November the 1st, 2021 - The Croatian company Pa-Sta, which creatively means both So what? in Croatian and also spells out the name of a much loved Italian food, has attracted the attention of huge chain stores.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Ivan Tominac writes, the global coronavirus pandemic opened some new vistas for many people, and it pushed Renata Buric from Zagreb into what are often choppy and challenging entrepreneurial waters. In those circumstances, she became the owner of the Pa-Sta brand, which deals with the production of homemade, hand-made ravioli.

"As I grew up in a very traditional family that always respected the homemade food we ate, I simply decided that I'd try to make some homemade pasta, although in practice I didn't know much about it," said the Croatian company Pa-Sta's owner Renata Buric.

This is how the Facebook page Pa-Sta was created, where she posted a couple of pictures of several types of classic pasta. She published her page within the group Virtualni Zagrebacki plac and, to her surprise, it wasn't long before she received her first order.

"In fact, I can't describe to you how successful I considered this order and how much it motivated me to go on, and most of all it awakened in me a spark of curiosity for knowledge and possibilities - which sounded something like; what more could I do?

So I set out to explore, study, play with colours and try to do something different. My first post of colourful ravioli was met with great customer approval and there was a really big boom after which the story carried on all by itself. That's why today I like to say that Pa-Sta chose me, I didn't choose it,'' Buric revealed.

Ravioli she makes are special in many ways, and they are characterised by creativity in terms of top quality.

“Although we have pasta on the market that comes in different colours, what we can't find are the producers who used those same colours in an imaginative and creative way where they played with different motifs. We even have ravioli with dots or dashes and bows that are black with white dots. In addition, our ravioli are large, rich (the weight of one piece is about 50 grams) precisely because of their quality as the raw materials we use are some of the best.

In the end, we're in balance with the consumer basket and the market value of other Croatian products, because it was in our interest to make our pasta accessible to every customer,'' explained the Croatian company Pa-Sta's owner.

Renata decided to make it by hand instead of using a machine, and thus made the job really difficult. However, there have been zero regrets because the result of such a way of working is incomparable in its quality and taste compared to machine production.

“Each roll of dough is mixed by hand, the only thing we use mechanically is a dough thinning machine, it's a little bigger than the classic household machines. Each hole in the dough is cut by hand. We also stuff the ravioli by hand, then we cut and pack it. Basically, every single step in the process is manual. In fact, making ravioli is a physically demanding job. In addition, one needs to be very patient because every step is really important, and sometimes due to the nature of the food some steps in production can be more demanding than usual.

Beetroot or spinach are live foods and they aren't always the same, so you have to know how to adapt them in processing in order to get the maximum quality. Sometimes we have problems when, for example, the weather is humid, rainy or too hot, and the dough absorbs water or dries up quickly. In general, the process itself requires constant adjustment to the weather and to various seasonal conditions,'' explained Renata.

The Croatian company Pa-Sta's beginnings were very modest with about 100 kilograms of pasta per month, but their production capacity has grown significantly thanks to the Start Croatia project and the Spar Hrvatska retail chain - about a tonne of ravioli now comes out of their small manufactory per month.

“Our biggest challenge was learning and adopting all the items we needed to be able to compete out there on the market at all. I'd like to emphaside that the Start Croatia project has really helped us a lot in this segment,'' concluded Renata Buric.

For more, check out Made in Croatia.

In the second installment of our food series, we're leaving Vis and heading up north to one of Kvarner's precious – Krk island.