Pistakio started with two recent college grads, a dorm room recipe, and an Instagram account they didn’t want to start. Nicola Buffo and Francine Voit launched the company as a college project after noticing something in real life they confirmed on Reddit: People have an irrational love for pistachios, and nobody was doing anything interesting with them.
What began as a pistachio mayo prototype became a sweet spread that sold out at Portland’s biggest local retailer, then went nationwide and grew 10 times.
Along the way, Nico and Fran said no to Shark Tank, no to Target, and yes to letting their community shape nearly every product decision they’ve made. In this sweet interview, they share how they built Pistakio by treating customers like co-developers, knowing when to turn down big opportunities, and learning what it takes to navigate a business partnership that’s also a relationship.
On scrapping their original product a week before the big pitch:
Fran: We took this community college class to learn how to actually make our product FDA-safe, because before that we were making it in a dorm room. The whole plan was to launch a pistachio mayo. Nine weeks into a 10-week course, a food scientist came in and told us we needed to scrap it, and it was never going to work unless we spent $100,000 on a co-packer run for a product we didn’t even know would sell.
So we completely pivoted. Instead of presenting the mayo to New Seasons, our first grocery store, we made the sweet spread. We had about a week and a half to get new labels, a new recipe, new jars, and an entirely new product. But they loved it.
Nico: It was so good, though. The mayo was my baby.
Fran: It was. But I thought the sweet spread was more like Nutella, and people would understand it faster. Pistachios as a sweet condiment just made more sense to consumers than a savory mayo that required a lot of education. We were always telling people to try it with fries, and Americans kept reaching for ketchup instead. You can’t buy that kind of education when you’re just getting started.
On building a brand in public because they had no choice:
Nico: When we started in college, Pistakio was a social media project. We were living in a dorm room so the lighting was terrible, the utensils were worse, and we didn’t want to start Instagram until after college. But my professor told us that if we didn’t start posting, he would fail us, and I’d have to stay an extra year. That was the kick in the butt.
It turned out to be super helpful, because we started building the community from the very beginning. We took people along the journey of developing the product, developing the labels, asking what they wanted to see.
Fran: Part of our assignment was to make the account a conversation instead of trying to sell something. We had nothing to sell anyway, so continuing that approach just built this strong community of people who always felt like our friends. We always respond. We always answer the DMs. We genuinely want their help, because without it, we wouldn’t be able to do what we’re doing. It’s already lonely enough as a founder. Having that community and a cofounder to lean back on are things we’ll never take for granted.
On how community feedback created their best-selling products:
Fran: Our crunchy spread came directly from our community. When we were first making the product, there were little bits of sugar inside because we couldn’t find powdered sugar that was organic. We were grinding it ourselves in a Vitamix and it wouldn’t always come out perfect.
We started getting DMs and emails from people saying they liked the crunch, but they didn’t like that it was sugar. So we found a supplier for powdered sugar, made the creamy version as smooth as possible, and thought if people are telling us they want crunch, we should just make something for them. That’s when crunchy was born. Everyone thinks it was a Dubai chocolate thing, but no. Crunchy is here to stay, she’s not a trend.
Nico: The date bark was the same story. We started seeing so many people using Pistakio with dates—cutting a date open and putting some inside, making date barks. When we started thinking about what was next, it was a no-brainer. We already knew people loved the combination. We launched three weeks ago and it’s so far beyond our expectations. It worked because it was something our community was asking for, not something we came up with out of the air.
On taste as the only core value that matters:
Nico: We put out a survey when we were thinking about switching from glass jars to plastic, which felt like a huge decision to us. Out of 200 responses, one person said they wouldn’t buy Pistakio in plastic. The other 199 didn’t care. That pointed us toward what really matters to our community: the product has to taste amazing. They don’t buy us because we have low sugar or because we’re no seed oil. They buy us because of taste. Once we understood that, we made it our North Star.
Fran: We get comments saying we should make a product with no sugar. And sure, we could. But it wouldn’t taste good. Our whole thing is that pistachios are supposed to taste delicious. If it needs a little sugar, so be it. This is an indulgence, it’s not a keto diet food. If you want that, you can get it somewhere else.
On saying no to Shark Tank and Target before they even launched:
Nico:Shark Tank reached out before we launched since we had a few posts go viral and they were interested in us. We’d been watching Shark Tank since college—that’s where we learned about business as two art school kids. But we knew we weren’t ready since, by the time the show aired, we would not have been able to fulfill orders. It would’ve been an amazing experience, but it probably would have put us out of business.
One of my biggest pieces of advice for other founders is to really understand where you are in your journey. Say yes when it pushes you to get better and get better faster. But be mindful and don’t put yourself in a situation where you can’t follow through.
Fran: It was the same with Target. … We didn’t have the capacity. We still don’t. We were afraid that saying no to Shark Tank meant they’d never reach out again, so we talked to other founders who’d been on the show. Some went on the second time, some the third, which helps us realize it’s not now or never. It was just not now.
On their café tour and getting people to try the product risk-free:
Fran: Last year it was just me and Nico, and we made a list of 200 coffee shops. I personally DMed or emailed them, sent samples, and told them to do their own R&D with Pistakio. We wanted uniqueness, with each shop doing their own spin on a Pistakio latte.
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This year, we hired someone to do it again. A lot of last year’s shops came back, and new ones started reaching out because they saw the map or heard about it!
Nico: Our community was super helpful here too. We told them to tag coffee shops where they wanted to see Pistakio, and those shops started seeing all these tags and wanted in. It creates this snowball effect. The more people get excited, the more shops want to join.
We always leave it open-ended. We give them the pistachio latte recipe as a starting point, but they can get creative with pistachio matcha, pistachio panini cake topping, whatever. It’s fun to see what they come up with.
Fran: The whole idea is that someone can try Pistakio risk-free. They can get it on top of their ice cream for a dollar instead of buying a $15 jar. Once they try it, they’re hooked.
On dividing a business when you’re also dividing a life:
Nico: There’s a level of trust you have with your partner that you wouldn’t have with a cofounder you met on LinkedIn. If Fran makes a decision I don’t fully agree with, I’ll share my perspective, but I trust she’s making it for the good of the business. Being in this together—living and breathing Pistakio—means I don’t have to explain why I’m sending emails at 11 p.m. on a Sunday.
Fran: We came from art school, so neither of us had any business experience—not even an outside job. We learned everything together. In the beginning, we took every meeting together, sent every email together. It was slow, but it helped us figure out which parts of the business each of us liked more, and which parts we were bad at.
Now we have our own areas. If Nico handles operations, I don’t weigh in on the supplier relationship. If I handle social media, he doesn’t tell me when to post a Reel. It’s not written down anywhere, but we both know it, and if we were micromanaging each other, nothing would get done.
Catch Fran and Nico’s full conversation on Shopify Masters to hear about the $20,000 TikTok agency mistake, why they chose Shopify as their first sales channel, and the food truck dream that started it all.
This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.
