Wildly Beloved Foods
Originally from Salt Lake City, Utah, Aurora Echo, a passionate cook and mother of two, founded Wildly Beloved Foods, a certified organic pasta company in 2022. The company creates artisan pasta, inspired by a craving for spinach pasta 15 years ago. Her vibrant spinach pasta ended up being a truly wildly beloved recipe. Aurora’s love of sharing food fueled her desire to transform her pasta-making skills into a small-batch, organic food company. Her goal was to build a company she, as a consumer, would support, and her success reflects a shared value for quality and sustainability. As she says, “sharing food that is both nurturing and nourishing is as old as humankind.”
Pasta Making has been a theme in Aurora’s kitchen since before she had children. She first made her spinach pasta because she found that it wasn’t available in any of the specialty and health food stores of her Salt Lake City, Utah neighborhood. Aurora bought the equipment from a Williams-Sonoma and found herself rebelling from the recipes that called for squeezing frozen spinach until all the water was gone (which she considered sacrilege for one who loved food and nutrition). Eventually, Aurora wound up buying organic baby spinach and blending it in a food processor and adding it to her gluten safe semolina flour to make what her friends and family reported as the best pasta they had ever eaten. After Aurora had two little girls, it became an almost daily request to make fresh spinach pasta and that is when she began drying it on wood racks in my kitchen. She then decided to rent space in a commercial kitchen and apply to become a WSDA Organic Food Processing Plant and launch a business that enabled her to sell wholesale to local food marketplaces, like the Whidbey Island Grown Food Hub, as well as direct to eaters through website orders, and in local and regional food hubs and grocery and specialty stores. Now she has a conjoined retail marketplace, factory, and cooking classroom in Clinton. All of which came from a simple desire for fresh spinach pasta.
What are your production practices?
Starting her own company from the ground up allowed Aurora to build a principled foundation; weaving and incorporating her values and knowledge of environmental health science and technology into every facet of Wildly Beloved Foods.
Wildly Beloved Foods prioritizes using certified organic ingredients, like eggs sourced locally from Day Creek Organic Farms in Sedro Woolley. They also prioritize sustainability by using compostable packaging and trash bags throughout their operation. Aurora believes these choices not only create delicious food, but also contribute to a healthier environment for future generations.
Additionally, when participating in the farmers markets last year, Aurora interacted with hundreds of eaters who identified as gluten-intolerant and gluten-sensitive, many of whom had avoided gluten for decades. Conversations about Italian and European flour inspired countless people to try her pasta and then report that they experienced no reaction after eating it. This occurred over and over again, and word spread—with people calling it “Life Changing Pasta”, and saying it was the only pasta they could eat. This has become a very big deal. It means that the flour Wildly Beloved sources is unique to these customer’s digestion. It is actually a safer gluten, a term Aurora has begun to describe her pasta with.
Community Involvement
The community has been a great resource to Aurora, including providing a place to sell her pasta and create a flourishing business. Not only that, but she often sells out the workshops and cooking classes she hosts at her store in Clinton. Having the resources to be in a brick and mortar facility took time and a lot of hard work and community support. Aurora also sells olive oils and ceramics from other small businesses on Whidbey Island.
Aurora is an amazingly involved producer with Whidbey Island Grown. Wildly Beloved Foods only recently celebrated their one year anniversary in their marketplace in Clinton (which they celebrated with a Pasta Party). Despite the youth of her business, Aurora has excelled at her marketplace and factory work as well as her work with the Food Hub. Aurora has also consistently created fantastic instagram content in collaboration with Whidbey Island Grown, with the star of her social media being her pasta machine!
FUN FACTS
Favorite food to eat or cook: Aurora’s favorite food is one of many themes of salad. She loves how versatile they are and has countless recipes.
Dream travel destination: Fittingly, Aurora’s dream travel destination is a tour of Italy to visit Bottene, where her pasta extruder comes from in the north. Then she wants to tour around the sparkling rosé region and then Calabria for all things spicy with dishes made with their calabrian chilis.
Favorite type of music: Aurora loves music and cannot choose a favorite because taste in music is like taste in food, and it is varied and changes based on mood and place. She loves the best of everything!
Coming Soon
Wildly Beloved Foods has many wonderful foods to accompany pasta coming soon! Aurora chose the name with Foods instead of just Pasta because she plans on offering a beautiful, delicate salad dressing, her grandmother Helen's recipe. It is just organic extra virgin olive oil, and organic white balsamic vinegar, salt and fresh ground pepper. WBF will also offer sauces and ravioli, which they make in the Workshops hosted weekly at the WBF Marketplace.
Producer Feature by Maddie Keating and Rex Curtiss
