When thinking of Iowa’s top agricultural products, flavor-infused pasta probably wouldn’t be the first item that comes to mind. Pasta of the Prairie is beginning to change that narrative, manufacturing and packaging its own pasta from an unassuming warehouse in Marion and offering 19 different pastas, including soup mixes, pasta salad mixes and meal kits […]
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When thinking of Iowa’s top agricultural products, flavor-infused pasta probably wouldn’t be the first item that comes to mind.
Pasta of the Prairie is beginning to change that narrative, manufacturing and packaging its own pasta from an unassuming warehouse in Marion and offering 19 different pastas, including soup mixes, pasta salad mixes and meal kits at small retail outlets across Iowa and via online sales.
Tyler Steinkamp, who co-owns the business with his wife, Lindsey, said Pasta of the Prairie traces its roots to Readlyn, where the couple was living in 2014.
“We'd go into the Waverly farmers market, selling things like hot chocolate mixes and that kind of stuff, but it never really took off,” Mr. Steinkamp said. “One time, my wife (said) ‘well, let's try to make some pasta.’ We were going to just make it for ourselves. We did a flavored pasta, with the flavor right in the noodle. I thought, ‘that's pretty dang good.’ So we started drying it down and sold it at the farmers market, and that was always the thing that sold out for us.”
The couple launched their new venture making linguine noodles, using a hand-cranked pasta maker, and forming the noodles into “nests” to dry. However, the method proved problematic, because the noodles would often stick together when being cooked.
The next evolution was to produce flat linguine noodles and lay them out on racks to dry, then box them for sale. But the linguine would often break into smaller pieces during packaging, so the Steinkamps sought a new purpose for the broken noodles.
“We were thinking instead of throwing these away, let's do something with them,” Mr. Steinkamp said. “So, we brought out soup mixes and used the broken pieces of pasta in the soup mixes. It was a quick, easy meal. And we were finding that people were buying the soup mixes more (than the pasta alone), so we were actually having to break up our pasta to put it in the mixes.”
Commercial growth
As the company grew, Mr. Steinkamp said he realized it was no longer practical to continue making pasta with a hand-cranked machine, since that method would only produce about four pounds of pasta an hour. So, the company purchased a small, automated tabletop machine that doubled capacity to eight pounds an hour.
“The key with that is, you didn't have to constantly monitor it,” said Mr. Steinkamp, who continues to balance his work at Pasta of the Prairie with his full-time job as a technical agronomist crop protection manager. “I could put in a new batch and go to my other job. It would auto feed for about 20 minutes, and then I'd come back and reload.”
In 2016, the Steinkamps moved to Marion, turned their home’s then-unfinished basement into a commercial kitchen and contracted with a commercial co-packer in Marshalltown. And while the new arrangement allowed Pasta of the Prairie to expand, it was also labor- and time-intensive.
“I'd have to carry every bag of flour downstairs, make the pasta, take it back upstairs and drive it to Marshalltown, then store everything back downstairs,” Mr. Steinkamp said. “It was a lot of back and forth.”
Then came the company’s transformative move, to an industrial facility in Marion, and the purchase of commercial equipment, including an automated pasta extruder that can produce up to 250 pounds of pasta per hour.
The facility is now equipped with several hundred drying racks, machines to automatically dispense precise quantities of pasta and seasonings into pouches designed by Ms. Steinkamp, and a packing and shipping station. Mr. Steinkamp also built a custom-designed device to transport freshly-extruded pasta onto a conveyor belt and a chute to funnel dried pasta into the packaging machine.
All of the pasta used by Pasta of the Prairie is still produced on-site, with five infused pasta flavors in the company’s inventory – lemon basil, spinach, Italian herb, parmesan garlic and tomato basil. Flat noodles are no longer in production, so all five flavors are produced in a fusilli, or rotini, configuration.
The couple learned some of the ins and outs of pasta-making during a trip to Italy, and tested many variations of their products through trial-and-error ventures. Not every idea worked, Mr. Steinkamp admitted – an attempt to make a cheese-infused pasta resulted in the cheese leaching into the water during cooking, leaving a plain pasta noodle and yellowish water in its wake.
“There's some bigger barriers to entry, learning how to make pasta,” Mr. Steinkamp said. “You do it by feel. Basically, pasta is just flour and water, but you really just have to know what the pasta should feel like.”
Paired with various seasonings, Pasta of the Prairie now offers 19 different products, including four soup mixes, three pasta salad mixes, seven meal kits and the five flavored pastas themselves, packaged individually. Each package can feed up to four people, and many offer customized recipe variations.
Keeping it local
The Steinkamps continue to work with the business directly, with two part-time employees handling many daily functions. Their products are available on Pasta of the Priairie’s website, at area farmers markets and county fairs, and at nearly 50 smaller retailers statewide, with local outlets including the Bread Garden market and Wilson’s Orchard in Iowa City, the Cultivate Hope grocery store in Cedar Rapids, Allen’s Orchard in Marion, 225 Artisans Gallery in Williamsburg, Dan & Debbie’s Creamery in Ely, and Bits and Pieces in Coralville.
Mr. Steinkamp said the company is currently focused on smaller retail outlets and in-person sales, since the “Made in Marion” focus is easier to stress on a local level.
“I don't know if our goal is necessarily just to move products,” he said. “It’s more about getting it to the people who are going to appreciate it and know the story behind it a bit more. And going into the smaller retail stores, giving them a little bit of an advantage, is probably better than necessarily trying to go everywhere and do everything. People at smaller grocery stores or retail stores are more willing to look at the back of your package, then when they notice it’s locally made, they give you a little more leeway versus when you're in the grocery store.”
The business has expanded rapidly in recent years, and Mr. Steinkamp said he projects sales of about 30,000 packages of pasta this year, representing 22,000 pounds of pasta production. It’s a far cry from the days of selling at a single farmers market on weekends.
“This business has grown a lot faster than I ever thought it would,” Mr. Steinkamp said. “We continue to see better and better sales because of repeat customers. I’ve always known that our product was more of an impulsive purchase, but I greatly underestimated the level of support for local foods, and the repeat customers that has brought us.”
