Lindsay Marie Morris

Jessica Tranchina's father didn't have it easy. Born and raised in Balestrate, Sicily, as one of nine children, he was a soccer player who didn't have enough money for shoes. When he came to the U.S. as a teenager, he couldn't speak English. Instead of college, he fought in the Vietnam War. Afterward, he worked as a house painter. 

"He faced a bunch of hardship that he doesn't talk about, and that just made him who he is," Jessica says. "And so we were raised with this example of someone with an amazing work ethic."

Her father eventually realized a passion for flipping houses, leading to owning rentals and having the money to send his whole family to Italy every two years. His grit and ingenuity inspired Jessica.

"My dad's an Aquarius, and my daughter, Giovanna, said to me, 'You're also an Aquarius, so you're a trailblazer, and you think differently than other people,'" Jessica says. 

As co-founder of Austin, Texas-based Generator Athlete Lab and owner of Experts in Wellness, this doctor of physical therapy has definitely blazed her own trail. She's also earned her stripes by competing in fitness events ranging from 5Ks to 50Ks, sprint triathlons to Ironman races, and strength challenges to figure competitions. 

Jessica took time out to chat about her practice and its inspiration. She also shared her goals and hopes for clients.
 

 

You have competed in a wide range of athletic events. How have these experiences shaped your approach?

I'm an eat-your-frog kind of person. When you do the really hard thing in the morning that you don't want to do, it makes the rest of the day easier and makes you more resilient. So, I do that in business, life, and sports. 

For anything that I tackle, I do the really hard thing or the hard training, whether in athletics or trail runs and triathlons and any competition that was happening. I call opening Generator Athlete Lab in 2018 my marathon or ultra run.

It's taught me so much about people in general, their psychology, and what makes them tick because it's way different than what makes me tick. I'm super competitive, highly driven, and motivated. I feel like it's served me well in life, but my biggest challenge has been learning other people aren't always like that.  

  

Jessica placed first in the 2009 Honolulu Triathlon.

What inspired you to create the Generator Athlete Lab?

As a practitioner, I knew early on—when I was 12—I wanted to be a physical therapist and follow the best mentors. I defended my dissertation at Boston University; I wanted the top degree. I knew I wanted to be the best.

 

Eventually, I opened my own practice in Hawaii in about 2006. Then, I brought it in 2010 to Austin.

 

I was practicing and seeing clients and would research recovery modalities and smart training. I did a lot of manual therapy and thought, "There is not a single space that exists for not just athletes to recover but also for my clients to recover and get the best manual care, training, and recovery."

 

So that's when I said, "I should build it."

 

Afterward, I thought, "Wait! What if people don't like this? This is absolutely crazy!" But when I opened it, people said, "Wow, this is crazy, but it's working."

 
Jessica's clients range from athletes to individuals looking to boost their mental health. 

Why did you choose to focus on recovery?

It was the one thing I didn't focus on personally. My only thoughts were, "Go! Train, train, train!"

 

Things started hurting for me, and I thought, "Why am I not even doing this?"

 

I started researching modalities that are science-backed and proven to work. They're great for longevity and mortality, heart health, and brain health.

 

It's not just athletes recovering for sport. We see a lot of injuries and people doing it for their mental health. And that has been the most rewarding part of it. I didn't even think of how amazing that part would be.

 

Originally, it was for inflammation and injuries, and now, people come to get off their antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs to sleep better and to be nicer to their kids. And that carries so much weight to me. It's very rewarding. 

 

Describe the protocols you and your husband, Delfin Ward, have designed.

We're known for our science-backed recovery protocol: 30 minutes in our infrared sauna and then in our contrast—hot and cold— tubs, along with medical-grade compression garments and vibration. There's science behind each step. We put them in that order, so when you come in for your pass or appointment, you get the full protocol we've designed.

 

You also own Experts in Wellness. Tell us about that business.

Generator Athlete Lab is zoned as medical, but we don't do physical therapy there because we don't want people to get confused. You can't bring your insurance card in and use that. It has a membership model or a pack. 

Since I still practice physical therapy, I've launched Experts in Wellness, where I hang my Physical Therapy license. I wanted to partner with a nutritionist, too, and we're starting to offer nutrition services and blood work panels to my clients. It's awesome.

 

What are your future goals?

We are going to expand Generator Athlete Lab nationwide. We're going to partner with like-minded people with the same mission as ours, truly compassionate people who want to help. And if we franchise, we franchise. Right now, that doesn't sound attractive to me because that sounds like fast expansion without me keeping my hand on the pulse. Our initial plan is to establish partnerships across the nation.  

 

What do you hope clients take away?

True healing. Not just physical healing but emotional and mental healing.

 

Jessica presents the concept of Generator Athlete Lab to her community.

 

What do you find most rewarding about your work, and how do you stay motivated?

I took off seeing clients for two years, probably the least motivated two years of my life. I've wanted to be a PT since I was 12, and I stopped seeing clients because I just wore the full-time business hat.

 

The business is doing really well, but it was not fully fulfilling me. Seeing clients really grounds me. Now that I started seeing clients again after a two-year hiatus, it has reignited every single fire in my life.

 

A quote by Pablo Picasso resonates strongly with me: "The meaning of life is to find your gift, but the purpose of life is to give it away."

That quote hit me so hard when I saw it because I was not giving away my gift. I'm a healer; that is my gift. My gift is to help. And I help in a lot of different ways. I help my team, I grow and lead my team, and my team helps our members. But specifically, I need to help people: individuals. 
 
 

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On my first trip to Sicily, one of my cousins handed us a bottle of limoncello. I had never tried the beverage before, but I was grateful for the opportunity to taste a traditional Southern Italian liqueur. We packed the bottle with us when we left to visit my other cousins in Milan.

I did not anticipate that we would receive a second bottle from my Northern relatives, who shared a similar pride in the beverage. By the end of our trip, we had so much limoncello that I had to give it away before we flew back to the U.S. But the sweet lemon liqueur will always remind me of family.

The same holds for Phil Mastroianni, co-founder of Fabrizia Spirits, who remembers his Calabrese grandmother sipping limoncello. After a trip to Italy, where he enjoyed a glass with his cousin, he began making his own. His uncle tasted it and encouraged him to transform his hobby into a business. He's since branched out to sell blood orange and pistachio cream liqueurs and canned cocktails. 

Phil shared Fabrizia's signature natural ingredients, why they use Sicilian lemons, challenges he's faced, advice he'd share, and more.

 

 

What exactly is limoncello?

Limoncello is a lemony liqueur made from the zest of lemons, flavored and colored by the essential oils that are inside the zest. It's a four-ingredient recipe with zest that contains the natural oils added to alcohol, sugar, and water. 

 

Fabrizia's Syracuse lemon grove

Why do you use Sicilian lemons?

Our limoncello uses Sicilian lemons for two reasons. One, they make limoncello as tasty as any lemon you'll get from anywhere in Italy. But there's more transparency. Sicily grows 70% to 80% of the Italian domestic production of lemons. 

Arabs brought citrus to Sicily between 900 and 1000 A.D. They also brought the ideal irrigation system for lemons, and they just grow well. They don't need nets. The temperature rarely goes to freezing, where the tree could get damaged, versus if you go north to Campana, that subtle five additional degrees average temperature makes a difference.

Not only do the lemons grow in abundance, but they're also less expensive for all the reasons I just said, and the land is flatter. Mount Etna has that wonderful volcanic soil on the island's eastern side that really helps them. So because they are easier to grow in Sicily compared to the hilly slopes of the Piano de Sorrento or anywhere else in Amalfi, you end up having more access to the fruit.

 

We visited the other lemon-growing regions—Amalfi, Sorento, and even a town called Rocca Imperiale, which is in Northern Calabria on the Ionian Coast. Rocca Imperiale actually just received an IGP status from the European Union. They sell to the Amalfi Association because the Amalfi Association changed its bylaws to allow lemons from this town in Calabria simply because Amalfi cannot keep up with its own demand given the natural environment of where Amalfi is.

Sicily doesn't have those issues. What we found is even when we visited the Sorento Association in Fondi, where a lot of the Sorrento lemons come from, there have been multiple instances where authorities have had to come in and say, "Nope, these are not Sorrento lemons. These are not Amalfi lemons. They really grew in Tunisia or Spain." I don't believe I've ever heard of that ever happening in Sicily. They're able to grow them in abundance there on their own.

 

So, it is part pricing and part knowing we're getting what we're paying for and using Italian fruit. Ultimately, there's no real difference in the quality. 

 

Nick Mastroianni picks lemons for their flagship product.

 

Why did you choose New Hampshire as your base?

I grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston. All my grandparents immigrated from southern Italy to Boston. It is $10,000 a year to have a liquor license in Massachusetts as a manufacturer. In New Hampshire, it was $1,700 and still is. And this was 15 years ago. Even to do it the "right way," you need federal and state licenses.

 

I was 25 when we found a place to rent, and I remember doing the math. Even up here in New Hampshire, we would have to sell almost 6,000 bottles a year without a salary, without anything, just to pay all the licensing fees and the rent where we were going to produce it. At that point in my life, I had only made about 50 bottles of limoncello.

 

It seemed like an absurd number: Who was going to buy 6,000 bottles of limoncello? I'm proud to say that this past year, we have hit almost 300,000 bottles in annual production, and our biggest customer is the Epcot Pavilion in Disney World. They buy over 6,000 bottles a year in just that one location. So it shows that sometimes you need to make sure that you dream big enough.

 

When starting, you need to take one step at a time. Had we got the licensing in Massachusetts, we would have had to sell 9,000 bottles. And that was an even more inconceivable number at the time—just to break even. New Hampshire is a small state that treats businesses very fairly and entices them to come here. 

Had we been in California, for instance, we would've felt the need to stay California fruit forever because that's simply what they do. At first, we were all-California fruit, and then it was fruit from wherever we could get it from—Mexico, you name it—and then we went to a blend of Italian fruits. A year and a half ago, we said, "Okay, we're going to go 100% Sicilian," and we have a camera on the grove we buy the lemons from.

 

We are producing limoncello in an authentic way. We could make a limoncello that is an 8 out of 10 just by cutting out the fake coloring and having a good recipe. Now that we're able to get the fruit from Sicily, and we still make it the old-fashioned way, the same way they make it in Italy, we can make it a 10 out of 10, and we can do it at a better cost than the brands that are trying to produce it the right way in Italy and sending it over here. 

 

What challenges have you faced?

We can produce Fabrizio limoncello for less because we just bring the lemons over, not the finished product with the glass and the bottles, et cetera. On the other hand, we import almost a million lemons a year from Sicily. So that has its own challenges.

 

The biggest challenge in the space is—hands down—getting distribution. That's something I wasn't planning on when I started this business. It's taken a lot of time, but I got good at it. And we get to work with some really large liquor wholesalers. But those relationships don't happen overnight. 

 

Fabrizia Spirits now sells a whole line of bottled and canned beverages.

 

Tell us about your blood orange liqueur and pistachio cream liqueurs.

The blood orange came naturally since its production is the same as that of limoncello but with blood oranges. One day, I was walking through Boston's Little Italy (the North End), and a customer said, "Hey Phil, why don't you make blood orange cello? I would buy it from you." We started making it right after that.

 

The pistachio was a lot more work. We noticed an uptick in places making pistachio martinis, and especially since pistachio is popular in Sicily, where we get our lemons, it was a natural extension. With that said, creating the liqueur took a lot of formulation as there is no one set recipe.

 

What led to the creation of your canned cocktails?

All of the left-over lemons! When we launched our ready-to-drink canned Italian Margarita in 2018, we were throwing away about 400,000 zested lemons per year at the time. We started juicing them and used that as the base for the cocktails. Being part of the rising popularity of ready-to-drink cocktails has certainly increased the visibility of the Fabrizia brand. 

 

How has listening to your customers influenced the evolution of Fabrizia Spirits?

Always so important to do. We are constantly listening to feedback on sweetness and taste profiles. With that said, the number one thing we hear is something we always promise to do: Be a brand you can count on to make natural limoncello and other alcoholic beverages with no fake colors or flavors ever. 

 

Ready-to-serve Fabrizia Limoncello Spritz

 

What new products or ventures excite you?

We're looking into producing Fabrizia in Italy for the Italian market in the years to come, which would be a big achievement for the brand. We're also diving into the deep end with a bunch of versions of bottled and canned Limoncello Spritz, made with imported Italian wine.

 

What advice would you offer other entrepreneurs?

If you're going to get involved in the spirits business or start your own business, you have to really size up how big your excitement and passion are for what you're going to do. I am more excited today than I was 17 years ago to be making limoncello.

But there's been so much time over the last 17 years where things have not gone right, and progress has not happened as fast as we had hoped. There were disappointments of many varieties, from business relationships to the product not doing as well as we'd like to in certain places.

 

If you really love the idea and believe in it, and it makes you happy, well, you can sustain all those challenges. And if you don't have the excitement or the true passion, you'll likely find that at one of those challenges, you'll find something else you'd rather do. Fortunately for me, that didn't happen because I believed in the idea so much and wanted it to work, not just so I could make money but also because I really wanted it to work for its own reasons.

 

What do you hope to share?

When it comes to the limoncello, we always love it when it is enjoyed by friends and family together on memorable special occasions. For me, it was about my grandmother. She would have a little bit of limoncello on Christmas Eve. She didn't drink that often, and I always found it to be a spirit that was approachable to the group. It wasn't about drinking; it was about bringing people together. 

We really hope that the experience is better for you if you are going to have an alcoholic beverage. You shouldn't have to say, "Okay, well, on top of having a drink, I'm going to have a bunch of Yellow Number 5," as in the case of our imported competitors, or "I'm going to have a bunch of preservatives in my vodka soda canned cocktail." We use fresh juice in our canned cocktails.

 

We really want the experience to be one of enjoying all-natural ingredients. That's what we're hoping to bring to people.

 

 

 

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