By Debbie Gardner
debbieg@thereminder.com
Christina Bozza is very much a hands-on kind of entrepreneur.
Coming out from behind her table at the Forest Park Farmers’ Market, she approaches a hesitant customer with a smile and a question.
“How do you like to cook?”
When the person murmurs something about not being much of a cook, Bozza immediately moves to put them at ease.
“ You don’t have to cook, you just have to eat. Now, what kinds of flavors do you like? Salty? Sweet? A little heat? How about garlic, or onions?” she enquires like a doctor probing a patient. Stepping back behind her display, she produces a box of sample spice blends, and opens one for the customer to sniff.
And so the relationship begins.
“In a business like this you keep the focus on the customer. You do this for the customer,” Bozza – who prefers Tina to Christina – told Prime during an interview about Saltbox Seasonings, the artisan spice blend business the 57-year-old left the corporate world to launch this past April.
It’s been a whirlwind first few months, securing spots at the Easthampton, Forest Park, Florence, Northampton Gothic Street, and Westfield farmers’ markets, The Baker’s Pin Store in Northampton, and other events throughout the Valley; designing marketing materials and setting up displays; talking to customers; researching and developing new spice blends. Many of those new offerings – such as Josephine’s Italian Sea Salt Blend, Heather’s Heat Salt Free and Tara’s Triple Play Grind – sprang, Bozza said, from just the kind of customer conversation she had at the Forest Park market.
“I did this for all the right reasons,” Bozza said of her decision to leave the corporate world for the entrepreneurial culture. “I thought it was really important for a lot of reasons, including the karma that you believe that if you are doing things for the right reasons that energy, good positive energy comes to you.”
Layers of experience
An avowed foodie raised by Italian-American parents who encouraged her to “just keep trying [it], just keep tasting [it],” as she encountered new foods growing up, Bozza said by the time she was an adult she’d be the one who would order “the weirdest thing on the menu” when visiting a restaurant.
But sharing her love of food and flavors wasn’t top of mind when she first set out to choose a career.
“I played office when I was a child,” Bozza said, adding she used to accompany her dad from their New Jersey home to his Manhattan office long before “take your daughter to work” was popular. “I had my own little briefcase, I had a little portfolio, I made my own little business card. I was five years old.”
She followed that business dream to Los Angeles, where she graduated from Occidental College – and was introduced to Mexican and Japanese and Indonesian and Filipino cuisines by her friends and it “opened up a whole new world” for her. Her first job out of college found her working in New Orleans, where the foodie in her found flavors that were “off the chart.” When she came home to visit in the 1980s, she’d “carry Cajun seasoning, Cajun spices and hot sauce in my suitcase.”
Subsequent jobs in the corporate insurance world took Bozza to other parts of the country, exposing the foodie in her to more cuisines and flavors.
“Just like you can layer spices, my life experiences have been layers and layers and layers,” Bozzo said.
A passion for flavors
But Bozza was never completely satisfied with the spice blends she picked up at stores in the areas where she lived. Often “they’d have MSG, or it had some anti-caking agent ... or some coloring or some other ingredient I couldn’t pronounce” in them, Bozza said. Already in love with seasonings – and chilies and peppers and spices and herbs – in the 1990s Bozza started making her own flavored oils to give as gifts, and spice mixes for cooking.
“These were often riffs on somebody else’s’ blends. I would add something to them I would start mixing them together, and thought, wow, this is kind of fun,” she said.
She dabbled in creating her own spice blends for about 10 years before she ever thought about turning her passion into a business.
“It happened in April of 2016, when I realized I didn’t want to be in a corporate role any more,” Bozza said, adding that, at the time she was working overtime on a project that was “going nowhere” and eventually was canceled. “I wanted something for myself.”
Initially Bozza had taken a job in Western Massachusetts to allow her life partner, Lori, to complete her PhD. With Lori’s blessing and encouragement that it was “her turn,” Bozza began to plan for her entrepreneurial debut in 2016.
“I came up with the logo and name in one afternoon,” she continued. “The idea cemented that I was going to do this and I started testing recipes, creating packaging, all the things you have to do before you put a product in front of somebody.”
One of her first official Saltbox Seasonings – Sammy’s Savory Seasoning – was developed with help from a friend.
“It’s an adaptation of a co-worker’s favorite popcorn [seasoning] blend that her husband makes,” Bozza said. An early confidant who knew about her dream of opening an artisan spice blend business, that co-worker sampled her blending attempts, helping her to adapt and “amp up” the mixture of parsley, savory, sage, black pepper, celery, garlic, onion, marjoram and turmeric to one of the most popular early blends she offered for sale.
Mixing in what you know
But there was more to opening a business than just creating a great product. Bozza knew what running a food-based enterprise entailed – her younger sister has owned restaurants and now a catering firm. She procured the necessary documents – a resident kitchen license, food protection manager certification, insurance, and certification in allergy awareness – and secured sources for ingredients and packaging. In November of 2016, she tried a “soft launch” at the monthly winter market at Forest Park in Springfield.
“It was almost a pilot – I continued working at my day job, and every other Saturday I was testing out the market,” Bozza said. “It gave me the chance to test products, to meet customers, to build product line.”
She also brought in spice blends for her co-workers to try, and offer feedback.
“I had a handful of very supportive team members. They gave me feedback on the logo, on the packaging [too],” she said. “ I knew from my business experience that soft launching, test marketing, research and development, packaging and labeling were critical.
“I’m still working on my labels,” she added.
Her soft launch – a handful of infused salts and bbq blends – has evolved since November to a full page of blends including seasonings and gourmet salts – many crafted to fill a customer’s request for a special mixture – chili mixes, fish fry mixes, grilling rubs, gourmet sugars, cocktail “rimmerz,” and hot beverage blends. She’s also developed no-salt versions of a number of blends.
“I’m moving into more organics, I’m moving into pink Himalayan [salt] as my base, and that’s in response to customers, and to some retailers who are very organic-based have asked me to focus on more organics, so I’m very responsive that way,” she said. And beyond using the consultative approach she learned while working in property-casualty insurance during her corporate years to connect with customers and help fill their needs, she also uses her former business skills at trade show setup and market research to grow her business. For example, she offers custom gift baskets, event favors and gift certificates in addition to custom blends.
Crafting a personal ‘blend’
Bozza’s Facebook page – https://www.facebook.com/Saltbox-Seasonings-107105903313546/ – is up and running. She expects to have her website – which will include a form to allow customers to request custom spice blends online – up and running shortly.
“I wanted to do this because I wanted my own thing … I was working nights and weekends, 12 hour, 13-hour long days [at a corporate job] only to see nothing come of it. [I wanted] not to feel like I worked for nothing,” Bozza said. “I wanted something that was mine. I wanted something where I could use all the skills I had learned, I wanted something where I could touch customers directly
“You can’t get much closer to customer than creating something that they are going to put on their food, that they are going to feed to their family,” she continued. “I make people smile in this job. I have fun talking to people at my booth. It ‘s like running a trade show, only instead of selling insurance, I’m selling flavors.”
