Today we’d like to introduce you to Francine Voit.
Hi Francine, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Hi! I’m happy to be here. I’m a half-ecuadorian, half-swiss designer who grew up in South Florida. From a young age, I grew up speaking Spanish and French at home while learning and speaking English in school and with friends. I grew up playing tennis in South Florida during the school year, but during vacations, my parents always took my sisters and me along on every vacation we got. So it feels more like we grew up between North and South America and Europe. When I turned 17 and graduated from high school, I decided to live in Europe for some time. I took a half-year off of school and moved to Barcelona, Spain, where I got to play tennis at an academy and figure out where to go to college. After leaving Barcelona and being fascinated by architecture, I decided to attend SCAD with Interior Design studies and play for the tennis team in January 2019.
A year later, however, things took a turn, and instead of doing remote classes during quarantine, I developed a love for cooking and the culinary arts. I decided to take a year off of school while the situation died down, and I went to culinary school in Milan, Italy. I had been to Italy many times on vacation, and I spoke little Italian, but after a few months, I became fluent and my love for cooking and Italian culture grew. There was one thing that struck me the most being there, that I brought back with me after returning to SCAD; the care-free lifestyle and the communal aspect around food. By carefree, I mean that people still go to work or still study, but that’s not the only thing they think about. Italians, and many Europeans, have a wonderful work-life balance. Coming back to the US and SCAD, I had a complete culture shock because I genuinely missed the life aspect of being in university. I missed the community that would be brought together by food. I could spend all day talking about food and the different types of pasta sauces. But another thing that I missed: pistachios.
I met my partner at SCAD in 2019, he was on the tennis team as well, and we clicked immediately. We became close when I got back to SCAD in 2021 and we even bonded over our love for good food. My partner, Nicola Buffo, is from Verona, Italy. He grew up eating cheese from the mountain farmers nearby and bread made from the flour of the wheat farmers near his home; you get the gist. We love putting pistachios in a variety of dishes because it reminds us of being back in Italy. When we both realized that this was non-existent in the US, we took it as a sign to create Pistakio.
Pistakio is a food brand that aims to evoke a carefree lifestyle and create pleasure through pistachio-infused, goes-on-anything spreads made to unleash pistachios’ nutty & wholesome flavor and their infinite health benefits. We believe that pistachios are underrated in the world of nuts, so we created a delicious Pistakio Spread that enhances the flavor of any dish, using pistachios as the star ingredient like no one has done before. I developed this brand along with my partner to highlight pistachios’ versatility in February of 2023. From there, we grew to 400+ followers on Instagram in a little over four months and sold at the local farmers market for around two months in Savannah, GA, during our final quarter at SCAD.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
In the big picture, yes, it’s been a smooth road. I’ve been fortunate enough to have surrounded myself with some pretty amazing people who have shaped me into who I am today. Pistakio’s road has been more of a staggering one — since the business started, it’s been a constant grind. We began on Instagram before we even had a product, and we slowly integrated into the market when we came out with the Pistakio Spread.
Pistakio started during a trip when Nico and I were in Peru. We came up with the idea of bringing a pistachio-lover culture in the US and initially, we wanted to create a food truck that only featured pistachio-infused dishes. We quickly realized that a food truck would be a big investment, and we didn’t know if people would be interested without testing the market first. Nico decided to take the opportunity to research the market for his thesis project at SCAD in his last semester. Together we developed the Instagram platform and simply began posting about pistachio-related things that we found interesting before we even had a product. We came up with a few pistachio-infused recipes as well and posted them to get people a little more adapted to the idea of pistachios in dishes. It should also be noted that if it weren’t for Nico’s professor, we wouldn’t have begun the venture as soon as we did. We were living in a dorm room and had a 50 square foot space with no light to shoot the images/reels (I know, it’s giving Facebook). But anyway, we started, not knowing what we were doing and learning as we went along. While experimenting, we created a pistachio-infused savory spread. We loved it, and our friends loved it too, but the question was if other people did. We decided that we needed to test it out in the market to get proof of concept so that we could continue on our journey.
In Savannah, GA, there is a local farmer’s market that goes on every Saturday morning, so we contacted them and asked if we could have a spot for one weekend to test out our product, and to our surprise they said yes! We were at the farmer’s market for the first time on February 25th, 2023. After developing three different spreads the night before, we brought all three with us and advertised free samples at the market. With our sign showing our logo and tagline (pistachios’ reimagined), we sparked the curiosity of 200+ people at the market that day, who tried our product, and loved it (aside from one person). So after this, we set out to perfect the recipe for the Pistakio Spread and decided this was going to be our flagship product. We perfected the recipe and scaled it, came out with our packaging and branding, and went back to the market two months later on April 15th, 2023. We continued to go every Saturday for the following six weeks to sell the Pistakio Spread, even though we were still finishing up school. In only six weeks, we sold 150+ jars at the market and we gained so much perspective on what our customers wanted. We are currently taking a break from sales, as we recently finished building a landing page for our website where we will soon have products for sale (pistakio.co). It’s safe to say that it’s been a hell of a ride, but we’re all in for this Pistakio journey.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
I am the co-founder, product developer, and graphic designer of Pistakio, the first pistachio-based spread company in the US. Our brand fabricated a goes-on-anything spread created to unleash pistachio’s nutty and wholesome flavor and their infinite health benefits. We believe that pure ingredients are the key to nutrition and the tastiest food comes from ingredients that we know (and can pronounce). Without any additives, preservatives, or fake stuff. Our ingredients are sourced locally to benefit farmers and other small businesses just like ours. Finally, as a startup company, we deeply believe in paying our part to the planet. We strive to become a zero-waste brand and give 1% of our annual profits towards our home.
Our branding and packaging is meant to evoke the carefree lifestyle of grandparents in Italy. When my partner and I met and started cooking together, we realized that we missed the way Italians infuse pistachios into their dishes, as well as the communal aspect around food and the carefree lifestyle of Italian grandparents. We want to share our love for pistachios, along with an approach to life that is more “Italian” — a carefree-yet-caring and hardworking-yet-chill way of life that is centered around relationships, people, and good food (of course). Pistakio is a celebration of the deliciousness of pistachios, but also a symbol of the “nonni” way of life — going all-in for the things you love, but also finding the time to celebrate the little and mundane things of life that make us the happiest.
At the moment, we have one flagship product — the Pistakio Spread, which is in the stage of development. After the Pistakio Spread, we plan on expanding our line to more pistachio-infused spreads. We expect to begin sales again and start shipping nationwide at the beginning of 2024. You can keep up with the journey on Instagram @pistak.io or go onto our website — pistakio.co and sign up for our newsletter to stay in the loop.
We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up?
I still remember trying pistachio gelato for the very first time as a kid on one of my first trips to Italy. I have family in Switzerland, so I would travel there every summer. We often took short trips to Italy for pizza and gelato. Sounds cheesy but we seriously did, it was a 2-hour drive and pizza costs 3x less in Italy than it does in Switzerland (plus it’s 5x better). I looked forward to every summer that I would eat pistachio gelato again and it’s still my favorite flavor.
Contact Info:
- Website: pistakio.co
- Instagram: pistak.io
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/pistakio
- Other: francinevoit.com
Image Credits
Ryan Orebaugh, Dalton Rice (Pistakio Mayo photoshoot)
