Sometimes, all it takes is a little push — a bit
of advice, some words of encouragement — to help a business grow.
For the last six years, the Center for
Innovative Food Technology has been giving a push to entrepreneurs and small
businessmen by way of its annual Food Product Development Contest, which seeks
to give a helping hand to people in the region who want to start marketing and
selling their food products.
Last week, two winners were named for this
year’s contest: Anthony Brubaker of Cygnet, Ohio, for his Reverend T’s BBQ
Sauce, and David LaRoe of Grand Rapids, Ohio, for his LaRoe’s House Poppy Seed
Dressing.
Both winners will receive practical and
technical advice from the experts at the center, ranging from the ins and outs
of business planning to everything they need to know about creating labels and
testing for shelf stability. In addition, they will be able to make their products
at the Northwest Ohio Cooperative Kitchen near Bowling Green, a commercially
licensed professional kitchen with the equipment needed to process, make, and
bottle food products.
Mr. LaRoe said the assistance offered “give[s]
the entrepreneur the chance to flourish.”
Mr. LaRoe, 60, opened LaRoe’s Restaurant in
Grand Rapids 36 years ago, and he estimated he has been serving the poppy seed
dressing there for 35 of those years.
“People kept asking me, ‘Can I take some home? I
can’t find anything like it in stores,’” he said.
The restaurant would give out small samples of
the dressing in a to-go cup to patrons who would ask, but after becoming
familiar with both the center and the cooperative kitchen, he decided to enter
the contest.
Eventually, he said, “I would like to see us
create a sister company to the restaurant where we could employ local people
and really go to the market with it. Not even just regional. I think it could
be a great small business, I really do.”
But first, there are obstacles to overcome. One
of the biggest problems with selling salad dressings is that the ingredients
tend to separate in the bottles: the vinegar stays on the bottom, the oil rests
on top of that, and the poppy seeds float on top of it all. When they make it
at the restaurant, they use high-speed blenders that emulsify the ingredients
so they all stay blended together.
But mass producing the dressing will require
large vats and industrial blenders, and the blenders Mr. LaRoe has seen so far
do not move fast enough to create a permanent emulsion.
He said he has been assured by everyone at the
organizations that they will be able to help him create a dressing that stays
mixed.
For Mr. Brubaker, the road to winning the
contest began with a passion rather than a profession.
For the past several years, he has been serving
barbecue to the Bowling Green State University football team the day before
they begin their punishing two-a-day workouts. The service has grown into what
he hopes has become a BGSU tradition.
Apparently, it goes over well. “A kid from the
Bowling Green football team said, “Man, you’ve got to sell this,’” he said.
He has the professional chops to do it. Now 42,
he is a veteran of Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm — the
first war in Iraq. While he was still in the military, he went to the
prestigious culinary school at Johnston & Wales University. After
graduation, he worked at a series of restaurants in Virginia before returning
to Ohio with his new bride.
He now works as a property manager in Findlay,
but cooking is still in his blood.
“With the past several years, I really developed
a passion for low and slow hickory pit barbecue. I wanted to develop a sauce
that suited my likes and desires, which was a bold barbecue sauce with
understated sweetness. It’s not very sweet at all.
“It’s like a trip from Kansas City to Texas. It
starts out with the tomato base of a Kansas City barbecue sauce. Then you
travel down to Memphis, where you pick up a little bit of the tang of the
Memphis sauce, with the understated sweetness that Memphis loves. Then you
finish off your journey with the big, grand spices of Tex-Mex barbecue: cumin
and garlic and coffee and apple cider vinegar,” he said.
That combination became the basis for Reverend
T’s BBQ Sauce — the T is for Tony, his nickname, and the Reverend is because he
is an ordained minister and an associate pastor of the non-denominational Basic
Truth Church, near Cygnet.
And maybe some day he will become a major
producer of barbecue sauce.
