Bippi founder spices up food aisles as sales triple for “Nonna level” chilli condiments

A young Melbourne founder's venture to industrially scale "stovetop batch" traditional Calabrian chilli recipes without preservatives has resonated with a growing foodie base across the country, with Bippi tripling sales last year amid plans to lift its foodservice footprint and exports in 2025. 

Ben Circosta started Bippi - which is Calabrian slang for 'chilli' - in 2020 after seeing a lack of high-quality Italian condiments prepared to home-made standards in the market.

"I knew there was a gap out there to be able to create condiments without having to add citric acids or preservatives to be able to keep it on the shelf," explains Circosta.

"It sounds pretty nonchalant, but it’s as simple as the fact my Nonna (grandmother in Italian) would have these jars of chilli in her cupboard for eight years before we would crack a jar and eat it, and it would taste exactly the same."

He explains there was a certain naivety to founding a business in such a highly competitive space, but that worked to his advantage given his passion for good food and its connection to his heritage.

"I think having something that is directly connected to family certainly helps you get through the harder struggles when you’re starting up, whether it be through product or staff or financial," says Circosta, who won the 2024 Melbourne Young Entrepreneur Award - Food, Beverage & Hospitality. 

"Having passion and a connection to the story is so valuable, and it’s something I’m very grateful to have. For me as a founder it doesn't feel like work - it’s literally just me making and eating nice Italian food, which is pretty cool."

The journey started out of Circosta's home kitchen producing Italian-style chilli, making sure each batch was approved by his Nonna Emilia before he'd sell it online or to small delis around Melbourne.

To do this, sourcing ingredients from local farms was critical to ensuring the same high-quality flavour as what his family grew up with. After migrating to Australia from Italy, his grandparents established vineyards in Mildura.

"We sold table grapes and sultanas and dried fruit, but in between all these vineyards and vines were just chillies and eggplants and random fruit and vegetables that they would have for themselves to eat," says Circosta, adding that chillies were so integral to the family's way of life that his grandfather would carry one in his pocket to gatherings and events just in case. 

"They would never go to the supermarket to buy anything, they would just grow everything – that’s the beauty of living in a rural area or having the farmland to do it. It's quite healthy and quite special.

"At the end of the season Nonna would have all this excess chilli that she would create Bippi chilli oil with. She would also dry chillies and roast it to make roasted peppers."

Placing an emphasis on the quality of ingredients, Circosta utilised connections with local farms and contacts in wholesale fruit and vegetable markets to secure fresh chillies that weren't graded highly enough for supermarket shelves.

"Farmers were struggling to sell second-grade chilli and would often lose money on picking them from the plant," Circosta explains.

"For context, second-grade chillies are simply curly, small or have tiny marks or grazes and therefore are not accepted by supermarkets. 

"This meant we could not only secure produce at a commercially viable price, but  we could minimise the food waste and support the farmers by purchasing their second-grade stock at a fair price for them."

This attention to quality helped the startup gain momentum and the interest of independent distributors, until it eventually secured a ranging with Woolworths in October 2022, and Coles not long after that in April 2023.

Today, Bippi operates out of its own purpose-built manufacturing facility with a team of more than 15 staff producing condiments that are sold by 1,669 stockists nationwide.

"We’re a young, modern brand, and although we are traditional in a sense with our chilli and our story, we’re also trying to be creative and find new flavours that have Italian influence," the founder says.

"Since launching our best-selling Italian-style chilli, we have created nine other delicious condiments addressing the same need, including world-first innovations like our Italian-style sriracha, Italian chilli oil, and chilli olive tapenade," the founder says.

"These aren't products that you see a lot of condiment brands making. It's very unique to us."

Whilst being stocked in just under half of Woolworths' stores and 45 per cent of all Coles stores has been a boon for Bippi, Circosta has taken care not to overcommit to any one sales channel.

"Part of our strategy was to diversify early and become strong firstly in Melbourne as our home base with a lot of independent stores, and then do the same in all the other capital cities, just in case something goes wrong and you get stung out with your cash position or stock," he says.

"The strategy has been to be a bit more targeted with our growth as well. I think it’s important to try to build the brand outside of those big players to help grow your brand and make sure people know you're around."

Growth last year was assisted by market entry last May into Queensland, its last Australian state or territory to have a presence and where it also signed a foodservice distribution deal with Euro Foods QLD.

In that segment the company also has a relationship with Simply Fresh Distributors in South Australia, and late last year Bippi partnered with major Italian foodservice distributor Bruno’s Fine Foods in Victoria.

"That opens us up to a lot of pizza restaurants, pasta restaurants, Italian restaurants and cafes and Panini bars, where until then we were just doing directly. But the goal has always been to partner with a key player in Melbourne. It's a really big win," he says.

"We're expecting by the end of the year we'll have grown five times with our food service side of the business, which is part of our diversification strategy."

While growth continues for Bippi in Australia, Circosta has recently taken the product to more distant shores after reaching a deal with a Thai wholesale distributor late last year with the first products hitting that market's shelves in December.

"Our first export outside of Australia was to Thailand and it's something we worked on for six months to make it happen," he says.

"We’re slowly looking into other areas of Asia. Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore are all on the cards.

"In each of these markets, some more than others, our customers are in higher-end markets and the partners we’re working with specialise in these areas; we're not going with a cheap volume-based distributor, we're targeting gourmet stores or gourmet areas through e-commerce, similar to what we did in Australia."

Circosta says this international push is benefited by a positive perception of high-quality Australian food, as well as a "global pick-up" in Italian-style food.

"We lean into that," he says.

"Obviously Southeast Asia isn't close to Italy, so importing Italian product from Australia can work for them.

"A lot more people around the world are wanting to experience Italian food and Italian culture, which is really exciting for our brand as we expand outside Australia," he says, adding a mid-year entry into New Zealand is also a possibility.

"Having something that was my grandmother’s condiment now being on the shelves of major supermarkets and in so many households, until you really sit back and take a look, it is very special. It’s something that I'm very proud of."