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Stew Leonard has posted a prominent announcement on the huge signboard outside his supermarket: WELCOME, PAUL NEWMAN. This was a big mistake, because hundreds of shoppers packed the store, refused to leave, and gridlocked the premises. In two weeks' time, 10,000 bottles were sold and Ken's had to put on extra shifts for their production line. We knew that Newman's Own would now have to bust its restraints and have a life of its own. Our little joke, our whimsical $40,000 adventure, was like a character in a play or characters being developed in a book who suddenly take off and run away from the writer, and all you can do is say, Look at that little bugger go. We didn't know where Newman's Own was taking us, but it definitely had a head of steam.
We didn't have an office, a bookkeeper, or any other employees, not even a telephone. We rented a two-room office across the hall from our lawyer's office, which was located above a bank in Westport. Because we were operating on the original $40,000 investment, we felt we were on shaky ground. So instead of buying office furniture, Paul decided that since it was September and he was closing his swimming pool, he would simply furnish the office with his pool furniture, even to the extent of keeping a beach umbrella over our shared desk (his picnic table). Paul's Ping-Pong table became our conference table.
We were beginning to learn the food ropes, when to say yes, when to say no (and mean it), and, since we were inevitably going to make mistakes, how to avoid fatal ones. In a relatively short time we had a platoon of Newman's Own pasta sauces attacking the shelf spaces. We were also augmenting our salad dressing troops. In 1983, our first full year in business, our sales catapulted to $3,204,335, with a profit of $397,000, which we dispensed to scores of different charities. In June of that year, when time came for Joanne to open their swimming pool and she couldn't find the outdoor furniture, Paul told her to replace everything. It looked as though we were going to last longer than expected.