The Rural Voice, 2004-11, Page 28FIRE
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24 THE RURAL VOICE
awareness and excitement all the
time."
Looking back, Rowe says the
experience she picked up in her
career prior to starting The Garlic
Box comes together to help her
succeed. She worked as a
bookkeeper, learning business. She
worked as a writer with the Owen
Sound Sun -Times and The Hanover
Post and did freelance writing and
freelance decorating giving her a
sense of style and colour. As a
mother, she loved cooking and
baking for her family. "I employ all
of those skills," she says.
"The decorating has given me the
confidence in shaping the look of the
company because it has to have a
presentation to it: our colours, our
concept, the verbiage we use, what
we wantour marketing message to
be to the consumer."
The marketing niche is clearly
defined, she says. "Not only do
we work with garlic, but we
work with Ontario garlic. We have to
stay very focussed on that."
From the family the products are
sampled by employees, and friends
and then turned over to one of the
professionals who gives the company
an edge, Rowe says. Anna Olsen,
who is seen on The Food Network
takes the recipes and tests them. "Our
garlic -mango dressing for example
— she tweaked that product to the
point it's one of our best sellers now
and people tell us they could drink it
straight from the jar."
Olsen takes the final product and
creates batch -size recipes which go
to the manufacturer. All their wet
products — sauces, dressings.
preserves, etc.— are produced at
NFI, a federally -inspected kitchen in
the Niagara area, using garlic that's
shipped from Hensall. At their
Hensall location they handle
dehydration and pack seasonings.
They also label the jars received back
from Niagara and orders are
assembled for shipping.
• Every day orders are picked up by
courier for delivery in Canada. Once
a week there's a consolidated order
to the U.S. It's dispersed on the U.S.
side of the border for shipment to
U.S. retailers. The company has now
started exporting to Britain.
The growth of far-flung markets
helps Ontario garlic growers by
providing more market for their crop.
Because .they brand their product
as made with Ontario garlic, it means
there must be a good, co-operative
relationship with growers because
there's no cheap short cuts of using
imported garlic from a supplier.
They started our hand peeling
garlic in the kitchen and dehydrating
garlic scapes (seed pod heads) in a
tablehop food dehydrator. Now they
have large dehydration'units.
"It's been a real learning curve,
not just learning marketing but
learning processing from the ground
up. It's been a lot of work and it
never ends."
In the case of their new Spring
Garlic Soup mix, an organic grower
agreed to dig up enough garlic in the
spring, foregoing letting the bulbs
mature, so they could experiment and
perfect the product. Staff are working
at refining their process in creating
the soup mix and the grower is
working at refining his, she says.
"They work with us and we work
with them," she says of the growers.
"Partnership is key to survival for all
of us."
The winning team also includes
one of Ontario's Olympic food chefs
who does food demonstrations.
Another chef in the U.S.
demonstrates their product all up and
down the eastern seaboard of the
U.S. in stores like the Whole Foods
organic chain.
"Even though it's all really
humble we try to hitch our wagon to
a star so that when we're out in the
public we're perceived as a star
company. I think it's through
associating yourself with people who
can do their job well that helps the
business grow and pulls it forward."
esearching new recipes never
stops, she says. A key
development for The Garlic
Box, for instance, was the Ultimate
Mashed Potato Seasoning mix. "It
targeted that comfort zone — garlic
mashed potatoes, you can't get any
warmer and fuzzier than that."
"We're in the specialty food
industry and you have to be nimble
and you've got to be quick to target
what the consumer wants because
they're looking for an experience and
the best way to have that is through
the gut," she says.
The need for nimbleness was
demonstrated in the aftermath of the
September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks