displays some of the company's products.
Westfield Foods Inc.
Owner: Mildred Pezzillo
Type of Business: Manufacturer of soup and rice mixes
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Location: Greenville
Employees: 12 at peak season
Year Founded: 1986
Annual Revenue: WND
Web: www.milliessoups.com
Years ago, Millie Pezzillo would create some satiating soups for her husband
John and their four sons at their Cranston home. The family would regularly
gather in the kitchen at dinnertime and consume such concoctions as lentil soup,
pea and pasta soup and a variety of vegetable soups.
At the time, the family didn’t realize that those very soup creations would
lead to a successful family business, be a fixture on the shelves of many supermarkets
in the Northeast and be featured on national television.
However, by the mid 1980s, Millie, with her cooking prowess, and John, with
his background in accounting, blended their talents and started selling their
soup mixes to local grocers.
One day, a buyer from Purity Supreme in Seekonk taste-tested Millie’s cookies
and soup. The buyer liked the initial products. Then Millie had the man try
her lentil soup. The buyer liked the soup so much he asked Millie to make him
100 cases of it and package it dry in a bag.
Dry soups were not as common in the mid ’80s, so the idea would only increase
the Pezzillo’s product marketability. Millie and John Pezzillo were then well
on their way to forging their business – Westfield Foods, a manufacturer of
soup and rice mixes.
“I’ve always liked to cook,” said Millie, “and the recipes just kind of grew.”
Business picked up by the late ’80s as the soup mixes Millie once made solely
for her family found their way onto the shelves of major regional retailers
like Stop & Shop and Shaw’s supermarkets.
The soups are now sold in locations throughout New England and in parts of
New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. Wal-Mart, BJ’s Wholesale, Ro-Jacks,
Roche Bros. and the Christmas Tree Shops, among others, carry the food line.
The products are also featured nationally on the shopping network QVC.
Nowadays, the day-to-day operations of Westfield Foods, based in Greenville,
are largely run by two of the Pezzillo’s four sons: Michael, the oldest, is
vice president of purchasing, and John, No. 3 son, is vice president of sales.
John said the “real genesis” of the business is his mother’s recipes.
“The foods that we make are pretty much things that my mother cooked as we
were growing up,” he said.
The homemade soup mixes are all-natural, low-fat and contain no meat, preservatives
or MSG. The spice blends are made to the company’s specifications and are proprietary.
“We keep it simple with natural ingredients,” said John. “It’s as if you went
to your kitchen cupboard, got some ingredients and put it together; but (our
product) is already there for you.”
Early on, the company coined a phrase for its products: “‘The big meal in
a small package.’ And that kind of describes what we do,” said John, “is to
give everybody a lot of value for it.”
Some of the 14 different soup and rice mixes include minestrone, lentil, pea,
five-bean soup, ravioletti, tortellini, Mexicali rice, risotto and rice with
cheese. The No. 1 seller is the garden soup, which includes bow-tie pasta and
a medley of vegetables.
Millie still works on creating different soup recipes and the company is expected
to introduce a few new ones in the near future.
John and Michael said part of the attraction to the soups is that they’re
easy to prepare and quick to cook (in about 12 minutes).
“I think what people like about our soups is that it’s convenient, everything’s
in one package,” said John. “Mothers who are in a rush, they just grab one package
and throw it in and it makes a big pot of soup, everything’s in there.”
Interestingly, each package can serve up to six people, which is the same
amount of people in the Pezzillo family. Additionally, the name Westfield Foods
comes from the street in Cranston on which the family lived for many years.
The marketing names for Westfield Foods are Millie’s Meals and Millie’s Soups.
John said he jokes with his mother that she’s become a “one-name celebrity.
It’s sort of become part of the lexicon in Rhode Island.”
The company works from a humble location on Lark Industrial Parkway in Greenville.
There are basically four rooms: two offices and two larger rooms for production,
packaging and storage. A specially designed machine does much of the automated-filling
process.
At peak season, from late October to March, the company may have up to 12
employees.
A couple moves that have boosted sales in recent years are strategic product
placement; the company’s presence on the national TV network QVC; and the launching
of a Web site last year.
For instance, the company is sometimes able to display their packages in supermarkets
on 1-square-foot shelves that are approximately 5-feet tall.
“You try and present your product in different ways all the time,” said John.
“We find that when your product is on the shelf with five or 10 or a hundred
different other products, one way to make it stand out is to get it off the
shelf.”
The company occasionally still goes out to stores to make demonstrations and
learn from customers. “When you’re actually out in the store talking to customers,
I think that’s the best feedback,” said John.
Also, in 1997, Millie’s Soups was selected by QVC to become a vendor on the
national shopping TV show. John or Michael will periodically make a trip to
the QVC studios in Westchester, Pa., and be a guest host featuring their products.
“It’s been a learning experience for all of us,” said Millie of the business.
“It’s been a lot of fun.”
