Ep. 1188 Jenna Pelka | Voices With Cynthia Chaplin

The Italian wine podcast is introducing a new donation drive this month. It's called YMI fan. We are encouraging anyone who tunes on a regular basis to send us your ten second video on why you are a fan of our podcast network or a specific show. We will then share your thoughts with the world, with the goal of garnering support for our donation drive. Italian wine podcast is a publicly funded sponsored driven enterprise that needs you in order to continue to receive awesome pre wine edutainment. Seven days a week, we are asking our listeners to donate to the Italian wine podcast. By clicking either the go fund me link or the Patreon link found on Italian wine podcast dot com. Remember, if you sign up as a monthly donor on our Patreon, we will send you a free IWP t shirt. And a copy of the wine democracy book, the newest mama jumbo shrimp publication. Welcome to the Italian wine podcast. I'm Cynthia Chaplin, and this is voices. Every Wednesday, I will be sharing conversations with international wine industry professionals discussing issues in diversity, equity, and inclusion through their personal experiences, working in the field of one. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and rate our show wherever you get your pods. Hello. This is Cynthia Chaplin, and today I'm very happy to welcome Jen Pelka to voices. She's the co founder and the CEO of Unfam, a new line of champagne, sparkling wines made by women winemakers and supporting women focused causes. Jen's career in restaurants began at Chef Daniel Boula's iconic New York restaurant Daniel where she ultimately became the US competition director for the Boku store. And she founded the Riddler Champaign Bar in New York and in San Francisco, and she was named among Forbes's thirty under thirty, along with a load of other awards and accolades too many to mention. So welcome to the show, Jen. So nice to have you. It's so great to be here. Thanks for having me on. Yeah. Huge pleasure. So before we get going, I have to ask you. I I know you've got a degree in philosophy of science from Stanford what the heck got you into hospitality and wine? It's a great question. Yeah, I I loved studying philosophy of science because really it was a an opportunity to learn about history and the notion of truth and proof and, you know, just all the big questions about the world. But I had a real passion and love for restaurants, food, cooking, home entertaining. I grew up in a household that we always had food around. We were always entertaining, always having big dinner parties, and my dad's parents, owned diners and delis in New Jersey. And my dad's father, my grandfather, actually, for the last twenty years of his life, was the chef of the Ocean County, New Jersey jail. Oh, holy cow. That's a niche thing. Super niche. And he would come home from work with his whites on and his side towel and, you know, apron, and he would always bring home the two things that were in surplus. So it was bananas and cream puffs were the two things. He would make cream puffs for the for the prisoners all the time. And so, you know, restaurants and food were just like a really big part of our family culture. And, actually, when I graduated from school, the first thing that I wanted to do was to move to San Francisco and open a restaurant, and my parents were like, you're crazy. Don't do that. Get a regular job, move to New York, work in, you know, something more traditional like a hedge fund or private equity, or investment banking, etcetera. And I actually have a job. And pay off your student loans and be a normal person exact and so I ended up working at a hedge fund, but I started hearing about the idea that you could do stodges, which are essentially like free internships working in restaurants, especially fine dining restaurants. And I was really lucky to get a stodge at Danielle on the upper east side, which at the time was Michelin three star, New York Times four star restaurant. And I started working there on Saturdays, and I ended up working there every Saturday for a year and a half and just falling in love with being in kitchens at that level. And eventually ended up actually working for Danielle for about five years in a variety of roles, you know, everything from working many positions on the line in the kitchen, to eventually becoming Danielle's research assistant, which is where I really learned from truly the best in the business about, all of the creative business avenues that exist within Food and Wine. And that's when I really got the bug. That's that's such a cool story. So many of us who are in line came to it through, you know, working on the floor in a restaurant, being a waitress, or, you know, doing something in a kitchen. And I I love the story of your grandparents with diners in New Jersey sounds like ideal grandparents, frankly. Absolutely. You went on with with Danielle, you had a hugely successful career. I know in food and wine e commerce and communication. And after you left Danielle, you founded, Magnum PR in San Francisco and Ridley, as I said, in in San Francisco and New York. And all of the businesses that you started just flourished and blew up. So I'm kind of wondering what made you decide to step away and launch Jun Farm, especially, you know, as you told me earlier, in February of twenty twenty, not the most ideal moment to launch a new business. And I know that sadly, you lost your own home in a fire. So it sounds like a completely nutty time to start a new business. What What drug you to do that? What gave you, like, the nerve to do it, basically? Yeah. It definitely was a crazy time. I think for all of us, I had the Riddler Champban bars in both San Francisco and New York, and that really was where the idea for the brand started. And it was a project that we worked on for about a year before it actually launched. So we certainly didn't set out to launch something in the midst of COVID, but it we're just right before COVID, but it it just kinda happened that way. It happened that way to so many of us. I know. It's so true. It's so, so, so true. Yeah. For us, the reason why we launched the brand was that we, you know, at the Riddler, all of our investors were women. We had thirty three investors in San Francisco, forty investors in New York, all women, ages, from their early twenties to their seventies, many women who'd never invested in a restaurant before, but who were all excited about the idea of getting involved in a champagne bar and also getting involved in a restaurant that was all funded by women. And so that became really a big part of our community or culture or history, all of our press coverage, etcetera always mentioned that. And so we had so many women who came to the restaurant. And, you know, we would serve hundreds of different styles of champagne by the bottle, and our champagne list could be a little bit daunting for a typical customer who comes in and doesn't necessarily know all the names of the grower producers or even what, let's say, Blanc de Blanc versus Blanc de noir is. And we would always feature a section on the list that was women made wines. And those wines would really outsell all of the others. Like, you know, you can imagine you in for dinner with some of your girlfriends returning to decide which order And you know you want something sustainable or organic, but you also see, oh my gosh. I can get a wine made by a woman winemaker. Of course. You're gonna go for that. I have four daughters. We go for all the women wines. All the women wines. But it's hard it's hard to know which wines are made by women. And that was a question that we got really explicitly. Guess would ask us how can I reliably know that a wine is made by a woman winemaker or gives back to charities that benefit women? And so we decided to launch a house brand that was all about women. And so our first wine that we launched was an organic grower producer champagne made in partnership with Julie Medi of the Go name Medi family. Yes. And love her. She's so amazing, and she crafts such beautiful wines. And, that was the first wine. So that was a really classic chardonnay forward, beautiful, beautiful, organic grower producer champagne. That was the first wine that we launched at the bars. And then we also noticed that our, like, just truly looking at our sales reports every week in both locations, in San Francisco and New New York that are top selling wine was always whatever we were featuring as our sparkling rose by the glass. It's such a wave and people here in Italy are missing it. I'm working on this. Oh, really spread the word. It's like It is it's so fun to drink Rosay always. And when it's sparkling Rosay, all the better. And, there's a lot of really cool sparkling Rosay out there. And I utterly agree with you. It's like, it's just such a fun style of wine to drink. But I wasn't finding a sparkling rose from the US that was dry, that was also affordable enough to be by the glass pricing for us. And so I reached out to one of my friends whose wines we love from California. Her name is Samantha Sheehan. She makes poe, she makes ultraviolet, and then she also now has a really killer, vermouth called mom and pop. That she's gotten, like, oh, they're so delicious. And I reached out to her and was like, hey, can we make a Jose together? And so that was our first California wine that we made. And, that's pretty Pina noir focus. And it's, you know, and charred, but, it's just delicious. It's juicy and fresh and dry and really, really food friendly. So that was the second wine that we launched. That one's called the Cali. Each of our wines are named after women. And she's the Cali because, that wine is our California, sparkling Rosay. Of course. Of course. Anybody who's listening needs to go check out your website as well because, the labels are cool as well. Okay. Yeah. So how how are you finding these women winemakers? Like Samantha, sheehan, that's an obvious one for you because you're in San Francisco, but, you know, you had a big list at Redler of, women winemakers, and I know you're still very much pro supporting women winemakers. How are you locating them and sourcing them? It's really honestly through, our network of friends, and also just what we see when we go out to Dine, you know, the people who always clue us into what's coolest and most happening in terms of winemaking are our friends who are sommeliers and beverage directors or own cool wine shops. So I have a a mental list of cool women winemakers who we love And it's really honestly through, like, shopping and tasting. We are right now on the hunt for an additional champagne partner and also potentially women in who are producing Cava and prossecco. Like, our focus really is around sparkling wines. And my goal would be to have a stable of wines that are all representative of really great high quality sparkling wine producing regions. And, you know, I can imagine Tasmania, I can imagine going to, you know, British Fizz, all of these, but, you know, it's a little bit one step at a time. So Of course. Of course. Well, we're gonna have to talk about Italian Rosay's sparkler producers because, I hook you up there. But Oh, amazing. I love to connect. Well, I'm really glad to hear that you're looking outside of California too because it'd be easy for you to just stay there. You know, and the the Pino and the chardonnay are very top quality. So the fact that you're looking into other regions around the world is also really important. I think for what you're doing, because it'll grow the visibility of your of your producers and also your ethos. You know, I I know that when you were at Magnum PR, in fact, you were really passionate about well crafted storytelling and remarkable events that sort of bring brands to life. You know, is this still the path you're gonna take as you go forward with Unfam? Because it sounds like he's gonna become many Fam, not just UNo. Right. It already is many. For sure. It's and also, like, the name implies that I'm the only person involved. And in fact, we are a a big team. Last year at this time, it was just me and my brother, who's my co founder, but now we're a team of sixteen. So we are we are, constantly growing and adding more people onto our onto our team. Well, ironically, when when I first found you, I will tell you that I took the name, Unfang, to mean the wine, not you. Oh, well, that's good. That's great. That's great. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we we really believe that all it takes is one woman to shatter another glass ceiling, which is where the name comes from. And, we have a a really, really great program where we honor three hundred and sixty five women in a year who shatter glass ceilings. And Oh, that's amazing. Yeah. And, that program is, I think, really representative of what you were talking about with what we did at Magnum PR. Which is, you know, we see this brand as a real opportunity not only to highlight women winemakers and to team up with charities that benefit women. But for women to use our wines as a way to celebrate their own successes, and also exploring something for sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. And to give these wines as gifts to other women in their lives who have really inspired them to dream big and to break through in their own way. And, you know, we're always thinking about could we launch something really big, like a conference or, an event that brings women together, of course, to drink a lot of sparkling wines, but also to learn from one another and collaborate from one another. And I see that conference would be the most sought after conference on the face of the earth, frankly. It definitely would be a lot of fun. So more to come. Well, that's that's really cool. I'll just follow that up. So is that something that you're really looking into doing as like a a b to b forum or more as a, you know, an opportunity as you said for women to taste other women's wines to see what's happening. What do you envision for that for that conference? Because that's a really interesting idea. Yeah. Absolutely. There certainly would be components of it that would be winemaking specific or wine education. There's an area of wine education that I'm really passionate about for women, which is really around wine in the kind of, like, in the workplace. So for example, if you as a woman go out to dinner, as a business meeting. Still, it so often happens that the man at the table receives the wine list and orders the wine. And I think there's, like, all the time. All the time. All the time. And I think there's a real power move that women can make, which is you know, taking that wine list and saying, let me order the first bottle and knowing, like, enough about champagne and sparkling wines to feel confident in being able to pronounce the words correctly and to know you know, what style of champagne they might be interested in and order that as the first bottle. So I'm kind of on a mission to get women to do more of that. I think there's a great, like, mentoring project right there, a training project and mentoring project that's really inspired because It is. I mean, it it's it always amazes me. We have a we have a laugh in my household. My husband doesn't drink at all. And we go out for dinner and invariably they hand him the wine list. Of course. I take it away. He hands it to me and says I don't drink, hands it to me. And when the sommelier comes back, they invariably ask him again what he has chosen. It's sort of it's a ten step process of no. It's going to be my wife who chooses the one. But in business situations, it's even worse. And in Italy, that's that's something that's definitely true, you know, to this day, sadly. Wine business is still very much run by, you know, old guys. Of course. And they get handed the wine list. So I think what you're looking at in terms of, training and mentoring and inspiring self confidence and teaching women to confidently yet, you know, with with graciousness, take that step and take hold of the wine list and order that first bottle, it is a power move. And that's, like, really setting the tone for a much more equitable discussion. Oh, absolutely. It's so, so, so important. It's it feels like something kind of small, but it actually is incredibly impactful. And women have so much buying power and sway over the wine industry in general. So I think it's really important that women, you know, people in general, but women specifically continuously seek out brands that they're supporting with their wallet that they feel are really aligned with their own personal mission and vision for how they wanna be, you know, relating to the world. So some of that, of course, is around sustainability and fair wages and all of those pieces, but also some of it has to do with, like, who runs the companies that I'm supporting. And I increasingly think about this with all consumer goods that I buy It's not always the easiest to figure out, the details behind it. But when we've got good solutions, it's, it's a it's a helpful piece for consumers, for sure. Are you enjoying this podcast? There's so much more high quality wine content available for mama jumbo shrimp. Check out our new wine study maps. Our books on Italian wine including Italian wine unplugged, the jumbo shrimp guide to Italian wine, Sanjay, Lambrusco, and other stories, and much much more. On our website, mama jumbo shrimp dot com. Now back to the show. I think it's also useful for for people in the hospitality industry to understand that, you know, particularly in America, but in the UK as well. And in Africa, also, the numbers are are proving that women are buying the wine. You know, over sixty percent of all wines bought in those three countries are bought by women. So, I think people who are in the industry, serving wine, selling wine, need to understand that women, you know, women are going to show their support with their purse, you know, if they're gonna buy or they're not gonna buy depending on how they're treated. So I think there's a training element that goes beyond the consumer and right into the industry how to treat women who walk into your restaurant or your bar or whatever because you don't know who they are. You don't know what they know about mine. You don't know where they are in their industry. And you've gotta be careful. So true. So true. Watch out for those ladies who know what they're doing. Well, this is you played right into my hand because I read a quote where you described yourself as part of a bad ass crew of women and you love serious wines, but you don't take yourselves too seriously, and you pair your champagne with tater tot waffles and serve your caviar with potato chips and offer free popcorn all day and all night. And you're always happy to savor a bottle for anybody in the alleyway outside of your restaurant. So Yep. First of all, I cannot get on board with that enough. I can't, see how much I would like to be part of that group. But seriously, in terms of, you know, educating people, how how do you translate your kind of slightly irreverent look at this, and your welcoming approach into your customer education. You know, when you've got people coming in, what language are you using? You know, you you were commenting about how difficult it can be to look at a champagne menu, especially a large one and not be sure of the words, not be sure of the French, not be sure of the terms or the domains. What are you doing to reach out and educate and stop that intimidation and that exclusivity for your consumers? Yeah. I think for us It's always all about relating to the wine drinker about what they really love to drink. What what turns them on? What gets them excited? My favorite way to do it is you know, in a live tasting environment with a group of people to get them to try multiple wines at once and just make a decision for themselves of what they like. And then for them to kinda break down. Okay. What do I like about this wine? Is it the way it smells, the way it tastes, the weight on the palate? Is it the level of sweetness, the level of, like, fruit expression? Is it a yeasty lazy characteristic, all of those pieces? And then once you can get to, okay, this is what I like about it, then we can kinda break down. Alright. The reason why you like this wine is because of this particular way in which it's made of the varietal composition, etcetera. But at the end of the day, we try to create wines that are pretty representative actually of the palette of what we knew was popular at the Ridley. We had, you know, hundreds of thousands of interactions with our guests at the Riddler and came to know what they really loved. And, you know, what is popular right now, which is totally in line with my palette is dry. I I love wines that still have beautiful, like, fruit characteristics to them. So I'm not, like, super, super into the crazy, crazy, high acid wines. I do love them sometimes with certain foods, but I like a beautifully balanced sparkling wine that, has some lazy yeasty characteristics and, is gonna taste just as good on its own as an aperitif or maybe after dinner. And is also gonna be really food friendly. I think another big piece of it is what you mentioned around, you know, our approach to food at the riddler, which was all about the high low. You know, I think that our wines are intentionally built to be, you know, accompaniments to things that are fancy, but also accompaniments to just, you know, what we're eating and drinking every day. You know, I love the idea of drinking sparkling wines at brunch. I love the idea of drinking sparkling wines with great pizza, even with burgers, certainly in fried chicken, as we all know. You know, French fries and anything that wants some sitting. You can do my favorite. Right? The best. The best. The best. And, you know, these wines don't have to be reserved for a really special occasion. They don't have to be reserved for New Year's Eve or a wedding toast. And they're, you know, they're they're meant to be enjoyed every day. And the reason why I fell in love with sparkling wines to begin with is that I do really feel like they turn every day into a celebration. Like, when you pop a bottle of bubs? That is so true. I I think we need that on a t shirt. When you pop a bottle of bubs, that is so right. It's it's funny. I, you know, some of my favorite memories are, you know, long night we all work late hours, you know, being in the industry, you know, our work tends to go late coming home, sort of one or two in the morning, being really tired, and just poached egg on toast and a glass of fizz That was heaven. The it didn't have to be anything special. It just had to be there. You know, and it and it made the whole night all right, gave me space to talk about what I, you know, what went well, what didn't, Again, my poor long suffering husband who doesn't drink or my children who used to stay up and and hear the stories of crazy wine people, that that having a glass of fizz in your hand really changes the the discussion. From, you know, just talking about work to actually sort of connecting with it again. Absolutely. We can all do fancy. Doing fancy is very easy. I think sometimes we we forget to do cozy. It's so true. I think of it almost like a really great sense of personal style. One of my favorite outfits, of course, is like a great pair of levi's, a, you know, a white tee, a a leather moto jacket, a pair of heels and a red lip. And, like, that is, to me, such a good example of truly the high low. And I think you wanna approach your the way that you're thinking about your food in the same way. It's like, you want some fancy stuff but you also want some casual approachable familiar pieces, to make up your own personal style. Yeah. And those two things go together. So I I like this concept of high low as well. I haven't heard it used that way, and I've I'm gonna I'm gonna steal that from you. So before we go too much further, I just wanna ask you, you you've sort of alluded a bit to, supporting women, you know, winemakers, women in the industry and, you know, paying back and working with charities and things like that. How how are you acting on that commitment? Because you've obviously formed these great women teams and your brother, your poor brother surrounded by women all of a sudden. But But you've you've clearly got, you know, a real spine of some strong women, and I know you wanna pay it back. So what are you doing through Unfam or what were you doing from Magnum or the riddler to sort of outreach into the community? How are you paying that? Absolutely. Well, each of our wines has a direct, charitable partner. This is really core to our DNA as a brand. And each of our wines gives back financially to each of those charities. So our two key charities are, the breast cancer research fund. Obviously, breast cancer affects so many women, really around the world, and anything that we can do to help to support research and even awareness for breast cancer is incredibly important to us. We also give back to an organization called dress for success, which is a great organization that is global that supports women, as they're getting back into the workforce. Actually, they've been through some sort of a tough time. And they started as an organization that would give, you know, appropriate business apparel to these women, but it's really grown into an organization that's focused on career training and and, you know, providing opportunities for women to truly get back into the workforce. So for us, that is a a big, big piece of what we do. We donate tens of thousands of dollars on a quarterly basis to the charities that we're involved in. And I I think one of the things I'm most proud about as we continue to grow and to scale as a company is that we're able to make larger contributions as we do so. And our our biggest partner is Delta Airlines. So next time you fly Delta, we are a global partner to Delta, which I, you know, I'm such a huge Delta fan even before all of this. But we're our sparkling white wine that that he is available on all of the planes in the US. And increasingly we are we're on many of the international flights as well. So I was actually flying back from Rome, recently and had some some of our sparkling wines on that plane, and it was pretty exciting to be drinking it, you know, from an international flight back to the US. Huge congratulations because it is not easy to make that sort of a thing happen. I I wanna know, like, a couple things I'm gonna say before I carry on with this question just for listeners who aren't sure where all these words are coming from, but the riddler, you know, riddling is is the motion of herding, sparkling wine bottles, you know, that are being made champagne style method of classical as we say in Italy, to help the lees fall down into the neck of the bottle. So, it's not it's not a Batman name. It's a it's a winemaking name. But, the the Betty comes from Betty White, the famous American actress, who who passed away, not all that long ago. And as you said, the Cali is, you're a California winemaker. So I love the fact that all of your wines have a story. Your your businesses have had a story even before you had these wines. So I can see this is something really close to your heart. And I'm just wondering where else are you selling? What what formats of your bottles are deemed the best? Who's your biggest customer base? What's happening with with the wines? Well, first and foremost, our website is big hub for us. So all of our wines are available on our website. And, that's one of the places where we get to, you know, interact with the customer directly, which is really wonderful. We actually just launched really beautiful gift packs, and corporate gifting, which is really cool too. Because we get a lot of requests from people who are leading, you know, within their company, diversity and inclusion initiatives, or, female powered groups or even book clubs, things like that where people are looking for the opportunity to gift, many gifts all at once. So that our website's been a big piece of the puzzle. We also do have national distribution throughout the country in the US. We are looking at international distribution. It's definitely on the on my mind for next year, so more to come on that. But a lot of a lot of questions to answer before we actually can can do that. You know, really the wines are available It's a little uneasy these days, logistics, and everything else. This COVID, it's tough stuff. Oh, yeah. I mean, the wine business more than anything is a supply chain business at this point. It's Absolutely. It really the in many ways, the least complicated part is the wine making. The more complicated parts of getting the wines where they need to be and making sure you've got enough bottles and packaging and, and all of those pieces. But, but we yeah. In terms of where we're available across the US, we have an amazing partnership with the Ritz Carlton. So we're available by the glass at every Ritz Carlton in the US. So anybody who's ever, you know, traveling to the Ritz, they can certainly ask for us. And then we're at great independent restaurants and independent retailers, really across the US. So we've got, a store locator on our website, and we are always trying to keep it up to date. But the the wines are pretty readily available, yeah, especially in big cities and increasingly more and more so throughout the US. So You are clearly this incredibly brave risk taking kind of leader as you said, bad ass person. What's next for you? What's what's next coming up with Unfang? You said looking at international distribution, but What else have you got in your in your sort of dreamscape? How do you stay so fearless and keep breaking all of these glass ceilings as you said? Well, definitely on the on the horizon, as I said, yeah, international distribution. Is a big one for us next year, going much, much deeper in the US and making sure that these wines are available at, you know, every great retail, every great restaurant that we can possibly, connect with, particularly women led restaurants. And women led retailers. That's very, very important to us to at least connect with those women and taste them on the wines and see if it's a fit for them. We also would love to launch some sort of a wine club next year. We don't know exactly what it will look like, but I think it would probably be a combination of our wines and some cool collaborative projects. We love to do collaborations, and we've actually got a great one coming up right after Christmas for the New Year's holiday. We're teaming up with there's an amazing cupcake company in the US called sprinkles. That's super popular. They've got, like, twenty five locations around the country. They're really big in LA and New York and Florida. And we're launching a Keeroyelle cupcake with them for new years, which will be super fun. Amazing. I need that in one week. Yeah. So we love to do those kinds of collabs too. And, for us, we're always looking for ways to team up with other women led brands and bring something special to our audience. Well, that is fantastic. I don't think we can beat that, Jen. So I'm gonna let you go, and I can't thank you enough for giving us some time today and telling us that Unfam, because I think what you're doing is really important for, the wine industry as a whole. You are leading. And I think you're also giving other women sort of the guts to to try some things outside of the box that maybe they wouldn't try without somebody who could inspire them and and possibly even lift them up and mentor them a bit. So, we wish you all the very, very best. And thank you so much for coming on today. Of course. My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. And I hope everybody goes out and and drinks bottle of of something special and sparkling today. Thank you for listening. And remember to tune in next Wednesday, I'll be chatting with another fascinating guest. Italian wine podcast is among the leading wine podcast in the world, and the only one with a daily show. Tune in every day and discover all our different shows. 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