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This simmering showdown between Carbone Fine Food and Rao’s reads like a classic American business fight — grit, vision and a little revenge on the corporate titans who think they can buy their way to taste. Eric Skae, the Bronx-born executive who once ran Rao’s retail business, has turned Carbone into a serious challenger, with sales expected to hit roughly $100 million this year and ambitions to keep growing.
Hardworking entrepreneurs built these brands from scratch, and Skae’s story is proof that private initiative still drives real results in America. Carbone’s lineup has exploded into some 27,000 stores and the brand moved millions of jars last year, proof that consumers will reward quality and hustle when given the choice.
But this is also a cautionary tale about consolidation run amok: Rao’s was rolled into Sovos and then scooped up by Campbell’s in a multi-billion-dollar play that shows how private equity and corporate giants gobble up America’s best-known names. When giant conglomerates buy beloved brands, the risk is always the same — policy and profit angles that favor shareholders over flavor and customers.
Meanwhile, Washington’s heavy hand is making things harder for honest foodmakers, not easier; the industry is contending with tariffs on premium San Marzano tomatoes that nibble away at margins and force price decisions that hurt consumers. Politicians talk about helping small business while slapping on costs that only benefit importers and big processors who can game the system.
Carbone’s rapid growth hasn’t come from short-term tricks but from reinvesting every dollar back into the business and betting on American consumers’ taste for quality over cheap, mass-produced sauce. That unprofitable reinvestment and Skae’s refusal to simply cash out — despite acquisition math that could value the company at multiple times sales — is exactly the kind of risk-taking our economy needs more of.
So here’s the bottom line for patriotic, hardworking Americans: cheer for the scrappy brands that keep competition alive and push back against the corporate consolidation and tariff policies that favor the well-connected. Support companies that reinvest, compete, and earn their growth — that’s how we keep shelves full of quality choices and keep power in the hands of consumers, not distant boardrooms.
