Making Meatballs a Career

From the WSJ | Apr 13, 2010 |

By GRACE
L. WILLIAMS

Daniel Mancini, 51, spent 25 years working in the apparel industry,
before turning back to a childhood passion: meatballs.

He started his career with department-store jobs in New York City
that eventually turned into management roles. A six-month executive
training program after college led him to now-defunct Gimbels department
store, where he also served as a manager. Mr. Mancini held posts at a
variety of other stores, like now-defunct Alexander's department store
on 59th Street and Sasson Jeans before he was recruited to work in sales
for a junior collection company that launched in 1986 called Ultra
Pink, where he rose through the ranks to become president.

"I love the fact that it's very creative and wherever I was I always
had my hand in on design," says Mr. Mancini of the fashion industry.

4 Elbows, LLC

'Meatball Dan' Mancini

But as his career played out, Mr. Mancini began
to wonder what might be next. It was memories of cooking alongside his
grandmother Anna Mancini that led to a second act.

Some of Mr. Mancini's earliest memories involved helping his
grandmother in the kitchen. As he grew up, he became Anna's right hand,
helping her shop for groceries and cook the recipes she had memorized.
At 15, he asked her to teach him exactly how to cook her dishes. "I just
felt that if I didn't learn all the recipes, they'd be gone," he says.
None of the 25 recipes used exact measures and he never wrote them down
either.

In 2008, long after Anna had died and he had made his name in the
garment industry, Mr. Mancini was looking for a new challenge. He had
often cooked his grandmother's recipes for friends, earning the nickname
"Meatball Dan." It was after one such meal that he decided to create a
business that brought the family dinners he had enjoyed as a child to
people outside his social circle. In a nod to his favorite dish, the
meatball, Mr. Mancini went into business with his grandmother's recipe,
creating what became "Meatballs and Sunday Sauce."

At first, he wasn't sure what to do with his idea. Mr. Mancini sent
an email to a local New Jersey market called Eden Gourmet (a division
of Garden of Eden) about his product and was invited to bring them by.
Mr. Mancini cooked up a batch of his grandmother's meatballs in his own
kitchen and served them up to the manager. After serving the meatballs
to Eden Gourmet management, Mr. Mancini knew he was on to something, but
wasn't ready to quit his day job without financial backing. Once he
had a working recipe, Mr. Mancini approached Carl Wolf, who lived in the
same central New Jersey town as he did and who is the former chief
executive of Alpine Lace Co., a deli cheese company, with his idea for a
product that he named "MamaMancini's."

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"He came to us and said he had the world's
greatest meatball," says Mr. Wolf. "And we said, 'Oh sure.' Sure enough,
it was a really good product."

He worked at perfecting the recipe-which took over 18 months and
involved turning a small scale recipe into thousands of meatballs. Mr.
Wolf then agreed to license the product from Mr. Mancini for about $1.5
million. Under terms of the agreement, the name MamaMancini's as well as
recipes Mr. Mancini created are owned by Mr. Wolf. Mr. Mancini says
that in addition to the licensing agreement, he receives royalties.

"I knew that if this was going to work, I had to make a deal with
someone who was an expert," says Mr. Mancini.

After that deal was inked, Mr. Mancini quit the garment industry to
focus on becoming the face of a meatball empire. He declines to disclose
his salary, but says it is about half of what he made in the garment
industry.

Production was moved to a 17,000 square foot factory in East
Rutherford, N.J., and the meatballs started rolling. After selling the
product locally in supermarkets in New York and New Jersey, in April
2009, Mr. Mancini got his chance to go national with his product when
the Martha Stewart Show featured Mr. Mancini with his meatballs.

The attention boosted the brand enough to catch on and win
distribution with well-known supermarket chains, including Whole Foods,
which carries the products in 24 stores in the Northeast.

The fact that his career change also pays tribute to his grandmother
makes his success twice as sweet. "When I made this change, I was scared
to death," he says. "I felt in my heart that if you do something that
you love, it will be successful."

Corrections & Amplifications

MamaMancini's, a gourmet food start-up, received $1.5 million in
capital investments from investors including Carl Wolf, former chief
executive of Alpine Lace. Mr. Wolf, his partner Matt Brown and Daniel
Mancini started MamaMancini's by developing over 18 months a meatball
recipe inspired by Mr. Mancini's grandmother. This article incorrectly
says that Mr. Mancini received $1.5 million as part of a licensing
agreement and that Mr. Wolf was still CEO of Alpine Lace. The article
also incorrectly gave the company's name as Mama Mancini, incorrectly
said that the recipe took Messrs. Mancini and Wolf two weeks to develop
and failed to note Mr. Brown's involvement.