Jarred Pasta Sauces Are Finally Interesting
plus Michelin-starred protein bars, the coffee shop trend I hope never goes away, and more
I don’t think there is a more crowded aisle at the average American grocery store than the one that houses the jarred pasta sauces. It’s a seemingly endless sea of red with stripes of white (cream based sauces) and splashes of green (the occasional pesto). Even though a decent marinara or tomato sauce is one of the easiest things to whip up with a can of tomatoes, there’s dozens of brands making hundreds of varieties of an even more convenient version — and people love it. The pasta sauce market is estimated to be about two billion dollars.
Yet, there is very little innovation. Sure maybe Prego or Ragu or Bertolli or whichever brand you prefer will add some garlic to a jar, maybe some basil or mushrooms to another. Some might even go so far as to add red chili pepper flakes to amp up the heat factor if they are feeling frisky. But for the most part, it’s just jars of cooked down tomato sauce — until now.
On the surface it seems completely insane to spin up a jarred sauce company in 2023 given how saturated the market has been and continues to be, but that didn’t stop Troy Bonde and Winston Alfieri, the twentysomethings behind Sauz, which now does over a million dollar of sales a month and is available in stores like Target, Whole Foods, and Erewhon. The team behind Sauz not only shook up the branding, turning to brighter and sleeker branding, but also started to offer flavors unlike any other mass market brand.
Take their hero product: the sweet and spicy hot honey marinara, which cleverly deploys the now beloved condiment (that first made waves around 2016). Other flavors include a summer lemon marinara made with both lemon juice and peel and a creamy calabrian vodka sauce, which is the fastest shortcut to a solid Carbone spicy rigatoni dupe. You don’t often see mainstream jarred pasta sauce leaning to acid or turning to the beloved Southern Italian chili for heat. (Yo Mama is another brand with a great calabrian chili-spiked tomato sauce.)
Now Sauz is dipping its toes into both a white sauce, but working in nutty brown butter into their jarred alfredo, and turning to a more international pantry for their latest tomato-based sauce which is cleverly made with miso and garlic. So many chefs turn to ingredients like miso and brown butter to amp up their own sauces and it’s fun to see a brand doing this in an unexpected aisle of the grocery store.
Sauz isn’t the only company helping to shake up the jarred pasta aisle either. Carbone’s very good CPG line of pasta sauces just announced five new flavors including three very interesting alfredos: Mac & Cheese alfredo made with white cheddar, a promising Black Truffle alfredo if it’s not made with truffle oil, and a Lemon Pepper alfredo which is made with lemon and pepper not lemon pepper seasoning (though… that might be incredible?) Rao’s, the CPG line from the legendarily difficult to get into NYC restaurant, also makes a line of great pasta sauces, some of which use ingredients like white truffle and red wine.
I’m hoping the success of Sauz means that more global pantry ingredients will make it into the jarred sauce aisle. I am waiting for someone to drop a gojuchang vodka sauce or a fish sauce marinara or a za’atar alfredo. The best cacio e pepes are made with Asian pantry ingredients (that is a story for a future newsletter!), and I would absolutely buy a premade sauce that guaranteed the results each and every time. What I am really waiting for is for someone to let me make a Butter (Chicken) Parm sauce aka a Makhani Marinara. Sauz, give me a call.
The rest of today’s newsletter is for paid subscribers and will cover:
The concept in London I can’t stop obsessing over
The coffee shop trend I hope continues forever
Further proof N/A beer is here to stay
A Michelin-starred protein bar
The controversial reason why Starbucks had to buy 200,000 new sharpies
The only acceptable “national margarita day” promotion
A look at what foods people are stock piling as tariffs loom