HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Rural Voice, 2004-11, Page 26A TASTE OF SUCCESS
From kitchen table food creations to
international success, The Garlic Box
shows farm products can be taken begond
the farm gate to create new markets
Story and photo by Keith Roulston
Experience
garlic seasonings,
dressings &
preserves that
celebrate the
pleasure of the table.
Jackie Rowe has proudly branded her Garlic Box
products with a "Made in Canada" label.
Jackie Rowe has just come back from a food show in
Britain in early September, working with another
company there to make British retailers and consumers
aware of the products of The Garlic Box, her Hensall
company. It's a long way, both in distance and experience,
from the operation that started at her kitchen table in 1997.
Back then she and her husband Jim were involved in
Perth Garlic Farms and she was looking -for a market for
garlic that wasn't suitable, through size or harvest damage,
for the table trade.
22 THE RURAL VOICE
"I would go out to the field after the harvester had been
through it and pick up the bulbs that were left," she
remembers. "We would go to the kitchen table and make
pretty garlic oils and garlic preserves and I did a
tremendous amount of cooking with garlic."
Most of the Garlic Box's current selection of goods also
starts out with experiments at the kitchen table but the
similarities with the starting company end there.
The Garlic Box also has four full-time employees (many
more in summer season when scapes are being picked and
processed) plus some of the continent's best chefs on side
as advisors and more than 1000 retailers across Canada as
far north as Nunavut and down into the U.S. That handful
of bulbs that were ingredients in the early experiments has
grown to 50,000 pounds of garlic a year being sliced,
diced, dehydrated, ground and cooked into products that
range from the newly -introduced Spring Garlic Soup to
garlic sauces. Seeing how far the Hensall-baed company
has come in a relatively short time might tempt someone to
term it an instant success but Rowe remembers the
struggles and the missteps along the way.
"There was a point when I almost folded up my pencil
case and went home but didn't," she recalls. "We picked
ourselves up and dusted ourselves off and took managed
risks but risks that in hindsight I don't know if I could ever
do again. I think when there's an amount of risk at stake
you really have to work so hard.
"It's all finally come together and it's taken a long time
to get to this point. It certainly wasn't an overnight
success."
The first sales were at a street fair in St. Marys where
they took in close to $300 selling fancy garlic oils.
"It was amazing," she remembers now in her bright,
airy office. "It was just so exhilarating."
They also collected a pile of names from customers and
people who expressed an interest in the products.
"Originally the concept for The Garlic Box was to be a
mail order catalogue company. The idea was to use that
format as a medium to preach about the merits of garlic
because garlic has a lot of folk tales about it but it is also a
medicinal food and a functional food with a lot of health
benefits. What we really want to sell more than anything is
to help people incorporate garlic into their diet." •
The Garlic Box at the time was an evening and weekend
job squeezed in around her full-time job as a designer for
Dinney's Furniture in Exeter. The first catalogue featured
hand -drawn illustrations by a co-worker of their preserves,
oils and gift baskets but also of garlic presses and other
associated items to help people incorporate garlic into their
everyday life. There was also lots of information about
garlic interspersed among the items.
"Friends and family were our first customer list," she
recalls.
The catalogue grew, first to incorporate black and white
photographs, the full colour on glossy paper with a
professional photographer hired to show the products to
their best advantage, but sales were still basically to friends
and family. Then came one of those moments that change
the course of a business.
"We were still working operating under the wing of
Perth Garlic Farms and trying to market not only Garlic
Box items but Ontario garlic anti encourage people to
understand the difference between off -shore garlic and