Cappello’s

About the Brand

The pair reconnected after Marcellus moved to Colorado after a stint in Argentina that fueled her foodie fire. She found a kindred entrepreneurial spirit in Frohlichstein. "He wanted to start a brand and specifically a pasta brand," she says. "We decided [gluten-free] was a smart industry to get into." They took their pasta recipes one step further by going completely grain-free. "Our products don't have any corn or rice or quinoa in them, and that really differentiates us," says Marcellus.

The key innovation -- and the company's trade secret -- was the tweaking of pasta recipes to go grain-free. "Because we use unique ingredients, we had to get over some pitfalls," says Marcellus. "The way we use things is a little bit different." Beyond the gluten-intolerant market, Cappello's has ridden a pair of trends to a broader market. "One ot the markets we're capturing is the Paleolithic diet market," says Frohlichstein. "People are returning to their hunter-gatherer roots when there weren't any farmed grains. That's really popular with the CrossFit community." They hit it off with some top names in the Paleo world right off the bat, including Juli Bauer of PaleOMG. "Three years ago, a lot of the megastars in this group were really accessible," says Frohlichstein. The Denver-based Bauer had about 15,000 Facebook fans in 2011. That number has since mushroomed to 300,000. "Now she's national and selling cookbooks," says Frohlichstein.

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