We had the good fortune of connecting with Francine Voit and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Francine, what is the most important factor behind your success?
courage. having the courage to start without any connections, mentors, and even capital. we produced our first dozen batches in a tiny dorm room, shot our first recipe videos/content in that dorm room with terrible lighting, & sold our first 100+ jars outside of the farmer’s market radius without any background in sales, production, formulation, photography, etc. we ended up learning so many things along the way (many of which we are still learning)! without the courage to start from zero, we never would have learned!

What should our readers know about your business?
our mission is to reimagine the way pistachios have been perceived & eaten for centuries. once luxury is now made staple. we hated the fact that a small bag of pistachios was only accessible to the wealthy & anything pistachio flavored was always marketed as a premium product. we know there is a demand for pistachios and strive to make them more accessible, approachable, & a staple in every meal.

a big part of how we got here is by having courage and taking a lot of risks along the way. we moved across the country 2 months after our college graduation to launch our business. we didn’t know anyone & we’d never been to Portland, so it was a huge risk – but also a leap of faith. from what we’d heard we thought it would be the perfect place to start a business. luckily, we were right. we met people right away in the food & beverage space who helped us from the very beginning of our journey & we were able to start quickly here with so many open-minded people who cared about their community. it may have been a risk but we also followed a gut feeling & that’s the most important part when taking risks.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Nicola Buffo, The Hacienda CDC (Portland, Oregon) & Mercado

Website: https://pistakio.co

Instagram: eatpistakio

Linkedin: Pistakio

Facebook: Pistakio

Other: Tiktok: @eatpistakio

Image Credits
Adam Levey

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