The three Sproule sisters from Grand Forks, North Dakota, have cooked up something grand for the forks of America — a high-fiber, pre-biotic pasta that in just a few years has grown to become a very successful business. Sold under the brand 3 Farm Daughters, the pasta can be found on shelves in national grocery chains such as Safeway, Albertson’s, Meijer and Whole Foods.
On the latest episode of Grow Getters, a new Farm Journal podcast showcasing and celebrating agriculture’s most inventive side hustles, the sisters tell host Davis Michaelsen how they birthed the business in 2020, when all three were busy giving birth to children. While growing up on the family farm, they forged a strong work ethic, but they also adhered to the family’s entrepreneurial motto — failure isn’t fatal. So they were well prepared for the challenges of starting a business.
“It was a windy, bumpy road,” middle-sister Mollie tells Michaelsen on the podcast. “We started making it in very small batches and selling it to local retailers.” Husbands and parents pitched in to help the sisters with deliveries before they managed to get a distributor.
When they were initially contacted by a buyer at Whole Foods, they wondered if the email was spam. They were in the process of creating a new look and new packaging for the product, and they were learning about a whole new world of selling and marketing consumer package goods. “We took the meeting — it was real — and it took off from there,” says youngest sister Grace.
A key to standing out in a crowded market is their clean, simple approach to the product, which is made with just two ingredients: wheat flour and durum wheat semolina. They use no enrichments or additives in the process. “When we started the company, we wanted the nutrition to come straight from the field,” Grace says on the podcast. “We didn’t want it to come from additives.
The sisters recently added spaghetti to their high-fiber, no-sodium lineup of penne, rotini, elbow and cavatappi. And they say they’re ready to keep the business growing. “We grow an array of crops on the farm,” Mollie says. “We have pasta today but hopefully in the future we’ll have a couple of other farm products, which would be fun and exciting. We invite everyone to stay tuned.”
Watch the full episode of Grow Getters.
Learn more about the sisters and their pasta: https://3farmdaughters.com/
