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Issue Preview: JC’s Pie Pops

The odds are stacked against small businesses jostling for space on crowded grocery shelves. Obstacles – from distribution challenges to supermarket slotting fees – pile up higher than towering cereal-box displays. But there is a way to change those odds: Invent something new. Just ask Jennifer Constantine, chief executive of JC’s Pie Pops, a three-year-old Chatsworth company. Her frozen desserts – think hot-dog-on-a-stick, but with pie – are carried in 3,000 retail outlets, including Whole Foods Markets, Bristol Farms and Sprouts Farmers Markets. And she’s about to triple production, with a huge order from grocery conglomerate Ahold USA that will put her confections in 775 Stop & Shop stores on the East Coast. And here’s what makes it all the more astonishing: Her company grew out of a dinner party disaster. Five years ago, Constantine was a songwriter, traveling between her home in Porter Ranch and Nashville’s Music Row, when a batch of panna cotta she had whipped up for guests accidentally froze in an overactive garage fridge. She was ready to trash the Italian custard dessert when her then-fiance (and now husband) Mason Gordon came home from work and grabbed the tray. “He tasted it and said it was awesome– better than the original,” Constantine recalled. “Had he come home five minutes later, I wouldn’t be here as the founder of a company today.” Read the full story in the Feb. 9 edition of the San Fernando Valley Business Journal.

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