The Original Wolf Pack: The 4 Hospitality Pros Behind Stuzzi

There are 4 founders, all sworn hospitality kin for life. Between us, we’ve got over 50 collective years of lovingly offering service, juicy sips, and perfect bites in restaurants, bars, and events across multiple countries. That’s what unites us—the love and perpetual search for The Perfect Bite.

Why You Can Trust Us With Your Hot Sauce: Our Resumés

  • Carla Rza Betts (Born in California, currently in NYC) went to NYU for theater, ended up in restaurants (shocking), fell in love with wine, and landed as Wine Director for The Spotted Pig, the Breslin, and The John Dory Oyster Bar in New York City. She co-founded and ran An Approach To Relaxation in the Barossa Valley in South Australia, making Grenache from some of the oldest vines on earth. She leads the Stuzzi team from NYC.

  • Ethel Hoon (Born in Singapore, currently in South Tyrol, Italy) graduated from Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration and trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. She worked as a sous chef at Restaurant Fäviken in Sweden, most recently helmed Restaurant Klösterle in the Austrian Alps, and currently runs Pramol Alto with her husband Jakob. Ethel also heads Hoons, a Singaporean pop-up that has been showcased at Fäviken, Klösterle, and Ottmangut in South Tyrol, Italy. 

  • Jakob Zeller (Born in South Tyrol, currently still there) co-founded The Rooftop Smokehouse project in Barcelona. He was the Chef de Cuisine of the two Michelin-starred restaurant Fäviken in Sweden (#19 in the World’s 50 Best Restaurant list). He and Ethel, previously at Restaurant Klösterle in the Austrian Alps, are currently running Pramol Alto in northern Italy.

  • Richard Betts (Born in Arizona, currently in NYC) is co-CEO and co-founder of CKBG (the parent company of Tequila Komos, Superbird Tequila, Doladira, Stuzzi Hot Sauce). He passed the Court of Master Sommeliers’ Master Exam in the spring of 2003 on the first attempt, the ninth person to ever do so. He resigned from the Court of Master Sommeliers in June 2020, the first person ever to do so. Richard co-founded Astral Tequila and Sombra Mezcal in 2005 and 2006 and sold them to Davos Brands in 2019. 

Our Meet Cute: 

Everyone loves an origin story, but have you heard the one about how a rad cookbook gave rise to a hot sauce? 

The Roadtrip

Carla and Richard were living in Amsterdam in 2020, when someone suggested a cookbook (Alpine Cooking by Meredith Erickson, founder of Doladira), which they quickly fell in love with. There are these fantastic maps in the back of the book, detailing where you should stay while in the Alps, who you should ask for when you arrive, and what you should eat while there. Carla and Richard created a treasure map-like drawing of their driving plan through the French, Italian, German, Austrian, and Slovenian Alps. They followed the map’s suggestions as if their lives depended on it and found themselves at Restaurant Klösterle outside of Lech, Austria, where fate brought them to their future Stuzzi co-founders. 

(Richard & Ethel at Restaurant Klösterle)

(Carla & Jakob at Restaurant Klösterle)

The Meal

Just a moment, if you will, it’s worth setting the scene: Klösterle is a many- hundreds-of-years-old shepherd's hut located in the middle of a verdant green valley, surrounded by sheep and Alps, which has been handily converted into a cute af restaurant with Ethel running the kitchen and Jakob taking care of people front of house. 

Carla and Richard had a dreamy meal in the low-ceilinged wooden restaurant, and towards the end, Jakob casually asked if they might want to join him and Ethel for a drink after dinner. Obviously, YES. Within 5 minutes of officially meeting, Richard popped the question: ‘Do you two want to make a hot sauce with us?’ Without missing a beat, Ethel said: ‘YES.’ 

BOOM: Stuzzi is born. (This is also a life lesson: always say YES to shocking but thrilling offers like this.) 

(Restaurant Klösterle, in Zug, outside of Lech, Austria)

The Plan

Fast forward to another life-changing road trip where we chase down the farmer in southern Italy who grows and dries Stuzzi’s base pepper in such a way that makes it wildly singular, and we knock on his door to introduce ourselves and ask if he can sell us some peppers. Why did that pepper deserve its own road trip? Excellent question, but that is a story for another time! 

I’ll leave you with one more crazy nugget: remember the cookbook that started it all, Alpine Cooking? After weeks of excellent food in romantic locations amid many Alpine pirates, Richard posted a Thank You note on Instagram to Meredith (a woman he’d never met), which eventually turned into the partnership that gave the world Doladira, an Alpine aperitif. 

You can’t write this s**t. And: always say YES.