.jpg)
We all know Pennsylvania has fertile farmland and amazing restaurants, but that's not the limit of our edible economy. The state is also home to a growing number of food entrepreneurs, selling everything from fresh roasted coffee to pickles to gourmet sesame paste. It's a challenging field, but one that inspires great passion and creativity.
Keystone Edge checked in with three of the commonwealth's ascendent food companies to find out how they transformed a simple idea into a star of your table.
A crisp idea
It all started with a story about pickles. Rob Seufert read a story in Baltimore magazine that profiled a guy selling cukes at a local farmers' markets.
“I still have family down there,” says EPIC Pickles' Seufert, who was born in Baltimore before moving to York County. “I found myself at the guy's stand, eating his pickles, and they were just amazing. Every time I went down there, I had to get those pickles. And next thing I know, I'm buying them for my neighbors and they were loving them. I've always loved cooking. I thought, this can't be that difficult.”
So Seufert headed to his own local market, bought some cucumbers and some dill, and started pickling. He tried out his creations on those same neighbors.
“Next thing I know, they're knocking on the back door with cash in hand looking for pickles, and the business was born,” he recalls.
Though Seufert has always loved tinkering in the kitchen, he is a graphic designer by trade. His product's cool, crisp design speaks to that fact — this is one startup that doesn't need to play catchup when it comes to branding. He was still working full-time when he started pickling, and when budgets were cut at his day job, he thought it was the right time to take the leap.
“I was already selling [pickles] to people,” explains Seufert. “Then just this past August, we were going on our summer vacation, and I got an order for like 60 cases, and thought, this is it. That's my sign.”
Seufert is still producing out of his home kitchen, waiting for the big order (from somewhere like Whole Foods or MOM's Organic Market) that can tape EPIC to the next level. But for now, he has a garage full of jars and some free labor.
“I've got fantastic retired parents that help me as much as they can,” he says. “My mom is actually my right-hand pickler. I don't even ask her, she just says, 'What are we getting on Monday?'”
For EPIC, it is all about grassroots marketing. Seufert takes pickles with him wherever he goes, striking up conversations at bars and restaurants. (“Next thing you know, I'm selling a case to the bar,” he says. “It's crazy.”) As a graphic designer, he was able to create his own website, and he also uses Facebook to spread the word. Thanks to word of mouth, local markets started contacting him, and the business grew from there.
“For instance, one place in Elizabethtown called me, and then they supply to Fair Food [in Philadelphia],” explains Seufert. “It's this trickle effect. Word travels like crazy. Fair Food has gotten me into a couple places in Philly, and as far as New York and Jersey.”
So what makes his pickles so special? The answer is easy: simplicity.
“There are a lot of great pickle companies out there, but I think a lot of them try to be a little bit too artsy or unique,” muses Seufert. “They really lose the pickle. Just make me the best frickin' kosher pickle you can make and be done with it.”
Seeds of growth
Soom Foods is a family business — the Philadelphia startup is the brainchild of three sisters: Jackie, Amy and Shelby Zitelman. They sell tehina (or tahini), roasted and pressed sesame seeds most commonly known in the U.S. as an ingredient in hummus or topping on pita sandwiches. Soom is trying change, showing discerning eaters that this healthy, delicious product can boost everything from desserts to smoothies to mashed potatoes.
It all started when Jackie, who lives in Israel, started dating a young man, Omri Horvitz, who was in the tehina business. (They're now married.) He works as a broker between manufacturers and restaurants and caterers. One night at shabbat dinner, Horvitz's mother brought out a carrot cake; it was dairy-free (common in Kosher desserts) and delicious (not as common in those desserts).
“How did you make this?” Shelby recalls asking. “It was unbelievable. And she says, 'I used tehina.' We had this concept that tehina was hummus or something you'd put on falafel, but there was this whole other world of how you could use the product. It's so versatile.”
There was nothing on the domestic market that compared with the deep flavor and velvety texture of the Israeli tehina. Soom's sesame is grown in Ethiopia and processed in Israel; most U.S. manufacturers get their sesame from Costa Rica or Mexico.
“We knew we had to bring it to the States,” says Shelby. “Not only is this a product that is really under-appreciated, but it also has nutritional elements. We really believe — and this is our mission as a company — that this is the next superfood. It has an amazing amount of protein, calcium, and vitamin B, antioxidants. Our job is to introduce the American consumer to its potential as an ingredient.”
Shelby has a background in entrepreneurship — she received an undergraduate degree from The Wharton School, with a concentration in entrepreneurial management. After college, she took a job with Ben Franklin Technology Partners, and she recently worked for PresenTense, a Jewish organization that helps social entrepreneurs turn their ideas into a business or non-profit.
“I love working with startups and learning from startups,” says Shelby. “I was on the financing side, but I had the opportunity, since Ben Franklin, to work with startups from 'ideation to the implementation.'”
Once they decided to pursue the business, the sisters took advantage of local resources, working with a Drexel entrepreneurship class on market research, testing assumptions and building some of the company's models.
“The local food scene is so amazing,” says Shelby. “And the resources that are available in Philadelphia we see as uptapped potential: manufacturing space, the fact that the port is just south of Broad Street, all of the food distribution facilities down in South Philly, and also just the geographic location to the highway system and being so close to major metropolitan areas. We want to stay in Philly, and I hope that one day we can build our manufacturing arm here.”
Last year, Soom shipped a container's worth of tehina — 19,000 pounds — from Israel and went through it in 10 months. They sell to both food services and retail. Clients include Zahav, one of Philadelphia's top restaurants, Weckerly's Ice Cream (they just debuted a dark chocolate sesame sorbet), Eat-a-Pita, American Sardine Bar, South Philly Taproom and Chop't, a chain of salad restaurants. As for retail, Soom is sold in Green Aisle Grocery, Essene Market, Weaver's Way Co-ops and smaller health-food stores, along with some places in the Maryland and D.C. metro areas.
The next step is landing a distributor. The team is also experimenting with new flavors, including chocolate and honey.
When asked if she's sick of tehina yet, Shelby laughs and replies, “I eat it everyday.”
Coffee date
“I started roasting coffee in my garage with a hot-air gun and a funnel in 2003,” says Mary Tellie, describing Electric City Roasting Company's humble roots. Tellie, who lives in Scranton, caught the coffee bug while working for a large financial institution and taking frequent business trips to San Francisco.
“I had an opportunity to get this great product and see this great [coffee] culture,” she recalls. “I thought that was really cool, and I couldn't find any of that in Scranton.”
She eventually retired from her banking job and started messing around with coffee, which led to a bean surplus in her house.
“I ended up taking it to my son's basketball games and giving it to all the moms,” says Tellie. “They said, 'This is really good.' People would knock on my door and say, 'Can I buy some from you?' I would just leave it on my front porch and people would put money in my mail slot.”
Eventually, Tellie's husband convinced her to move the roasting out of their home — apparently the words, “You're going to burn down the house” were uttered — and into a small mom-and-pop candy shop in an adjacent neighborhood. She got the space for roasting, but also started offering single-serving cups of coffee made-to-order on a Clover machine. That place became Zummo's Cafe.
“From there, I had a small business plan,” explains Tellie. “Coming from my banking background, I wasn't really sure I was going to be successful at this. So I figured, worst-case scenario, how many cups of coffee do I need to serve everyday to survive? I ripped that plan up three weeks later because at that point I knew.”
According to Tellie, the factors that go into a great cup of coffee are the quality of the raw green coffee, the quality of the roast, and the quality of the brew method. Tellie roasts single-origin beans, and spends a lot of time on the ground in coffee-growing regions; she was leaving for Costa Rica the day after our conversation.
“No matter how good of a roaster I am, if I use low-quality coffee beans and just blend everything and char it and make it really dark roast, no one is ever going to know what it is,” she says. “We know a lot of people who are really successful in doing that.”
Electric City now has two facilities — a cupping and tasting room in Scranton and a production facility in Cleveland.
“I think that, in this region, we have great community where they just know where to get really good stuff,” says Tellie. “They'll drive so far to get great pizza or great Italian food or great Lebanese food or fabulous coffee. I think that speaks volumes.”
LEE STABERT is managing editor of Keystone Edge and Flying Kite Media; she has a great tehina salad dressing recipe if you care to ask. Follow her on Twitter @stabert.