Thoughts on Food Day From a Privileged Bay Area Dweller

By , 25 October, 2011,

learn to canAll across America the call to observe “Food Day” inspired communities to throw food-related events, related to good eating education and policy. In Omaha, 2,000 children enjoyed meals. As I perused the Food day call to “Ask Congress to Support Food Day’s Goals,” I realized each one touched me somehow this week.

  • Reduce diet-related disease by promoting safe, healthy foods – Realistically do most people know about safe, healthy foods and what they’re eating isn’t healthy? I think so. In seventh grade I bragged to my teacher about my healthy eating: “I have a banana shake every day after school, with about a half a bag of walnuts in it!” She all but shrieked…my first lesson in caloric intake. Still, better than a Twinkie.
  • Support sustainable farms & limit subsidies to big agribusiness – This would also help small food artisans locally access more affordable ingredients, to make it easier to produce their products more cost effectively. (Read the astounding facts on the Food Day website.) The question of whether having GMO crops will reduce U.S. food exports also weighs heavy on my mind.
  • Expand access to food and alleviate hunger- Beyond the food deserts blanketing our cities, I have seen food access problems, knowing seniors who can’t get to the farmers’ market (LOVE the Food Bus idea), for whom the delivered produce boxes are good as long as they can cook, and who end up getting expensive deliveries from the large supermarkets. While a Whole Foods is relatively nearby, the price of organic milk is prohibitive. This is an extremely tough conundrum.

    And as I prepare to travel to a place where the eating options are largely non-organic, non-local foods, I wonder what life was like in the old days–which really points to a return to canning. Why even when we were little eating canned and frozen vegetables was where it was at. Perhaps we’ll go back to the future.

  • Protect the environment & animals by reforming factory farms – Not to mention protecting our health. It seems like everyone is getting cancer or some sort of disease these days. They need to start showing snippets from Food Inc on airplanes. (At least on flights where meals aren’t served. Or maybe where they are.)
  • Promote health by curbing junk-food marketing to kids – A very foodie friend mentioned his well-educated kids still demand name brand, mainstream sugary cereal over natural brands. Is it that faux fruity flavor ? Or what?
  • Support fair conditions for food and farm workers – I heard on NPR today that an Alabama farmer is between a rock and hard place since he’s depended on immigrants, who a new law has driven away. The American workers he’s tried hiring simply did not want to do the manual labor. The answer is clear: Market it as “the farm worker diet” and have people pay you to lose weight hauling melons. Obviously I’m not in policy, but someone’s got to try it!

With thousands of events across the country, Food Day has made a great impact on moving the country toward making every day is food day.

How to Make Bean to Bar Chocolate the DIY Way

By , 12 October, 2011,

Visiting Dandelion Chocolate‘s Palo Alto laboratory–cleverly tucked into a suburban garage, for now anyway–felt like a live immersion into Instructables or of course the Maker Faire. Nary had Todd started giving me a tour that I whipped out the old video recorder to capture the charming and clever mechanisms he had built to make a bean to bar chocolate which is quickly gaining a following in the Bay Area and beyond.

See how a few tools, wood, and hardware store parts can come together to make much of the small scale machinery needed to start tinkering with making chocolate. Disclaimer: The DIY part works mostly for prepping the cacao beans, not so much for making the actual chocolate. Although surely there is someone hacking together their own conches and other refining equipment.

California Cottage Food Law – What If? Interviews

By , 3 October, 2011,

Today more than 30 of the United States allow people to run a small food business from home. The Eat Real Festival in Oakland, California seemed like the perfect spot to gauge interest of such a law among the throngs of food crafters and DIY devotees. Yes, asking people who are making jams, pickles, etc at home is not an unbiased survey. Still, it was exciting to see the live reactions and thoughts. Interestingly, the majority did not know they aren’t allowed to sell food made at home, unless you’re a farm.

The people you’ll see in this video represent a small sub-set of the types of folk who could benefit from a law allowing people to run a small food business making “non-potentially hazardous foods” at home. These people are engaged in the sustainable, “good food” crafting movement. Imagine the stories from others in pockets of the state who don’t have the luxury to attend wonderful festivals and may be on unemployment, welfare, and otherwise struggling to make ends meet. (If you don’t want to imagine, check out the petition and read some of the comments.)

Many are very likely are making and selling food law or no law. This isn’t guesswork: Pretty much everyone I know who sells food does or has at some time made a little something at home.

I’ll be writing more about this in the future, having worked with many food producers across the country who benefit from their states’ cottage food laws in proving their businesses before expanding. Experiencing “the math” of getting started while working on my Nutless Professor foods, before being able to prove a  product’s potential, I’m more convinced than ever why these laws work and how California could safely and sanely implement such a law.

Please subscribe to my blog for updates! Join the Facebook group to discuss or comment here.

Since it may be hard to hear I’ve transcribed the video interviews, with some paraphrasing:

Two Companies in Business: Dandelion Chocolates and Baia Pasta

From their garage lab–which is for testing–Todd Masonis describes the process Dandelion Chocolate went through to get started: “With the cottage food laws in other states, bean to bar chocolate makers are able to start up in their kitchen or garage, with just time and effort and labor. In our case [in California] to get the ability to sell a single bar we had to get our machines NSF certified. There is no such thing as NSF certified chocolate making equipment. We had to hire machinists and consultants that took months to even call us back to check out the machines. We paid thousands of dollars to have our machines inspected.

To legally sell your bean to bar chocolate in California is literally months of effort and at least $10,000. Whereas in other states to sell it’s after the moment you make a good bar.

In our case we would have loved to have a very low limit like $100,000. If you’re below that limit you can sell out of your home or garage. Then when you start getting something to customers you have to build out a kitchen and get certified. That would make more sense to me rather than requiring everyone to be professional on the first day.”

Dario from Baia Pasta speaks from his booth at Eat Real about how a cottage food law would have helped them get started:

“We were a garage pasta operation for six months. We wouldn’t have been able to get where we are if it weren’t for the Underground Market. We’re now able to open our storefront and it’s absolutely required for me in this new economy to allow people to produce and sell under certain circumstances, when the customers are knowledgeable about what they’re buying and they’re OK with it–as we’ve done for six months. Now people love our pasta.

We filter our water and use organic flours. The flours are stored very carefully. We don’t use any eggs. That would probably be the biggest source of problems with pasta. We dry under controlled situations of temperature and humidity.”

Aspiring Home Business Food Entrepreneurs

1: Jam maker – “If California were to allow food preservation at home, a friend and I would take the surplus seconds from her farm and make jams, pickles, and all sorts of things and sell them at her CS and farmers’ markets.”

2: Jam and pickle maker – “I can probably sell james that I make and pickles. Right now I give this away. But I think everyone should be allowed to run some kind of home-based ubsiness that could help them out economically.”

3: Vegan baker – “I enjoy baking vegan goods, which is something that there isn’t a big market for. Not having funds, this law would help me bring in extra income without it being a big production.”

4: Cake decorator – “I decorate cakes. Being able to start a food business at home would seriously make all my dreams come true. I could quite my corporate job, I could have my own business, and do all the things I love to do without having to worry so much.” (Note from Susie: Ah to be in that state of dreaming before getting into the nitty gritty realities of business…) :)

5: Mochi (Japanese baked sweets) maker - “I make mochi caneles at home for friends, and a lot of people have asked me to sell them. If I were able to do that, it would be a great side business to supplement some of the other things I do, while also making something I love.”

How would the ability to run a small food* business at home help you?
*foods that do not require refrigeration, such as baked goods, jams, granola, roasted coffee, and dry nut, herb and tea blends

Infused Cocktails Now Legal in California – Cheers to Jerry Brown

By , 23 September, 2011,

What’s the big deal about it being legal to infuse cocktails with flavors in California?

A lot, especially for bars and crafters wanting to get creative and old timey. A few months ago, we visited the intriguing and experimental Test Kitchen LA restaurant and bar in West Los Angeles. LA Confidential-style, the vice had raided the bar only days earlier to seize their house-made fruit-infused liqueurs that were–gasp!–illegal. Literally had busted in during dinner hour to take the jars.

test kitchen la

Only months earlier, I’d enjoyed some fabulous Cherry Bounce elixirs at The Old Fashioned in Madison, Wisconsin, made with fresh Wisconsin cherries steeped 6 month in vodka, brandy and bourbon. I did not die after consuming.

Sfoodie pointed out that the ban dated back to “a Prohibition-era law banned bars from creating infusions, allowing the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control to ticket barkeeps for serving sangria, limoncello, and fruit-flavored tequilas — basically any drink where a bar has altered the alcohol content with its own fruit, vegetables, herbs, or spices.”

Cheers to Governor Jerry Brown, Senator Mark Leno, and the groups the LA Times says advocated the law: “the Golden Gate Restaurant Assn., the California Chamber of Commerce, the Family Wine Makers of California and the California Restaurant Assn.”

It’s a good time to throw out the antiquated laws such as those preventing home / cottage food businesses and support our state and livelihoods however we can…especially with so much great fruit waiting to be turned into amazing drinks and foods!

soozie's boozies

Starting Something Big in the Middle of Somewhere Small – Mary’s Gone Crackers

By , 13 September, 2011,

Past orchards, the ground littered with wind-blown nuts. Elephant-eye-high corn fields. Sneeze-and-you’re-past towns. Keep going, down winding roads with frustratingly changing speed limits you know have got to be designed for the radars to catch you. You’re not in the city anymore. You’re not even near the main highway anymore. How did you get here? And why?

In my case I was on a mission to meet Mary Waldner of Mary’s Gone Crackers, someone whose factory in Gridley, CA I’d wanted to visit since the first time I munched on her gluten-free black pepper crackers while on a roadtrip (and had no idea where Gridley was). I honestly didn’t actually think I’d one day be sitting in Mary’s rural office–in a cozy pre-fab building–eating uber crunchy Curry Stick Twigs for breakfast.

Oh sure, the world has thousands of rural businesses and food businesses based on freshly harvested produce, logically situated by the farms. Yet, Mary and her husband dale Dale did not grow up in the countryside. Not at all. They moved here from the Bay Area after putting a stake in the ground to pursue this food business, near their organic rice suppliers. They now love the “country” life.

Touring with Mary through the production facility made me think a lot about the use of “hand made” and small batch. I’ve visited factories my whole life, from Wonder Bread, to General Mills, and the good old Hershey walk-through factory in Oakdale, CA that closed. Much as in I Love Lucy’s time, many food types require hand labor, and many are nearly fully automated including ultra cool mechanisms to discard “bad” batches.

When you see a factory like Mary’s first hand, you realize how even if a company seems “big” it really may run like a small bakery. This is partly due to how simple and natural the ingredients used to make Mary’s products are: organic quinoa, rice, and others. The herb crackers have full pieces of rosemary.

From a smaller facility in Chico, the company moved to this larger warehouse where they set up production, taking employees who had started out as helpers and seeing them move up to managing production. It’s nice to see the heart that goes into healthy products and how locating in a semi-rural location can allow for growth at a more affordable price while building up a regional economy.

Smart Lessons for Food Entrepreneurs

  • Stick to your intuition even if your circle says no or has ideas that don’t seem right to you. The company is expanding into different sorts of products (I’m addicted to the ginger cookies) rather than extending the same product lines to the moon.
  • Source the best ingredients. You can see on the packages the company can make every desirable health claim that makes the products ideal for every sort of eater.
  • Plan your production smartly. With such unique products the team knew they would run production themselves rather than setting up with co-packers to manufacture for them.
  • Solve a need. It was just luck that Mary and Dale started at the beginning of the gluten free boom. However their excellent products that appeal to all snackers are what makes them so successful.
  • Keep improving and be nimble. The spirit of invention and continual process improvement is critical to reduce costs and to be able to expand with demand.
  • Clearly define your founders’ roles. Mary is product. Dale is operations. (“If it weren’t for Dale, I’d probably still be making these in my kitchen,” Mary told me with a smile.)

Come to think of it, these principles apply for any entrepreneur!


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