Bambinos of all ages

Contrary to the joking insinuations of friends, Zoi Maroudas was not fulfilling any sort of “Big, Fat, Greek Wedding” stereotype when she opened up her organic baby foods store right behind Pizza Olympia, her family’s long-held restaurant in Spenard.

Instead, she insists, it was pure coincidence — maybe even fate.

What wasn’t accidental was Maroudas’ passion for providing good nutrition for people — especially those most in need, namely, babies and the elderly. It’s a passion that first took hold when she was a medical student at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, but its roots go back further than that.

“All my years I’ve been involved in the restaurant, food production, customer service — I call it my first education,” Maroudas said of the family business that’s been in operation since 1983. “Agriculture was always very much a part of my life, especially the organic tradition of farming with my family’s roots in Greece.”

In medical school, Maroudas’ experiences made her, for all intents and purposes, an activist for better nutrition. When she moved back to Alaska to help the family after the death of her brother, Maroudas wasn’t eligible for the WWAMI (medical internship) program in her home state and decided to turn her medical school education into a entrepreneurial venture in the food industry.

“Little did I know that when I was in medical school that that was going to be bringing me back to what I learned here,” she said. “There’s a great disconnect between nutrition and modern medicine, especially with what the little ones eat, and especially those with allergies. The elderly I cared for, their food wasn’t very good. It was more of a burden than an experience.”

So, Maroudas made use of the Pizza Olympia kitchen during closing hours. From 11 at night until 10 the next morning, she would prepare her designer baby foods, made from fruits, grains and vegetables from local farms. She’d sell her wares at farmers markets, usually on the south side, which was where she hoped to open her own brick-and-mortar shop. That purchase fell through when she was outbid by another buyer, and a second location didn’t pass inspections. Serendipitously, the building behind the family restaurant came open.

“We needed a home; I couldn’t wait anymore. Doing it in the middle hours of the restaurant was just a bottleneck,” she said. “When this became available, I didn’t actually think about it being so close to my parents’ backdoor.”

Maroudas opened her modern and classy kitchen/office on Sept. 1, just as summer-long construction on Spenard Road was wrapping up.

“Spenard is very eclectic, and with REI being right next to us, and Pizza Olympia, with the tradition of my parents, and the beautification (efforts) of Spenard, it’s a great place to call home,” Maroudas said.

Maroudas estimates that three-fourths of her orders go to out-of-state customers. That figure may seem to make Alaska a less-than-desirable headquarters, but, she noted, there’s already a built in shipping system that can make The Last Frontier an ideal space for a shipping business.

“My model of how to do the distribution is no different than the seafood companies,”Maroudas said. “I didn’t reinvent the wheel; I just followed a really great instrument.”

The most popular items Bambino’s offers are peanuts, sockeye salmon, sweet spring veggies and a hearty stew made with filet mignon, and among the most innovative is a cookie, called the Peanut Mani that is designed to help babies overcome peanut allergies.

“The success rate of this is about 83 percent. What happens is a child starts breaking down peanut protein from four months to 18 months, so I created a cookie,” Maroudas explained. “You can dehydrate it, put it in the oven to zap out all the moisture and the next day put it in the blender to make homemade cereal.”

That sort of multifunctional food form is the staple of uniqueness behind Bambino’s products.

Another of Maroudas’ products is a popsicle that comes in the form of a star, shaped that way for a good reason.

“Everything comes in star shapes, especially all the frozen baby food, which is designed to be tactile for a little one to pick up,” Maroudas said. “They’re able to put each area between the star to numb their gums and allow them to eat. As they get older they can enjoy it as a popsicle or a quick snack, or you can melt it down to the consistency you want. Heat it all the way up and it becomes a velvety smooth bisque.”

Using FedEx and the Postal Service, Maroudas is able to ship out a month’s worth of baby food to customers, but for smaller purchases, she’s come to lean on Amazon and it’s global delivery service.

Recently she participated in a small business seminar hosted by Amazon in Anchorage. Small business and an online giant like Amazon might seem like sworn enemies, but Maroudas doesn’t see the relationship that way at all.

“I don’t see them in any way as a rival,” she said. “What I offer on Amazon is very different than what I offer on my website. The website offers volume and on Amazon, you can go and buy 1 or 2 packets, so I’m not competing with my own brand, it just gives you that great platform for a small business to expand.”

Maroudas is celebrating her first Thanksgiving in business all her own by donating more than 200 turkeys to Title I schools across the Anchorage area.

“We’ve talked to multiple schools about Thanksgiving dinner donations — it’s one of the outreaches we do for our ‘Bambinos of All Ages’ program,” Maroudas said. “We go to schools and talk to kids about traceability and transparency of the food they eat at home.”