also possible to have an overall company name, and then a different brand name or names for your products. For example, an exhibitor in our National Fiery Foods & Barbecue Show, Apple Canyon Gourmet, has differently named brands because they bought several failing companies and turned them around. They didn’t want to rename the products because they were already branded.
And you want to avoid triteness. Because the Sandia Mountains hover over the city of Albuquerque, there are many, many businesses with the name “Sandia” in them. So many, in fact, it’s become both trite and absurd, once you understand what “sandia” means in Spanish. Near sunset, the low sun in the west causes the west-facing slopes to have a distinct reddish tint that is exactly the color of the flesh of a watermelon, and that’s precisely what “sandia” means. The translation reveals the absurdity of calling your business the “Watermelon Mental Health Clinic.” Likewise for “Watermelon Dog Obedience Club,” or “Watermelon Crust Pizza Company,” which is a pun on the highest point of the Sandias, Sandia Crest. Often, regionalism is confusing and is not a good thing.
My mentor, the late, great Frank Crosby, was a show producer too and would never in a million years have called his business “Sandia Entertainment Company”—he had a much larger vision than that. He named it the Entertainment Corporation of America. Before you say that the name is a bit grandiose for a small Albuquerque company, I should point out that Frank had once been a standup vaudeville comedian who always told jokes like, “Did you hear the one about the farmer’s daughter who sits among the beans and peas?”
My point here is to think big. If your microfarm is in the Midwest, I plead with you not to call it “Little Microfarm on the Prairie.” It’s clever, but make it a brand for your products rather than your company name. Likewise for “Pacific,” “Rockies,” “Bayou,” and so on. Think more symbolically than locally—that’s why I chose Sunbelt Shows, Inc. for my corporate name. It says what the company does primarily but is deliberately vague as to regional location, allowing for easy expansion into other markets, which we did successfully for a while with food shows.
The Small Business Administration has some good advice about choosing a name for your business. Don’t get lazy and just name the business with your family name because that makes it more difficult to present a professional image and build brand awareness. You must consider how your name will look as part of a logo, on a website, and in social media. Does the name directly reflect what business the company is in, and most importantly, is it unique? You should select a name that has not been used by others, either online or offline. There are several ways to check the name you’ve selected: a simple web search, a trademark search through the U.S. Patent and Trademark website (Uspto.gov), a domain name search through the WHOSIS database (NetworkSolutions.com), and through your state filing office. Registering your “Doing Business As” name is simply the process of letting your state government know that you are doing business as a name other than your personal name or the legal name of your partnership or corporation. If you are operating under your own name, then you can skip the process.
Value-Added Products: How to Manufacture and Market Them
The first thing you should do if you’re interested in this type of expansion is to buy a copy of From Kitchen to Market: Selling Your Gourmet Food Specialty, by Stephen Hall. It is the most comprehensive book on the subject and will probably lead you to making the right decision. Of course, Hall wrote an entire book on this, so I can’t include all of it here. But since I’ve been producing a show for these types of products for the last twenty-five years, I know a lot about this subject, so I can give you the highlights of what to expect.
What type of product(s) should you make? The most obvious ones to me are concentrates of what you’re currently growing, assuming that’s possible. This is why I’ve turned my ripe tomatoes into purees and sun-dried slices. This is basic “manufacturing” and as long as you’re selling to chefs and not to the general public, usually you won’t need a particular license or even a manufacturing facility. Make sure you check your state’s regulations on this issue. Assuming you have some basic equipment, concentrated forms of your products will be simple to make and will require freezing or drying after they are processed. After the basics, there are an astounding number of products that can be made, and research into the specialty food market will be required. One of the simplest ways to learn a lot about the different products out there is to go to a trade show where they are on display. The Fancy Foods Shows, produced by the Specialty Food Association, are a good place to start, as is my show, the National Fiery Foods & Barbecue Show.
Who will buy them? Generally speaking, your first customers will be your farm customers who already know and trust your unprocessed farm products. The next wave of customers will come from your contacts at farmers’ markets, so be sure that you have your new products well-displayed and even offer them for tasting. From there, you want your products continually on display locally at specialty food stores and even supermarkets. After that, I suggest (of course), exhibiting in food shows as your first form of advertising beyond the basics explained earlier.
Where are they made? Most states do not allow food made in home kitchens to be sold to the general public, with the possible exception of baked goods like cookies, pies, and cakes sold at nonprofit bake sales. This means you need to use a commercial kitchen if you want to produce and pack the products, or find a contract packer (called a co-packer) to do it for you. (The best way to find a co-packer is to ask manufacturers of non-competing products who packs theirs.) I think that usually you should go with the latter option because how much can you do? You’re a farmer, a food producer, and a marketer all at the same time? You’re going to need employees, and that is very expensive. Better to let someone else worry about paying the help needed to pack products. Yes, there are often problems with co-packers changing recipes to cut expenses, or using cheaper containers, but you can monitor all this in a lot less time than spending all day on your feet packing food into jars. And don’t even think about building your own commercial kitchen. How many headaches do you need?
What kind of packaging is right for the products? Some are easy. Your microfarm grows seventeen different kinds of mustard seed, and you’re going to make packaged gourmet mustard. Have you seen it packaged in anything other than glass jars, plastic squeeze bottles, or tiny plastic single-serve pouches? But some ingredients, like chile peppers, have a myriad of packaging possibilities. Today, for example, I discovered a squeeze tube of chipotle pepper paste. Who woulda thought? Again, attend a gourmet products trade show and speak with some product packaging companies. Since they want your business, they will give you plenty of free advice that should all be taken, as the Roman cooks used to say, cum grano salis (look it up).
How will you store and ship these products? No, your greenhouse can’t be your warehouse. It would be wonderful if you just moved your products from the co-packer to a food distributor’s warehouse, but that’s not going to happen for a while. So you will have to play it by ear and move slowly as you learn the business. Now is the time to consider mail-order sales, whether you might need a delivery truck or van, and how far away you want your products distributed if you have to do it yourself. All of this begs two questions….
How will you distribute them? And, How will you market and advertise them? You need to pick some people’s brains. Find the owner of a company that has products that will not compete with yours, get to know him or her, buy them some coffee or a drink, and start brainstorming. Find out what they do with their products and keep two lists—one of ideas you like, and one of ideas you don’t. Talk with some managers of local markets and ask them about their most popular locally made products, and what makes them sell. Discuss the situation with your co-packer, if you have one, and get some advice. At food shows, casually ask exhibitors (at slow times) how they advertise and if they have a distributor they could recommend. You’re
