Profiles of Innovation

Built from scratch: The 30-year legacy of Michael Angelo's Gourmet Foods

It all started in a 400-square foot kitchen in a bad location, where “the Pac-Man machine grossed more in a day than the restaurant did,” recalls Michael Angelo Renna of the humble beginnings that started a 30-year legacy in frozen food products.

Renna, founder of Michael Angelo’s Gourmet Foods, was a young man without a college degree, helping his mother at the family restaurant when innovation struck.

“I came up with an idea of packaging meals and then taking it to the stores,” he says. For Renna, packaging meals was a way to give his family’s quality food the recognition it deserved — recognition that a tiny restaurant (in a bad location) couldn’t.

"""Everybody else in my industry, they produce long, long runs and put it in warehouses. It's against the way we came to market."- Michael Angelo Renna

Renna worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week to get Michael Angelo’s off the ground. He would sleep on a bench in the restaurant as he waited for the fresh meals to freeze, then he would load them into his own car and deliver them to markets around town.

“It was always about moving forward,” he says. With determination and elbow grease, Renna transformed the tiny kitchen project into an Austin-based food empire. “Michael Angelo's starts in a little 400 square-foot restaurant and now lives in a 132,000 square foot highly automated… massive big kitchen,” he states proudly.

Though now an empire housed in an industrial kitchen, Michael Angelo’s Gourmet Foods still has family at its center. The meals — Eggplant Parmesan, Meat Lasagna, Chicken Piccata, Calzones — all started with his mother's recipes. She still works on recipes at Michael Angelo’s, and Renna’s brother is also involved in the business.

Renna's Italian heritage also plays an important role in the Michael Angelo’s business model. The meals start with fresh ingredients and processes that are usually overlooked in the frozen food industry. “I have to pick up the ingredients, bring [them] in, produce the meals and send them back out. And I do this all within a day — very unique.”

“As an entrepreneur, you get to create — I created a lot of different things that did not exist in an industry,” Renna says of his innovative production model. Whereas competitor’s products may be packaged months before they hit the shelves, Michael Angelo’s meals travel from the kitchen to the freezer in just a few days. “Everybody else in my industry, they produce long, long runs and put it in warehouses. It's against the way we came to market."

Long hours in kitchens big and small have paid off for Michael Angelo Renna. From scratch, he's built a line of “prepared meals” that, after 30 years, are still bringing a unique approach (and taste) to the frozen food industry.

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Starting from bed rest

Kendra Scott goes to Houston: "Like Build-A-Bear for grown women"

Following a flagship store on Austin's South Congress, and addresses in BeverlyHills and Dallas' West Village, a Kendra Scott boutique has cropped up this weekin Rice Village.
Photo by Whitney Radley
Kendra Scott, the woman behind the eponymous jewelry line, grew up in Houstonbefore moving to Austin at 19.
Photo by Whitney Radley

Kendra Scott's success story is one for the books: Pregnant and confined to bed rest, with a recently-unemployed husband and a meager bank balance, she began creating custom jewelry.

Once she was allowed back on her feet, Scott would walk around to Austin stores taking sales orders and then sell her samples to the very last shop on her route so that she'd have the funds to purchase supplies to fill them.

Eleven years later, Scott opened her fourth eponymous boutique (and the largest yet) in Houston's Rice Village this week, with others slated for CityCentre and Scottsdale, Ariz. — and she's revolutionizing the way that women shop for jewelry.

But the best part is, each wearer has the ability to tailor pieces to her personal tastes or a particular outfit at the Color Bar.

"I found that what was missing out there was colorful, beautiful jewelry using natural gemstones, at a price that I could afford," Scott says.

She and her design team lean on antique jewels and contemporary trends for inspiration to create pieces that are in vogue, on-brand and timeless — something that, Scott hopes, a granddaughter will pull out of a jewelry box decades hence.

But the best part is, each wearer has the ability to tailor pieces to her personal tastes or a particular outfit at the Color Bar. The Rice Village boutique is equipped with two 55-inch touch screens, a half-dozen iPads and even "bar menus" with images of products and options.

This makes each customer a part of the design process. They select the style, the stones and the metal, and then watch while a store clerk — all of whom are trained stone-setters — makes the design a reality.

"It's like Build-A-Bear for grown women," laughs Scott, who got the idea early on when her workers would customize the colors of their own jewelry pieces for a night out on the town.

She took that concept on the road for a trunk show at Henri Bendel in New York that was supposed to last just three days. It ended up attracting lines out the door for three months, and the Color Bar became a staple.

But the shopping isn't the only thing that is experiential: Kendra Scott boutiques are event driven, with the Color Bar available for booking for bridal brunches or girlfriend get-togethers, and a Girls Night Out each Wednesday that draws fashionable crowds for cupcakes, champagne and select jewelry deals.

Kendra Gives Back parties offer opportunities for an organization to benefit from 20 percent of proceeds. Attendees, meanwhile, can gild themselves and feel guilt-free about the indulgence.

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The new Kendra Scott boutique is in Rice Village at 2411 Times Boulevard, Suite 120. The store is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Sunday from 12 to 6 p.m.

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