Moving Right Along

OK, so this is a blog about our company, FolkFoods. And the company is really about people and community and good food and all of the benefits of bringing these things together. Most of our recent posts have been about food and gatherings and such, but what about the business??

Starting a business is time consuming. It is stressful and resource consuming. It is also a lot of fun. I think it's cool that we have to make decisions about what size packaging to use or how much Veggie Crumble we think should be in each package, "to feed a family of four." More and more, it is requiring that Shana and I work together to guess at the best answer to those questions. Thankfully, we are getting a lot of help and support from Brian at the Vermont Food Venture Center. That guy knows a lot about the food business!

Last week, we officially went into production! We now have samples of all three products! (And most importantly, we know that the large scale version of our recipes work) Our products: Veggie Crumble, Veggie Breakfast Patties, and MasterSauce (A Spicy Cooking Sauce and Condiment). More on these as time goes by, but I can tell you that they are excellent, versatile, healthy, and really good. (Approved by our meat-eating and veggie friends alike.)

Some of you know how fond I am of the household immersion hand blender (I use it often, sometimes for Kefir Smoothies!). Well in the picture above, I got to use the mother of all immersion blenders! So freakin' cool! Shana, well, she got to play with A LOT of garlic!

There on the left, that's Brian, our food expert! He's showing us how to use and calibrate a filler (that's a simple name for a very complicated machine). Yes, you may have guessed it, that big conical stainless steel thing-ama-jig is now holding many, many pounds of FolkFoods MasterSauce. On your right, you will find both Shana and I hot-packing the MasterSauce into jars. We made 12 cases! Product? We got Product!

Well, that's about it for now. But, first, here's a little look into the beginning process of FolkFoods MasterSauce: