Supply-Side Memo: 'Look What We Found' Sounds Like an Odd Name For A Line of Premium, Prepared Foods; But Read On; It Makes Perfect Sense

British food industry entrepreneur Roger Mckechnie had combined a unique recipe of ingredients -- premium and gourmet, natural, gluten-free, locally-produced, wild-foraged and the use of game meats-- into the creation of his 'Look What We Found' brand of prepared foods, which include ready-meals, soups and sauces at present. Annual sales are £6-million and growing. [Photo Credit: Katie Lee/Sunday Times of London.]

What others are writing: From the Sunday Times of London

Roger Mckechnie had spent most of his career working for the storied British food company United Biscuits, working his way up from a marketing manager for the company to the chief executive of its popular Smith's Crisps' brand.

Born, raised and educated in Northumberland, England, Mckechinie was happy to be able to remain nearby in his job running the Smith's Crisps brand for United Biscuits. However, as often is the case, especially when one performs well, United Biscuits had bigger ideas for the northern England native, and told him they wanted him to move to the south for the company.

He wanted to stay put, despite the fact United Biscuits' told him if he didn't move he would be out of a job in six months, according to a profile of the food industry entrepreneur in tomorrow's Sunday Times of London.

Mckechnie stayed put and left the corporate world to start Derwent Valley Foods, which produced the popular Phileas Fogg tortilla chips in the United Kingdom. Ten years later the corporate food industry executive-turned-entrepreneur sold the company for £24-million (pounds) to none other than his former employer, United Biscuits.

"It was the right time to sell it," he says in the Sunday Times' profile piece. "Once it got to the point where I was employing huge numbers of people and there were politics and organisational issues, I started to lose interest. I'm more of a creative independent."

The "creative independent" bought an old country house, which he converted into an award-winning boutique hotel, after selling Derwent Valley Foods. 'Starting to feel this guy's Midas touch? like we are.'

But the food business remained in the entrepreneur's blood. So in 1999 he went back into the food industry in the UK as a consultant to Northumbria Larder, a group of 60 meat, cheese and game producers.

It's taken the entrepreneur a few years since then to figure out his next new big thing. However, Mckechnie, who went on to launch his current food company, Tanfield Foods in association with these UK meat, game and cheese producers, thinks he's now on to it with his Look What We Found brand of ready-meals (just heat and eat), which feature such interesting varieties as: Herdwick Mutton Stew with Pearl Barley and Root Vegetables; Gloucester Old Spot Pork Meatballs with Butter Beans in a Rich Tomato Sauce; Wild Rabbit in Leek & Elderflower Sauce with Camargue Red Rice; Mushroom Stroganoff with hand-picked Scottish Mushrooms, and a number of other varieties you can view here.

In addition to the line of Look What We Found brand premium ready-meals, the company also markets a line of gourmet soups under the brand name. Some of the varieties in the prepared soup product line are: Country Cured Ham in Delicious Pea Soup, Tweedside Honey in English Parsnip Soup, English Tomato Soup with Cheviot Cheese Pesto and others.

Lastly, the company produces a gourmet sauce line under the brand, which you can view here.
The soups and sauces all are gluten-free and are made using locally-produced (in the UK), premium ingredients.

Most of the upscale ready-meals also are gluten-free. They too feature locally-produced fresh meats and produce and other ingredients; items like locally-foraged wild mushrooms and local dairy products are used in them as well.

You can read the interesting profile by Rose Gamble in the London Times here.

You can view the Look What We Found Web site here.

Food & Politics Memo: It's Zen and the Art of Chocolate Making For City Council Member Turned Chocolatier and Confection Company Entrepreneur

Oakland, CA city council member Nancy Nadel shows off some of the chocolates that she has made from beans. Nadel spends her summers in Jamaica cultivating a cooperative of cacao farmers to supply her with fermented beans. (Photo Credit: Mike Lucia/Oakland Tribune)

From the Natural~Specialty Foods Memo Editor's Desk: Who says food and politics don't mix? Not longtime Oakland, California USA city council member Nancy Nadel.

Her honor, perhaps finding a lack of sweetness in her position as a local politician and lawmaker, decided to seek her sweet delights elsewhere: She founded a confections company, Oakland Chocolate Company, specializing in chocolate, and named it after the city she serves.

Nancy Nadel remains on the city council, she just added a second hat (well, a hair net actually) to her already busy life.

The Oakland Tribune newspaper profiled city lawmaker/chocolatier Namcy Nadel and her Oakland Chocolate Company in a recent article. We enjoyed the story, including the interesting juxtapositon of local politics, chocolate-making and small business building. We thought you would enjoy it too. Read it below:

Oakland council member finds her Zen in chocolate
By Cecily Burt
Oakland Tribune
October 18, 2008

After a grueling week immersed in the city of Oakland's problems, Councilmember Nancy Nadel unwinds in a unique way. She puts on a hair net, cranks up the reggae, and loses herself in swirling vat of warm, rich, dark chocolate.

Nadel has become a chocolatier in her (very little) spare time, launching the Oakland Chocolate Company with its roots in Jamaican soil.

"It's like my Zen," Nadel said last Sunday, the only day of the week she isn't buried in budgets and voluminous agenda packets or other issues affecting her West Oakland district. "The preparation and even the clean up, I get into it. When I give people my chocolate they are happier than when I talk about my progressive policies."

No doubt. But Nadel's progressive policies have a way of steering her life choices, and the decision to dabble in chocolate is no exception.

The story can be traced back to the last vacation Nadel and her late husband, West Oakland activist Chappell Hayes, took to Jamaica before he died. She has returned year after year during summer breaks from council business, staying with friends in the rural reaches in the parish of St. Mary on Jamaica's north coast.

Cacao farmers such as Steve Belnaviz eke out a living selling their just-picked beans to the government, which sends them to a state-run fermenting plant. Many of the poor farmers that Nadel met have land, but no money to harvest their cacao trees. Some have cleared the trees that shade the cacao to plant other crops.

"It's a beautiful place but it has the same kind of (economic) problems as Oakland," she said.

At first Nadel wondered whether she could help the farmers get better prices for their beans by helping them organize a fair-trade cooperative. The cooperative would ferment its own organic beans and sell the product in bulk to chocolate companies, basically removing the middle man. Then she thought, why not try her own hand at farming and making chocolate?

"As a city council member I've talked about sustainable issues and farming for a long time," she said. "My goal is to put my money where my mouth is."

So she took a weeklong class at UC Davis in chocolate technology and hasn't looked back. The Oakland Chocolate Company started small and Nadel intends to keep it that way for the foreseeable future, given the demands on her time.

For a time Nadel rented kitchen space at Brown Sugar restaurant on Mandela Parkway. But that arrangement required her to bring in her supplies and pack it all out at the end of the day. She recently subleased space from the maker of Barlovento artisan chocolates in Jack London Square. She bought a bigger machine for melting her chocolate and she can leave all her equipment, ingredients and finished products there.

Nadel is averaging about 200 pieces of filled chocolates or dipped nuts and fruits each Sunday, plus molded chocolate leaves and textured chocolate crunch bark. She eagerly gives visitors samples of nutty-tasting cocoa nibs to munch on as she describes how the milky white beans are harvested from football-sized pods that grow from the trunks of cacao trees, and then placed on trays and covered with banana leaves to dry and ferment.

It's taken years of research and outreach, but Nadel and her partners in Jamaica gathered with cacao farmers for the first time in February to discuss their plans for a cooperative and fermentary, and efforts to join the Jamaican Organic Agriculture Movement.

And it will be some time yet before a production-sized fermentary is established and the farmers can produce enough fermented beans to provide a steady supply to her company and other chocolate makers.

Still, the seeds are starting to take root.

"Two weeks ago was the first time I made chocolate from beans that I had picked, fermented and dried, and brought back 3,000 miles," said Nadel, sounding like a proud parent. "It's an incredible feeling."

A portion of the sales from the Oakland Chocolate Company will go to help build a production-sized cocoa bean fermentary in Jamaica.

To learn more about the company and the Jamaican farmers, or to order chocolates, visit http://www.theoaklandchocolateco.com/.

Supply-Side Guest Memo: Chris Reed Plans to Grow His Two-Decades Old Reed's Natural Beverage Company Into the Big Leagues

Natural~Specialty Foods Memo Editor's Note: Chris Reed founded his Reed's Ginger Brew beverage company nearly two decades ago. Since starting the natural beverage company, Mr. Reed has focused distribution of the brands (Reed's Ginger Brew and Virgil's Root Beer) primarily in the natural foods and upscale food and beverage retailing segments of the industry, along with higher-end foodservice establishments, mining the niche market for consumers who are willing to pay a premium for all-natural and unique-tasting beverages.

However, last year the ponytailed natural soft drink entrepreneur took his company public. Following that move, the company experienced not only a cash infusion, but grew its sales by about 24% between then an now, largely by gaining distribution in new retail stores, including a number of what can be described as more mainstream-oriented supermarkets. The beverage company currently has annual sales of about $13 million.

The June, 2008 issue of Fast Company magazine has an article about Reed's plans and strategies to grow the Reed's natural beverage company (and the brands) even further into the food and beverage retailing mainstream channel, and how he and his team members plan on doing so, along with growing the company in general.

Read the article, "An All Natural Icon Reaches Beyond Whole Foods," by Saabira Chaudhuri in the June, 2008 issue of Fast Company.com below. The first few paragraphs are reprinted below, with a link to the rest of the piece below that:

An All Natural Icon Reaches Beyond Whole Foods
By: Saabira Chaudhuri

As Reed’s ginger brew makes a play for the big leagues, the natural question arises: Can the brand's success be attributed to the marketing or is it all about the taste?

Chris Reed isn't your typical CEO. He's a tie-dye aficionado who sports a ponytail, eats vegetarian, and enthuses ceaselessly about the benefits of yoga, Ayurveda, and meditation. He comes off more like a freewheeling Californian—maybe a wave chaser or an amateur home grower—than a guy from Queens who runs a multi-million-dollar business.

But when you ask him about the inspiration for his soda company, Reed’s, you uncover a side of him that is ambitious and openly profit seeking. "I'm a renaissance man. I'd rather not make money for other people when I can make it for myself," Reed says unabashedly. Last year, his company brought in sales of around $13 million outselling established brands like Izze (owned by Pepsi Co.), RW Knudsen, and Hansen within the natural foods category, a group of about 3,000 markets that includes Whole Foods and Trader Joes. It is now the number one player in natural sugar/fructose sweetened soft drinks.

In January of 2007 Reed’s went public and experienced a 24 percent increase in growth that year. Now, after 18 years in business, the company is looking to branch beyond just natural foods, and go mainstream.

Home Brew

A self-made businessman with no formal business background, Reed started out wanting to be a rock and roll guitarist. He tried working the music circuit for a few years, playing rhythm and lead in a band, before he reluctantly decided to get serious and go the conservative route, trudging off to study cryogenic engineering at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. After the oil and gas industry crashed in the mid '80s however, Reed came to terms with the fact that he just wasn't cut out for the life of an engineer.

At 29, he packed up and moved to Hollywood to study guitar at the Musicians Institute. Simultaneously, he started working for a friend who owned a 1-800-DENTIST outlet. At first he just answered the phone. Eventually, he started selling to the dentists, displaying an unexpected aptitude for bringing in dollars that prompted him to consider starting his own business.

While Reed already possessed a deep-seated interest in Ayurvedic and Chinese medicines, many of which incorporated ginger, the inspiration for creating his eponymous brew only came while he was traveling across India in 1988. There, the roadside sugarcane juice vendors often infused their drink with ginger or lime and it was during this trip that Reed settled on ginger brew as the best vehicle to get ginger to the American public.

Back in the States, he did some research at UCLA and found that before soft drinks were commercially made, they had been brewed at home. So, he decided to brew his own line of natural soft drinks, and began experimenting with recipes in his Venice Beach kitchen, tinkering for almost two years before he settled on a spicy-sweet concoction.

With the aid of a loan from his father, Reed launched his first batch of ginger brew for less than $5,000 in the summer of 1989. He sliced 90 pounds of fresh ginger by hand, brewed the product at a small brewery with no bottling operation, bottled it on his own, slapped on labels with a stick of glue, and loaded 36 cases into the back of his VW bug for distribution at four local stores.

Click here to read the rest of the article from the June issue of Fast Company.com.

Food Industry & Entrepreneurialism Memo: Homeboy Bakery & Enterprises and Kinh Do Foods Show That Entrepreneurialism and Innovation Continue to Thrive

We recently read two articles which describe two food industry enterprises that despite being very different in kind and thousands of miles apart geographically, embody the spirit of entrepreneurialism that's alive and thriving in the global food industry despite the current poor international economy.

Twenty years ago, The Rev. Gregory Boyle, who is a Jesuit Priest currently assigned to Dolores Mission Church, the poorest Catholic parish in the Archdiosese of Los Angeles, California, got an idea to try using employment as a means to help the city's gang members stop their vicious cycle of committing crimes, being imprisoned and then released, only to once again return to jail.

Father Boyle launched a campaign at the time in an attempt to get local businesses to take a chance on hiring the "reformed" gang members. However, he couldn't get enough business owners to take a chance on the "homeboys," (gang members) so had to give up on the plan.

The good Jesuit Priest then had a brainstorm: Why not create a business himself and employ the "homeboys" to run it. Rev. Boyle did just that with the financial backing of the famous Hollywood movie producer Ray Stark, according to a story in the March 20, 2008 New York Times by James Flanigan.

The Jesuit Priest bought an abandoned bakery in 1992, which he named Homebay Bakery, and hired six former gang members to work at the business, making tortillas and doing routine maintainance and janitorial work.

Homeboy Industries, Inc. was born. Today, Homeboy Bakery, which bakes bread and pastries as well as makes tortillas, employees 25 former gang members, recently purchased $3 million worth of start-of-the-art ovens and tortilla making equipment, and is close to inking a "major" contract with a large cafe/coffee house chain to supply the retail operation with fresh breads and pastries.

The "homeboys" are in a growth mode. In fact, somebody at the bakery suggested to Father Boyle he should buy an automatic dough mixing machine to help keep up with all of its new business rather than having the workers continue to hand-knead the bread and pastry dough. The good--and smart--Jesuit nixed that idea however--explaining not only is hand-kneading dough therapeutic--but increased business means he can hire more gang members to hand-knead the dough so he can reach and rehabilitate more "homeboys."

Homebay Industries has diversified in its 16 years in business, according to the Times' article. Today, in addition to Homeboy Bakery, there's a silkscreening business, a maintainance company and a retail store.

There's also the Homegirl Cafe, which is run by a staff of 27 girls who were involved in various ways with neighborhood gangs. The cafe is located in the city's Boyle Heights neighborhood. It features Latino cuisine and flavors prepared with a contemperary California twist. The cafe has recieved positive reviews from the Los Angeles Times, as well as being featured on the Oprah Show.

In addition to their salary, ongoing training and the ability to advance, the "homeboys" and "homegirls" who work for Homeboy Industries get free mental health counseling services, medical care, housing assistance and free tattoo removal, which is important because the former gang members are "tagged" with their previous gangs' insignias and other related body art which makes employment and living in non-gang related society difficult for them.

According to the Los Angeles Police Department's research bureau, there are 250 gangs and 26,000 gang members in Southern California. Father Gregory Boyle, who is writing a book about Homeboy Industries and his experiences and wants to take his program nationally, is working to solve that gang problem one "homeboy" and one "homegirl" at a time.

>Read the full March 20 New York Times article about Homeboy Industries and Bakery here.

>View a slideshow of the inside of Homeboy Bakery here.

>Visit the Homeboy Bakery website here, the Homeboy Enterprises website here, and the Homegirl Cafe website here. You can learn more about Homeboy Enterprises and its the bakery and cafe businesses, as well as future plans, on the websites. You also can order shirts, sweaters, hats and other "homeboy" and "homegirl merchandise on the websites, in addition to learning how you can get involved with the enterprises.

It's been 33 years since North Vietnamese troops marched into the city of Saigon. The city fell to the North, as eventually did the rest of the then divided country of Vietnam.

After Saigon fell, a 21 year-old named Tran Kim Thanh was ordered by the North Vietnamese to stop working at his family's baking-supplies store and sent to work making bread and buns at a new, state run bakery in the unified Communist nation of Vietnam, according to a March 12 story by James Hookway in the Wall Street Journal

As we said, that was 33 years ago. Today, Vietnam remains one, unified country. But it's embracing Capitalism with a frenzy. And Mr. Thanh, who's now closing in on his mid-fifties, is one of the nation's leading entrepreneurs.

The former state-run bakery worker's Kinh Do Foods is one of Vietnam's biggest consumer companies. It has a market cap of $400 million, is publicly traded, and is backed by the U.S. investment house Citicorp, Inc., along with Britain's Prudential Insurance PLC. The country of Singapore's sovereign wealth funds are even major investors in the food company, according to the Journal article.

The iconic red and yellow Kinh Do Foods' stores, which are located all over Vietnam, are basically retail bakery/cafe type shops that carry a wide variety of native baked goods like breads and pastries, along with such local specialty items as dried-squid buns and other Vietnamese consumer favorities. In some ways, the stores are to Vietnam what McDonlads and Starbucks are to U.S. consumers in terms of their ubiquity and popularity.

Vietnam has one of the world's fastest-growing economies. It's drawing U.S. and European investment capital at about the same (per-capita) rapid clip as China and India are.--However, unlike China, Vietnam is far more liberal in terms of encouraging overseas investment. Further, the country welcomes and incourages investment from America, a country it battled in war for far too long on both sides.

Kinh Do Foods' owner Thanh, who also goes by an Americanized version of his name, Paul Tan, launched the fast food-style retail bakery chain in 1993. He has big growth plans for the food chain, backed by the investment houses mentioned above. The food industry entrepreneur is even thinking about expanding outside Vietnam.

From clerk at his parents' tiny bakery supply store, to forced worker at a Communist-run state bakery, to capitalist, Tran Kim Thanh proves entrepreneurs can come from varied--as well as oppressed--backgrounds. It's an idea, combined with a sense and spirit of adventure, a desire to succeed on ones own (and yes, at times become wealthy), along with lots of hard work that are its primary ingredients.

Out of the ashes of war and the rigidity of Communism, Vietnam is becoming reborn as a free-market economy and integrating itself with the rest of the world. It's entrepreneurs like Tran Kim Thanh (aka Paul Tan) who are leading the way. And in Paul Tan's case, one dozen dried-squid buns to-go at a time.

>Read the full Wall Street Journal article here.

>Visit the Kinh Do Foods website here.