Val and Sal Gray, Southern California natives, have been married for 25 years. They both previously worked in the corporate world in management positions but were unfortunately laid off when the recession hit. “When we tried to find work again, we were told that we were too old to be rehired,” Val explains. “They had gotten rid of all the upper management and hired younger people working for a fraction of what we made.” After struggling for a while to reenter the corporate world and being too young to retire, Sal and Val found themselves in a predicament.
Sal and Val both are of Italian heritage, their grandparents hailing from Naples and Rome respectively. “Sal made this fabulous sauce,” Val boasted of her husband. “I had my own family sauce, which I thought was pretty spectacular until I tasted his. It converted me!” The pair used to host regular dinner parties for friends and family, and attendees couldn’t get enough of their sauce. When a friend suggested they consider jarring their sauces and turning it into a business, it transformed into a lightbulb moment for the Grays.
But starting a business from the ground up is no easy feat, and would take a lot of time and resources. “We were living on our 401K, cashing it in just to survive,” Val mentions. “That was at the start of our journey. We prayed a lot, because the whole idea seemed pretty far-fetched to us. We prayed that God would give us a sign. At the time, we were growing tomatoes in our garden, and the next morning we discovered a perfectly heart-shaped tomato. That was our sign.” That heart-shaped discovery not only provided the Grays with a name for their new company, it kickstarted their entire culinary journey.
At the beginning, the Italian Hearts started at craft shows, with friends and family rallying around to help them make their first batches of sauce. Val recounts their first experience selling their product vividly; “We entered a craft show that was at a high school. We hadn’t gone commercial yet and I was really nervous setting up. I went to put a jar on the table and it misses the edge, smashing and filling the entire gymnasium with the smell of our sauce. People came in and were like, ‘what is that smell?’ and we sold out almost immediately, which was a good indication.”
After making some more batches at home and finding success at local farmers and craft markets in Reno, the duo decided to take things a step further. “Our number one goal of being commercial was to sell in Whole Foods,” Val mentions. “We were loyal Whole Foods customers and at the time, Whole Foods had a different model and were all about supporting local. It took us a year to get through compliance, but we finally got into Whole Foods.” In 2011, the Grays found themselves a commercial kitchen to rent in Sparks and began their commercial journey.
The pasta sauce department is one of the most competitive sections in the entire grocery store, with rows upon rows of brands competing for the best, most visible spots on the shelf. “That was the hardest thing at the beginning, showing customers why our sauce is different from everybody else’s,” explains Sal. “At the start, we went out on the road and did demos, because unless people really taste our sauce, they don’t know why we’re really different from anybody else.”
The Grays take pride in the fact that every single ingredient put into their sauce is hand- elected by them, as well as being locally produced and sourced from various family-run farms and ranches in the Greater Reno area. Instead of mass-producing their sauces in a factory, Papa Sal and Mama Val hand-produce each batch of sauce themselves in their own kitchen, maintaining complete control over their product.
“We cook sauce all day, exactly as we would make it at home,” says Val. “We taste them, and they’re not finished until we reach perfection. Of course, our profit margin is much less doing it this way. We can’t say we’ve made a billion dollars from this business because we haven’t. But it’s our passion and our business, and it’s hugely prosperous. Not necessarily on an income level, but to us, that’s fine, because our customers appreciate what we do tremendously.”
The Grays place a heavy emphasis not only on great taste, but also health and nutrition. “For Italians, red sauce is like our secret weapon for good health,” Val reveals. “We use a good grade olive oil, mostly all our ingredients are organic. We recently switched from regular tomatoes to certified organic San Marzano tomatoes that are grown in Italy without raising the price of our sauce.” Italian Hearts is currently in the process of obtaining their certified organic seal and switching out the labels to reflect the tomato change.
The company offers three different sauce flavors; Bella Amore, Val’s Vegetarian, and a Three Meat Sauce. The Three Meat sauce is Sal’s family recipe, hailing from his origins in Naples. Link sausage, chuck roast, and pork roast cook for hours in their signature red sauce, releasing all the meaty flavor into the sauce before being jarred. The Bella Amore is based loosely on Val’s nonna’s recipe, filled with the flavor of Val’s homemade meatballs with a slightly spicy kick. The third sauce, Val’s Vegetarian, came about after one of their vegan friends complained that she couldn’t try any of their products. “We took a week off and went up to our friend’s cabin in Tahoe and totally unplugged from everything, spending the whole time creating a vegan sauce,” Val explains.
Above, Sal’s egg recipe using Italian Hearts sauce.
Their first major commercial breakthrough was with Whole Foods. After Amazon purchased Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in 2017 though that was not good news for the Grays.
“That changed everything for us,” Val explains. “Unfortunately, we were one of the products that got cut across the board nationwide. Whole Foods was our number one store, so it was devastating.”
Prior to the Amazon takeover, Italian Hearts had won a Whole Foods Small Producer Grant, an award whose winner was selected based on popularity, and was voted on by stores in each region. “We were unanimously picked as the number one because we demoed in there weekly, setting up a table. We knew everybody there, it was like family. So when we got cut, it was like a bad breakup quite frankly.”
After being cut from Whole Foods' product range, Val and Sal felt a little burnt out with corporate America and decided to change directions and keep their focus on the local market in Reno. They went back to setting up tables at more craft shows and farmers markets and started to meet more local food producers.
Hearing about other local business owners' struggles and issues, Val and Sal decided to open their hearts and kitchen to other local producers and help them with their businesses. They’ve been renting out kitchen space for the last ten years now and are currently at full capacity, with nine local chefs and food trucks operating out of their kitchen; Mitch’s Vegan Jerky, Italian Heart’s, Dollface Cheesecakes, Faded Apron, Mama Bear’s Vegan Foods, Just Scones, Hungry Heart’s Food Truck, Kitchen 1851 Food Truck, Mrs. Bea & Mr. Rocko’s Catering. They offer their space and use of their state-of-the-art equipment at the lowest rate possible, simply charging chefs the flat rental fee with no added costs on top, and have rented out their space and helped 50 local food businesses to date.
Italian Hearts has plans to continue supplying the Reno market with their delicious jars of tomatoey goodness, with the ultimate goals of expanding and opening a second commercial kitchen in Reno to up their sauce production and provide more opportunities for local chefs to find affordable kitchen space. “We definitely have plans to grow, but it all takes money,” Val explains. “We got an SBA loan recently which we were really thankful to get, but that all went to buying new equipment and upgrading our electricity.” They also have plans to implement an itern program for students wanting to learn about business operations and the food and culinary industry.
Apart from adding the sauce to a pot with your favorite pasta shape, Papa Sal and Mama Val have some other suggestions for getting the most out of your sauce:
Support a local business and follow Italian Hearts on Facebook. Their page unfortunately got hacked and they lost thousands of followers they had amassed throughout their journey. They have a new page up and running, and could use any support to get their following back.
Papa Sal: “Papa used to poach an egg in the morning in the sauce right on the stove, and then use a little Italian toast to dunk in the egg yolk.”
Mama Val: “One thing I really love is zucchini. Cut them into rounds, sautee them in the sauce and finish it off in the oven topped with a really nice cheese.”
Italian Hearts pasta sauces can currently be found in the following stores in the Reno-Tahoe area:
Raley's O-N-E on Wedge Parkway in Reno – Italian Hearts Display
Raleys on Caughlin Ranch – end cap display
Raleys on Mayberry Drive in Reno – shadow box up front in the pasta aisle
Raleys on N McCarran in Sparks – Italian Hearts Display
Raleys in Carson City – pasta aisle
Raleys in Gardnerville – end cap display
Raley's O-N-E in Truckee, CA
Whole Foods Reno – pasta aisle
Whole Foods in South Lake Tahoe – pasta aisle
The Urban Market in downtown Reno
Natural Grocers Reno
Great Basin Community COOP