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QuickTake:
Pasta Plus, founded in 1981, is now selling fresh pasta made with locally grown flour from Camas Country Mill at the Lane County Farmers Market.
Welcome to Market Watch, a new series where Lookout Eugene-Springfield chats with different vendors at Eugene’s Saturday Market about how they got started and what they’re up to now.
For this edition, Lookout talks with Mike Pierce, who purchased the 44-year-old Pasta Plus business in January.
Responses have been edited for clarity.
How did you get started in the pasta business?
I had a food truck called Pasta La Vista where I was extruding fresh pasta every day. Unfortunately, that burned down, and then I was in the process of rebuilding. It took a lot longer after COVID and inflation and everything like that. Then this business came up for sale.
When did you start tabling at the market?
This is our fourth week at Saturday Market and we’re really honored to be still serving fresh pasta to Eugene. The pasta we’re selling at the farmers market is 95% Oregon-based. We use Camas Country Mill Oregon-grown durum wheat flour and pasture-raised chicken eggs from Upside Down Farm in Coos Bay.
What are you selling at the market?
We have large shells, small shells, spinach rotini, regular rotini and rigatoni. Everything is $9 per pound. This is different from what we sell in stores, which is the fettuccine, linguine and spaghettini. Those use flour that isn’t necessarily local. For the farmers market, we wanted to have local ingredients.
Pasta Plus has been around since 1981 but they didn’t sell at the farmers market. How has the response been to being at the market?
The more we’re here, the more people are finding out about us being here. It’s been a really good response. The people that have been getting it have been coming back every week to get more, which means the product is really good. Last week we had four return customers from the week before.
What don’t people understand about your work?
People don’t always realize how local this really is. We’re using Oregon ingredients and we’re connecting directly with the farmers. Today the actual farmers who grow the wheat for Camas Country Mill came and bought pasta from us. It’s been a really cool experience getting to talk to everybody from the community that makes it possible.
Where else can people find your pasta?
We’re in every Market of Choice in the state, Natural Grocers here in Eugene, Safeway, and Fred Meyer and now Provisions in Eugene [and other places, such as Capella Market]. But what we bring to the Saturday Market is special — it’s our Oregon-sourced line made specifically with local ingredients.
