Once again, RP’s Pasta Company is looking for a new home now that plans to move to the former Kohl’s grocery store space at Northside Town Center have fallen through. The Madison-based fresh pasta maker is “bursting at the seams” at its current location on East Wilson Street, according to owner Peter Robertson.
The deal that would have brought the company to the north side looked like a go this spring but quietly fell apart over the summer. Robertson declined to give more information about why negotiations with Northside Town Center reached an impasse.
“Let’s just say there were just too many things that didn’t align. So we made other choices,” says Robertson.
Sherman Plaza Inc., which owns the Northside Town Center, could not be reached for comment.
“We’re back to square one on a building search,” says Robertson, who founded RP’s in 1995 and has been looking for a new facility for over a year.
North-side Ald. Larry Palm is disappointed the company won’t be moving into his district. City officials approved a low-interest, $800,000 loan from the Capital Revolving Fund to assist in what was expected to be a $2.5 million renovation of the space for RP Pasta’s new facility. Palm says the project was a perfect fit for the “North Side Food Innovation Corridor” envisioned by the city’s economic development team.
“The north side already has FEED (Food Enterprise & Economic Development) Kitchens, the Madison College culinary program, a number of breweries and other food businesses,” says Palm. “RP’s Pasta would have been an ideal addition to what we are trying to do on the north side. We worked really hard to make it happen. It’s a real shame.”
The need for larger digs has been fueled by the success of its gluten-free pastas, which RP’s started producing in 2008. In the last few years, demand for the specialty product has been “overwhelming.”
“We are an extremely niche product even in the global, gluten-free market,” says Robertson. “All the other gluten-free pastas, whether they be dry or fresh, just don’t meet expectations of what a pasta should be. Right now we’re trying to figure out how to keep up.”
Robertson would like to be able to sell to more restaurants, delis and other food service businesses as well as have more grocery stores carry his product. But without a larger space to crank out more pasta, his growth is limited. The company currently employs 28 people and intends to hire more once a new facility is up and running.
Robertson is trying to keep the operation in Madison. Details are far from finalized, but he is in early talks to move to the south side in the industrial area off of Greenway Cross.
“We are trying to stay,” says Robertson. “But nothing is set in stone, and we haven’t closed on a deal yet. We do have customers waiting in the wings that we need to provide a service for. So if we need to go outside of Madison to make that happen, we might have to leave. But I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that.”
