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Key Takeaways Fiorenzo and Prakash reached out to Italian producers to launch their brand Sfizi.
Sfizi translates to whims in Italian; the couple considers them little pleasures.
Now, they’re targeting $100,000 in annual sales and eyeing product expansion.
This as-told story is based on a conversation with Joe Fiorenzo. Fiorenzo and his wife, Sheela Prakash, co-founded Sfizi, a food company curating Italian products in celebration of aperitivo culture. They launched their first product, ring-shaped snack crackers called taralli, in December 2025. Now, their business sees an average of $8,000 to $10,000 in monthly sales, on track for $100,000 in its first year, as it plans for product expansion. The piece has been edited for length and clarity.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Sfizi. Sheela Prakash and Joe Fiorenzo.
I started the business with my wife, Sheela. Sheela has studied and lived in Italy off and on for the past 10 years. We’ve been together for all that time, and we’ve traveled in Italy together. During that time, we fell in love with Italian culture. I also have an Italian American background, so I’ve experienced some of those Italian influences over the course of my childhood.
Sfizi translates to “whims” in Italian. We like to refer to them as little pleasures. The goal is basically to celebrate little pleasures of Italian culture. We launched with Italian Taralli crackers, the small bagel-looking crackers. You do see them throughout the United States. A lot of times they’re in those clear cellophane bags. They’re often very dusty looking, at the bottom of a basket somewhere in the cheese section. We wanted to start with that product because it felt like an easy segue.
Starting a self-funded business without a CPG background
Neither of us have a CPG background. I worked in corporate insurance for 17 years. Sheela has a food background, but not in the CPG space. So we wanted to start small. We figured, if we can’t figure this out, then we probably are in the wrong business, so we should probably do something else. But it’s been good so far. We launched with three flavors; we wanted to make them fun, approachable and eye-catching.
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