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- Chef in a Bottle: Profiles In How to
Take Your Restaurant Product Publicby Melissa T. Stock
You're a chef. Your restaurant is doing great. Customers are promising their first born in exchange for just one cup of your signature chipotle-Vidalia onion salad dressing. A sneaky thought enters your mind as you fill yet another mason jar with hot salad sauce, gratis: I ought to be selling this stuff!
Good news. It's very possible to make a small fortune producing and retailing a line of products from your restaurant -- all it takes is a large fortune. Those are the semi tongue-in-cheek words of Theo Susser, the marketing manager of New World Foods, the company producing four sauces by Chef Allen, of Chef Allen's Restaurant in Miami, Florida. In this article, Susser, along with Kathy Diaz of Monroe's Restaurant, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, share their insights on what is takes to get started, and how to stay or get into a profit while manufacturing and marketing chef/restaurant signature products.
Company: New World Foods
20855 NE 16 Ave. Ste. C36
Miami, Florida 33179
PH: (305) 770-0870
FAX: (305) 770-0705
Contact: Theo Susser
Restaurant Affiliation: Chef Allen's Restaurant
Products: Tamarind Chili Spicy Grill Sauce
Papaya-Pineapple Grill Sauce
Hot Mango Cocktail Sauce
Mango Ketchup
For eleven years, Chef Allen's Restaurant has provided North Miami Beach diners with highly provocative cuisine. With things going well, including recognition as the "Ponce de León of New Floridian cooking," and a cookbook in the works with Ten Speed Press, they were tempted to open a new restaurant. However, when Chef Allen Susser and his brother Theo Susser, restaurant general manager, looked at the astronomical numbers associated with creating new locations, they instead decided to expand their business by capitalizing on the unique sauces used in their restaurant.
Theo Susser took on the project and left his position as general manager to launch their sauce company, New World Foods. Thus began Susser's indoctrination into the world of manufacturing. According to Susser, the easiest part was dealing with the recipes, as they had been working with them for years in the restaurant. The most difficult part of getting started was the sheer number of things that had to get done: bottle sourcing; finding a co-packer; creating labeling and packaging; and placing the product. With an initial investment of $100,000, or roughly about the same amount necessary to build just the restrooms of an upscale restaurant, they introduced Mango Ketchup in 1995. Distribution began on a local level in Miami, until a call came from a broker in Baltimore who had sampled the sauce while on vacation in Miami. Susser says they quickly learned an important lesson: it's hard to market just one product. While people were very interested in the sauce, the gourmet stores that they had targeted preferred products which offered an entire line. They broadened their product base to four sauces, and began hiring brokers all over the country.
Strategies For Success
Although it may sound simplistic, "approach every aspect of the creation and marketing of your product from a business perspective," says Susser. He put together a five year profit and loss statement, projecting losses for the first three years, knowing that initial startup costs wouldn't be cheap. Susser projected that they would start to turn the corner into profit in their third year and be in the black by the fourth. "My projections have been pretty much right on the money," he says. Their products are currently distributed to speciality gourmet shops, whole foods markets, and kitchen/cook shops such as Crate and Barrel.
Free Advice From New World Foods
1. If you're a full-time chef, you can't do it all. Find a marketing person, and let someone else in the business do the work for you.
2. Make sure that your product has a point of difference. With literally hundreds of thousands of new product produced every year, you won't make it if you don't.
3. Know when to say no--the gourmet market and mass market have to be handled in two very different ways. "We were approached by a chain of grocery stores to carry the product. While it was a very exciting prospect on one hand, I was not sure about supermarkets, and had to say no to a lot of distribution because we were not ready for that."
Company: Monroe's
6051 Osuna NE
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87109
PH: (505) 881-4224
FAX: (505) 345-6877
Restaurant Affiliation: Monroe's Restaurants
Products: Green Chile Sauce
Red Chile Sauce
Salsa
So you say chile is addicting. You probably wouldn't get Kathy Diaz, owner of Monroe's Restaurant, to argue with you. Monroe's has been a local favorite in Albuquerque, New Mexico since the first location opened in 1976. Huge green chile cheese burgers and an assortment of chile-laden traditional New Mexican food has built the business to three locations. However, from the beginning, customers have been trying to take home the restaurants sauces, often under the guise of needing to send them to a "friend" far away from home that was desperately in need of a chile fix.
After filling up lots of tupperware and mason jars for customers, Diaz and her husband Miguel began to experiment with hot packing their sauces for sale, and found that they could successfully capture the full flavors of their restaurant sauces in a jar. They began with green and red chile sauce, and added a salsa later that year. Their most recent addition to the line is red chile honey. Because they already had a commercial kitchen and all of the equipment, their production began right in their own restaurant. "Since we already had the big cooking equipment, and staff available to cook, label, pack and mail, we felt we could put the investments we had already made in the restaurants to better use by doing it all ourselves." And that "it" was everything; from the first spice poured into the pot to making the gift baskets. Their first Christmas they sold more than 300 gift baskets and shipped them to places as far away as Costa Rica, England, Italy, Japan, Australia and Japan. They knew they were on to something.
According to Diaz, the startup costs were minimal; jars, lids, labeling and production. In 1993, their first year, they sold 500-600 cases, and were faced with figuring out exactly what kind of product they were producing. "We felt we were a gourmet product, so we decided to stay away from places like the Price Club," she says. The majority of their distribution is still through their restaurants, although they are also represented in speciality stores in New Mexico, Washington, New York, Kansas and Hawaii. They also sell their sauces through a special program that promotes local products in the Furr's grocery stores in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Diaz says that their products have been in the black from the start, although the profits are not yet significant, in relation to those of the restaurant. The hardest parts, she says, are the pure physical labor, and the never-ending task of charting the growth and journey of their product. Because the sales of their sauces have grown to about 100 cases a month, they now utilize a local cannery where they can monitor the process and guarantee the quality of the product.
Strategies For Success
Decide what you are trying to accomplish. Do you want to use your product as an advertising tool for the restaurants, or is this going to be an equal and significant addition to your restaurant business? Diaz also believes that using the resources she already had was key to keeping her profits in the black. "By piggybacking the labor of your product with the restaurant, you'll get ahead. You're already paying wages-- utilize busers and other employees to pack, ship and mail during slow times.
Free Advice From Monroe's
1. Retailing a restaurant product can help "pick up the slack" in a highly competitive restaurant market.
2. Keep control of your recipe and listen to your customers. They'll tell you very quickly whether you have a good product by the amount they reorder.
3. Keep your eyes open for promotional opportunities. Examples include promotions with non- traditional companies such as a bank. Monroe's is the official hot salsa of the Bank of New Mexico. They also tout their product in all of their restaurant advertising.
