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STILLWATER — Rolling in dough? Maybe not yet, but Becky Biederman of Stillwater and her sister Beth Aarness might be there soon. For now, they're mostly just rolling out dough. The sisters opened their frozen certified-organic pizza dough business True Dough three years ago. Revenues doubled between 2013 and 2014 and may double again this year, with the sevenvariety product line now sold out of 70 stores in six states. That growth has somewhat stunned the owners, who started selling at farmers markets on a lark after being dissatisfied with the additives in other frozen doughs on the market.
“We didn't ever think we'd become this big,” noted Biederman, 38. “Even though we're still really small, it feels big to us.” Next the sisters plan to add a couple more distributors and employees and expand their marketing efforts to achieve a 50 percent market saturation in metro-area health food stores, co-ops and health food sections of grocers. After that, the product mix might expand beyond savoryflavored and gluten-free varieties; they're thinking lowsodium, dessert and perhaps caramel-roll dough. “It's kind of like endless hours of labor , but we're just both so motivated that it doesn't feel like work a lot of times,” Biederman
said. “It goes from being overwhelming to elating, this cycle of 'I cant believe what we just did.' It's an extreme challenge.” The sisters grew up in Hastings. Farmington resident Aarness, 34, originally pursued a career in human resources, living in Arizona for a while and working for employers including Target Corp. Biederman studied education and is now a middle school teacher in Woodbury; she moved to Stillwater with her family in 2006. Biederman said both women were “proclaimed foodies and big fans of the organic food movement” when they literally threw around the business idea while making pizza for their families. Both feel other products on the
market include too many dough conditioners, chemicals, preservatives and additives to be healthy. Their idea took a turn after they made up and sold some of their own dough at area farmers markets and were approached by a representative from the Kowalski's grocery chain who offered to sell it in stores. After that they fine tuned their recipes, rented a commercial kitchen in St. Paul, ramped up production and studied up on marketing and distribution. For a long time they made all the dough themselves, though one employee was eventually hired. Most ingredients are sourced from Minnesota.
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