Lean Lasorda Goes for the Fences, Takes Sauce Firm Public

Cubs and Pirates fans may hate the Dodgers, but Tommy Lasorda is betting that they’ll love his spaghetti sauce.

The Fountain Valley-based company that markets sauces under the name of the pasta-loving Dodger manager announced a merger deal Wednesday that will make Lasorda Foods Inc. a public company and provide the capital to put its product on grocery shelves from Florida to Illinois.

“We’re looking at expanding our sales from 40,000 cases a month to 100,000 cases a month,” said Steven Fox, president of Lasorda Foods, which markets the recipe handed down from the manager’s mother.

To accomplish this, Lasorda Foods will exchange all of its outstanding common shares--the majority owned by Lasorda and his wife Jo--in return for 4.6 million shares of Discovery Capital Corp., a public company based in Englewood, Colo. The surviving entity in the merger will be Lasorda Foods.

Fox said that transaction will mean that Lasorda Foods will become a publicly traded company and have immediate access to more than $1.5 million for expansion and new product introduction. The Lasordas will continue to own about 80%, and current management should remain in place after the transaction becomes final June 15.

Lasorda Foods was formed in June, 1988, to market a line of Italian food products endorsed by Lasorda. In August, 1989, the company began selling its homemade pasta sauces in grocery stores in Southern California.

The deal will allow Lasorda to try to pitch his lineup against the national league of “designer” pasta sauces. The manager’s old family recipe already faces off locally against actor Paul Newman’s “Newman’s Own” and will soon have singer Frank Sinatra’s brand to contend with. And that’s besides such well-known national brands as Ragu and Prego.

Fox, sounding as optimistic as Lasorda is on opening day of spring training at Vero Beach, Fla., counters that the manager’s sauce tastes better than its many competitors.

“We would be very willing to have a public taste test, like the old Pepsi challenge. The one thing with the Lasorda sauce is, once they try it, they’ll buy it again,” he boasted.

Fox said he wants to expand the company’s products to places where Lasorda is known and liked, even if the Dodgers go on a winning streak against the local favorites.

“Tommy is a national sports figure,” Fox said. “We know he’s very popular in Florida and Chicago and Pennsylvania (where Lasorda grew up). These are areas where we are going to create a demand for the product.”

In addition its sauce, the company plans to introduce a line of fresh pastas. Te sauce will be sold in 64-ounce bottles, in addition to the 25-ounce size.

Fox said he doesn’t expect any trouble from Lasorda’s appearance in television advertisements for a liquid diet, in which the slimmed-down manager stands next to a large likeness of himself with a pot belly.

Though Lasorda drinks the diet milkshake for two meals, “he still eats pasta every day,” Fox said reassuringly.