next to Rao’s. We get seven red sauces items.

On the shelf before we touch Alfredo's or our pizza sauce, you know, so like it's a very, and we back it up with quality service. I'm in supermarkets. I can't hang point of sale everywhere. I can't put a saltier stick around the front of a shop. Right. I'd get in trouble. 

Jordan Buckner: Well, I think that's key because a lot of.

Founders, I think themselves don't really know what it takes for their brands to succeed at store level and sounds like that's something that you've been on the ground. You've been in the stores and really identify what it takes for your brand to be successful once it hits the shelf. What types of shells?

And I think that that's a problem that a lot of early stage. I would say under yeah. A million, 5 million in sales. They're still trying to figure out [00:18:00] where's my product exactly fit in. What's that sales story? What do I need to do to get it moving off the shelf? And how do I build that repeatable launch plan?

So I know exactly like you said, get eye level, get next to rails and get a price. Right. 

Eric Skae: Starts with doing a very comprehensive breakdown of the category and then breaking it out by tier, right? So like I, you know, the tiers I tend to break out or in where I am or kind of value mainstream premium and super premium is the way I break.

It's not how spins breaks it down is how I break down the pasta sauce category because anything under 7 to me is kind of like premium. It's mid value. Right. And it's important that you break that down and I'd go to three or four tiers and really understand where you are, why you're different than that competitor.

 And like, who are you comping next to? Who do you need to be next to? Who's the fastest growing in that category? That's who you always want to be next to. Cause they've got eyeballs, you want to get some of their eyeballs. And you also got to recognize, depending on the category that a lot of the decisions are made at the shelf, right?

So you gotta be really, really careful about [00:19:00] that position. Like , we're going through we had a chain do a massive reset for us. And in a very short period of time, we had a massive, massive win. Like I'm talking about a million dollars through a register in two weeks. I'm not gonna say who, but I'm now breaking down that story.

So I can give that to my sales team and say. Bring this to your other retailers. This is what happens when you get this kind of space. 

Jordan Buckner: And this goes back to the data story that you were selling in, right? Like you're still doing this. You're it's all about data. It's all about having the right story of.

Product moving through the register and in people's homes and then loving the product. Eric, I love that. Thanks so much for being on today and sharing these insights, because I think having that simple sales story backed by data and the product that people want truly makes a huge difference in growing to be that high velocity brand.

Eric Skae: Keep it simple. I really appreciate you having me, Jordan. 

Jordan Buckner: Thanks, Eric.