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The basics:

• Hoboken Farms is a NJ-born clean-label pasta sauce brand founded by Brad Finkel
• Brand’s marinara sauce has earned accolades from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Wirecutter
• Hoboken Farms’ sauces are now sold in over 1,300 supermarkets across the U.S.
• Using +$4M in funding to expand production, distribution and innovation

Fueled by more than $4 million in fresh funding, a spicy new flavor and soaring demand from grocery stores across the U.S., New Jersey-born clean-label pasta sauce brand Hoboken Farms is turning up the heat. Founded by native Hobokenite Brad Finkel, the venture is the only independently owned company that has organically grown from a local, outdoor farm market into an emerging national brand.

Made with simple, high-quality ingredients, the premium sauces have landed on the shelves of over 1,300 supermarkets coast to coast, alongside storied brands like Rao’s Homemade, Barilla, Carbone and Classico.

Even amid fierce competition in the $3.76 billion pasta sauce industry, Hoboken Farms is attracting a loyal following among consumers. It also continues to score rave reviews. In 2011, The Wall Street Journal named Hoboken Farms’ marinara sauce as the best jarred pasta sauce in the country. Following a blind taste test, the newspaper noted the sauce’s brightness, balanced acidity and sweetness.

In October 2025, The New York Times’ product review website Wirecutter ranked Hoboken Farms as a top pick in the “best jarred marinara sauce” category. The publication praised it as “a refreshingly bright sauce that cuts through rich foods.” Wirecutter also singled Hoboken Farms out as a thick and tangy sauce perfect for dunking mozzarella sticks.

“One of the reasons why I’m so excited about that is because it’s not about our brand. It’s not about our story. It’s about the actual sauce … That just gives us so much credibility with consumers and with the trade,” Finkel said, adding, “It’s just so humbling because this little local brand is up there with the corporate behemoths.”

Taking opportunities

After recently doubling sales and boosting distribution by 40%, Finkel hopes to sell between 850,000 and 1 million jars this year.

“I bet you Rao’s does that in a day,” Finkel said of Camden-based The Campbell Co.’s flagship pasta sauce brand.

But compared to some of those widely recognized brands with long histories, Hoboken Farms’ sauce component is something the CEO regards as business that is promising yet still “brand new.”

“I wasn’t trying to grow Hoboken Farms into a sauce brand in the least bit. This is something that came to me from the market and the trade. And it became clear that if I was being asked to take advantage of these retail opportunities, in order to do that, I needed the economics, the expertise and the execution,” he said.

“And so, the question is, ‘Are you going to take those opportunities?’ If the answer is yes, you’re going to have to open up the business and take on partners and grow it. If the answer is no, then you’re going to stay exactly where you are and maybe that’s fine,” he said.

“For me, I like to hit doubles all day. I figured if I could hit doubles, I can get into the Hall of Fame. But I’m also not adverse to hitting the home run if the pitch is right,” he said.

Imagine the pastabilities

After beginning his business as a side hustle, Finkel grew it into a popular stand at farmers’ markets in New Jersey and New York. It started in 1992, when family and friends who had moved away from Finkel’s hometown of Hoboken kept asking him to bring fresh goodies to them when he visited.

“Before, when I was in high school, I joined a band called the Delavantes. The Delavantes are considered one of the creators of the Americana movement. In fact, they were the first band to actually ever have a No. 1 top 10 Americana record,” he said. “I played bass and loaded vans and went from one club to another from Maine down to Texas.”

“I don’t know if I was ever an artist, but I was certainly starving. There’s not a lot of money to be made playing bass in an Americana band and traveling around in a van,” he said. “So, I started going to Ramapo College and I was a commuter. I drove from Hoboken to Mahwah three to four times a week, and that was when they were widening Route 17. So, it literally was a two-hour drive both ways.”

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Gateway to Hoboken

That’s when Finkel said he began meeting a lot of “ex-Hobokenites who had moved to the suburbs.”

“What I learned in my freshman sociology class is there’s a macro trend that was going on, which was, this was the beginning of the gentrification of Hoboken,” he explained. “And I became their gateway to the food that they missed. I needed to pay for college. I needed to pay for an apartment. I started a small home delivery business, literally on an old answering machine with a cassette tape. ‘If you call me by Monday, I deliver on Tuesday. If you call me on Tuesday, on Thursday, I deliver on Friday.’ … And within about a year, I had about 250 customers.”

One of his first customers, Peter Beronio, also happened to be the economic development director for Englewood at the time. The former Hoboken resident invited Finkel to participate in the city’s farmers market.

“I said, ‘What’s a farm market?’ He said, ‘I don’t know – but we’re having one,’” Finkel recalled. “And, I said ‘OK.’”

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Following a sell-out debut in Englewood, Finkel began setting up at farmers markets in other towns, offering a selection of baked artisan breads, fresh mozzarella cheese and handmade ravioli expertly curated from local shops in Hoboken.

“I figured if I could do one, I could do two. If I could do two, I could do 10. If I could do 10, I could do 20. If I could do 20, I could do 30. And within a couple years, we had hundreds of markets that we were dealing with,” he said.

Something’s missing

The business didn’t get saucy until Finkel’s customers started asking him for something to go with all those breads, pastas and cheeses they purchased weekly from the Hoboken Farms stand.

“We would sell thousands of loaves of bread, tons of fresh mozzarella … and countless coolers of ravioli all day. And every day, people would ask, ‘Do you have any sauce to go with your ravioli?’ And I’d say ‘Nope, I don’t do that.’”

“Then one day, I was at the Summit Farmers Market and a kind of very Jersey guy came over and said, ‘Hey dummy! … Don’t you have any sauce? Look who you’re standing next to,’” Finkel said.

After that, Finkel used his farmers market connections to get fresh plum tomatoes, basil, garlic and onions to create a marinara sauce in 2011. When Finkel began selling it in mason jars, the sauce was an instant hit.

“It was very clear that there was a proof of concept. I couldn’t make enough,” Finkel said.

Expanding the lineup

Finkel said, “The exciting thing about a farmers market is that it’s both an ecosystem and an incubator. I can really try out an idea … to see if people will buy it … and to figure out if there’s something special here. I’m also able to have customers tell me, ‘Hey this is something we want.’ And then I was able to look to my neighbors like, ‘Oh man, they have the raw materials that I can make this from.”

Within a year, it caught the attention of the Rutgers Food Innovation Center in South Jersey, who encouraged Finkel to put the sauce into production.

The exciting thing about a farmers market is that it’s both an ecosystem and an incubator. I can really try out an idea … to see if people will buy it … and to figure out if there’s something special here.
– Brad Finkel, Hoboken Farms founder

By 2013, Hoboken Farms landed its first retail partnership with Whole Foods Market. Since then, it has expanded distribution to chains across the U.S., such as Wegmans, Acme, Giant Food, Stop & Shop, ShopRite, Kings Food Market, The Fresh Market, Jewel, Stew Leonard’s, Key Foods, Weis Market and The Turnip Truck.

Hoboken Farms has also grown beyond just offering one variety. The line now includes vodka sauce and basil marinara.

Since launching its low-sodium marinara sauce on Amazon.com a few years ago, it has consistently ranked among the e-commerce site’s 100 best-selling marinara sauces.

Spicing things up

And there’s the newly added butter & Calabrian chili. Crafted with real butter, sweet tomatoes, caramelized onions and the heat of Calabrian chili, the flavor is billed as perfect with pasta, roasted vegetables, atop a “drunken pizza” or swapped for any hot sauce.

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“My idea was to have one great marinara. If you have one great marinara, that’s all you need. And, that’s true at a farm market,” Finkel said. “But if you’re going to be sold on the shelf of a supermarket next to corporate behemoths, not only are you going to have to have amazing labels, branding and corporate story, but you’re also going to need to have other flavors.”

In charting the next chapter of the now Clifton-based company, Finkel said his most crucial decisions were “being strategic, going slow and making sure that I have best-in-class partners.”

That meant bringing in “people who live and breathed the pasta sauce business,” he said.

That includes Hoboken Farms President Chuck Stamaris. Previously, Stamaris was an executive vice president of sales for Carbone sauces.

The sales team also includes Ritchie McNight from Rao’s and Daniel Gollin from Carbone, according to Finkel.

“I think that that’s the best decision I made, which was to wait until I was ready and then make sure that I had excellent, experienced partners that would work with me,” Finkel said.

Awesome sauce

For Finkel, the commitment to delivering a “world-class flavor experience and category-defining ingredient transparency” was inspired by his loyal customers and family.

“My wife is a fairly well-known mindfulness yoga instructor, Jillian Pransky. And we have a child who was born anaphylactic to wheat and gluten and a bunch of other foods. So, I had to create something that the yoga instructor wife was going to feed the very, very sensitive child,” he said.

Hoboken Farms’ sauce contains no citric acid, has no sugar added and the lowest sodium amount possible, according to Finkel. He credits its rich pure olive oil content – three times the amount other sauce brands use – for the “luxurious mouthfeel” that balances out acidity.

“I wasn’t thinking margin points and scaling anything. It was just like ‘Hey, this is what I like.’ And that’s what I did. So, that’s the reason why people loved it. It was just a better sauce,” he said.

Clean and honest

Finkel also believes his brand is positioned to meet growing consumer demand for food that is clean, honest and full of flavor.

“I do see is that there is just an unmet craving for transparency and we’re all about transparency,” he said.

“We are non-GMO certified. We are lab-tested, third party-certified seed-oil free and the first pasta sauce in America to have that. We’re third-party certified gluten-free. We’re third-party certified vegan. We are OU kosher certified and we’re keto certified. These are all third-party lab tested certifications that really let any person know exactly what’s in here is what we say is in here,” he said.

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The farmers market circuit continues to be a key part of Hoboken Farms’ business model. In fact, Finkel has personally attended the Summit Farmers’ Market nearly every Sunday since it began over 30 years ago.

The brand also has a regular presence at farmers markets in Jersey City, Hoboken, Bedminster, Metuchen, Scotch Plains, Nutley and Somerville. Hoboken Farms also attends markets in New York City at Roosevelt Island and East 67th Street.

Finkel visits those markets several times throughout the season, too.

“We participate in and help organize up to 800 farm markets a year since 1992. We have now participated in 26,723 farm markets, which is, from what I understand, potentially more than anybody else in the country. Outdoors, under tents, all day, every day, we sell our products face-to-face in the heat, in the sun, in the rain and the snow,” said Finkel.

A jarring outlook

After securing more than $4 million in funding from investors, who also happen to be farmers market enthusiasts and fans of the brand, Hoboken Farms is using those resources to expand production, distribution and innovation.

“When customers learned that we were considering a raise, several stepped forward as investors. We are thrilled to have longtime fans become part of our scaling initiative,” Finkel said.

Along with “a lot more really exciting flavors,” Finkel said Hoboken Farms is focused on expanding its presence in existing markets and entering new regions.

“The more stores we can get into, the more jars we’re going to sell. And, I believe our Butter & Calabrian Chili flavor, coupled with our brand-new, first in America, seed oil free certification and the New York Times Wirecutter review gives us a tremendous amount of best-in-class kind of energy and reputation,” he said.

Giving back

Finkel emphasized Hoboken Farms’ commitment to the community. On a weekly basis, Hoboken Farms donates a truckload of food to the Hoboken Food Pantry. It also makes regular contributions to The Community FoodBank of New Jersey.

Amid disruptions in federal food assistance benefits caused by the extended federal government shutdown last fall, Hoboken Farms gave 5,000 jars of sauce to the CFBNJ. And it coordinated with family-owned grocer Inserra Supermarkets to donate 5,000 boxes of pasta to the nonprofit.

The company also runs the “Hungry Artist Project,” a community-focused initiative that supports emerging musicians.

Through the program, Hoboken Farms invites artists who are actively recording, rehearsing or touring to share their stories and, in return, provides them with “Box o’ Sauce” filled with the brand’s pasta sauces, custom pasta and other swag.

“When we get these applications, they send in a video, who they are, where they are and a little bit about themselves. And I get to listen to their music. Then, I’ll write them a letter saying, ‘Hey, I love this song. I love that song,’” Finkel said. “I want to say it’s a charitable project, but it’s also a selfish project for me because I get to hear some really good music!”

Besides helping feed hardworking creatives and thanking them “for making the neighborhood more interesting,” Finkel feels it’s a way to celebrate the artistic spirit that helped inspire his brand.

“I spent 13 years in a band playing on the road … and there’s nothing more cliché than living on pasta. So, you may as well have great sauce,” he said.

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 1:39 p.m. March, 2, 2026, to correct Hoboken Farms President Chuck Stamaris’ name.