About Pasta of the Prairie

Tyler & Lindsey moved to Eastern Iowa in 2013. As a creative outlet, we began gardening, cooking, and baking goods to sell at a small farmer’s market. One of those goods was handmade pasta. Through much trial and error, we taught ourselves how to mix the dough to the right consistency, roll and cut it into thin strips, dry it, and package it. Our farmer’s market customers enjoyed the unique flavors of our pasta, so we chose to narrow our focus to that. We later added soup mixes that were made with our homemade pasta. We also upgraded our hand-crank pasta machine to a small pasta extruder from Italy. In 2016, we built a commercial kitchen in the basement of our home. We upgraded our small pasta extruder to an even larger one from Italy, and we added pasta salad kits and meal kits to our product line. This opened up opportunities for us to sell our pastas at a greater variety of farmer’s markets, craft fairs, and other events throughout the Midwest. To help with the increased demand, we began hiring team members to help us part-time. In 2018, we moved the pasta production out of our home and into a separate building. Today, we rent two spaces for our company: one for our production, and another for storage and shipments. We have several team members, friends, and family who assist us with selling and producing our pasta. It takes a team! Read their story