Episode
Carbone Fine Food on Becoming America's Fastest Growing Pasta Sauce | Eric Skae
- Podcast
- The Perfect Bite
- Published
- Mar 26, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2946
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Summary
Eric Skae is the CEO and co-founder of Carbone Fine Food, the fastest growing pasta sauce brand in America. In just five years, Carbone Fine Food has gone from zero to over $130 million through the register, adding an average of 156,000 new households every single month. And before that, Eric ran Rao's, where he took it from the number six pasta sauce brand in America and set the foundation that would eventually make it the number one premium sauce in the country. In this episode, host Sarah Perkins sits down with Eric for one of the most candid, educational, and genuinely fun conversations The Perfect Bite has ever had. Eric doesn't sugarcoat anything— not the $3.2 million personal loss he absorbed when his first brand, New Leaf Iced Tea, went through hard times, not the shareholder battle that forced the sale of Rao's, and not the very specific competitive mindset he brings to a category he has now shaped twice. What makes Carbone Fine Food special isn't just the branding. It's all about the product. Open kettle cooking. Italian tomatoes from southern Italy. Monthly taste sessions with chef Rich Torrisi. Eric personally tasted every single batch in year one, logging 100,000 miles on United without leaving the country. That obsession with quality is the moat and he knows it! This conversation covers the full picture: The origin story of building Carbone Fine Food from a handshake deal with Chef Mario Carbone to shelves in five months, why the brand's marketing flywheel is PR, event, and social rather than TV spend, how Costco became their biggest trial driver, what he thinks about the premiumization of pantry staples, and what's coming next, including a brand new Italian chili crunch launching in July that he previewed for the first time right here on The Perfect Bite…