Humble Beginnings
As a child, our founder Julie was surrounded by a family full of female gourmets.
Julie spent nearly every weekend in the kitchen with her grandmothers, Rocci Valentine, and Marguerite Percy, cooking and listening to their stories. That time in the kitchen was an informal master class in both cooking by heart from Grandma Rocci and cooking by precision from Nana Marguerite. While Nana Marguerite had a formal and well-measured approach to cooking, Grandma Rocci was a fireball of culinary passion in the kitchen.
Her time in the kitchen gave her not only a love for food but also an ear for storytelling...
and a sense of adventure nurtured by trips around the world with Nana Marguerite. After arriving at college, Julie’s room soon became an informal canteen for her dorm mates as they marveled at the creative concoctions she was able to make with a simple hot pot and a packet of noodles. Julie took an internship in London during her junior year and spent the summer afterward backpacking around Europe.
Driving around the Portuguese countryside...
Julie stopped by a roadside stand and was amazed by the high quality and beautiful designs being sold by this small family-run business. Julie quickly realized that she could create a business importing these fine wares and selling them throughout the United States, and so Terra Americana was born.
Starting a business was surprisingly easy for Julie.
Julie started hosting house parties where she would share stories of her adventures and showcase her latest finds from her adventures in Europe. Soon Julie had recruited a close-knit team of moms to help her run her business. With the leaves quickly turning colors, the holiday shopping season had begun. Julie knew it was now or never to capitalize on this opportunity.
She ran to her pantry and began pulling out ingredients, packaging up the correct proportions for her recipe, and tucking them all inside the mug.
After she was done, Julie looked at the festive bouquet of ingredients she had assembled and knew she was on to something. The next day she had her team help assemble a few of these new recipe kits to take to her party later that week.
On the day of the event, Julie sold out of her recipe kits in minutes.
From that moment on, the more kits she made, the more she sold. Julie dedicated the rest of the holiday season to preparing and packaging spice blends and baking mixes inside her various ceramic pieces. By the end of the season, she had sold over five hundred kits in two months. After a chaotic holiday season, Julie was ready to relax a bit before holding her next party...
Dozens of new customers who had been the recipients of the gifts Julie had sold just a few weeks ago all asking the same thing...
“Where can we get more of those spice mixes?” or “where can I get more of that cake mix?” Over the next two years, Julie began selling more and more spice blends, baking mixes, and herbal vinegars, and less of the ceramics she had started her business importing.
By the late 90's Terra Americana refocused it's energy on food.
A growing line of spice, soups, cake mixes and more at farmer's markets in our local area. Just two years later, we broke into retail with cookie mixes in jars being carried on the shelves of the Christmas Tree Shop in time for the 1999 holiday season.
At every turn, Julie made decisions not just about what was best for the company but what was best for her customers.
This customer-centric approach has carried Jullie and her team of food enthusiasts from the farmer's markets and pop-up shops they started at into the bright lights of Hollywood productions. All the time, she stayed truly humble, asking only what was fair, and helping the people she served in whatever capacity she could. Whether it’s giving cooking advice from their own kitchen or handing out free samples to loyal fans.
Today Terra Americana employs a team of seven inside their quaint commercial kitchen tucked away in the Mill at Crane Pond.
If you’re in the area stop on by! Our doors are open Wednesday-Sunday afternoons Wewelcome you in to sample whatever delicious delicacy we have cooking up. We love sharing the fascinating stories of the origins of our products and the adventures we’ve had discovering them.