Taking value-added foods to market

More than 20 years ago, two teachers, Tom and Catherine Carty-Wilbur, started making chocolates part-time in their Freeport home kitchen.

Today, they have three Wilbur's Chocolates retail locations and are breaking ground on a new wholesale manufacturing facility in Freeport.

Fourteen years ago, stay-at-home mother of two Debbie Godowsky wanted to generate income to meet her children's college expenses. She founded Cookies Direct in her Yarmouth kitchen to send cookies each month to students at college and boarding schools.

Today her customers still include students but also hundreds of others from Maine and around the world.

Last year she baked over 100,000 cookies in the same 13-by-10-foot kitchen where she began.

Godowsky and the Wilburs are three of Maine's more than 600 "value-added food producers," many of whom started businesses in their kitchens. According to a recent University of Maine study, Wilbur's Chocolates and Cookies Direct are part of a small but growing industry in Maine. Many of these industry players, according to that study, are seeking the same kind of growth as the Wilbur's and Godowsky. Between 46 percent and 56 percent indicated they wanted to expand their product line.

Their enthusiasm often is tempered by challenges not uncommon to other small businesses, according to Eloise Vitelli, Director of Program and Policy Development at the Maine Centers for Women, Work and Community. Many of these producers are microenterprises, says Vitelli. According to the Unversity of Maine study, 64 percent of these businesses had fewer than three full time employees and 80 percent had fewer than 10.

"To grow, these microenterprises often need to add staff," says Vitelli. "Which poses the question of risk." At this point, according to Vitelli, "Sometimes the business owner perceives a barrier to progress." But she adds "there are strategies of getting beyond that."

Carty-Wilbur says she owes her company growth, in part, to Wilbur's decision to add staff. "One of the best things we have, is the best set of employees in the whole state," she says Placing daily operations in the hands of capable employees freed her to develop new business - including corporate sales, weddings, and personalized candies.

Godowsky offers another caution for novice value-added food producers. "Even though everyone says you are good at making that whoopee pie or whatever, you also have to be able to sell that product," says Godowsky. She says novice entrepreneurs should realize "You are in the business of selling that product, not just making that product."

According to John Entwistle, a certified business counselor and Director of the Maine Small Business Development (Maine SBDC) center at the University of Southern Maine, strategies to expand market share and increase customers are among the basic technical business skills that are critical to success for Maine's value-added food producers. With the specialty food industry growing nationally at 7 percent per year and generating $39 billion in retail sales, Entwistle says Maine specialty food producers "have great potential if they have the business skills and savvy."

The Wilburs and Godowsky believe in on-going business skill-building. Godowsky says a recent seminar in marketing led her to "pick up the pace on Internet advertising." She says it "has changed my business remarkably." If the pace of growth continues, Godowsky says she will have to expand her kitchen or completely renovate an adjacent barn to keep up.

Maine's value-added food producers will have a full-day opportunity to access nine business skill-building seminars at the April 26 Taste of Success Conference at the Augusta Civic Center. Sponsored by the Maine Small Business Development Centers, the Maine Centers for Women, Work and Community, and the Maine Gourmet & Specialty Food Producers, the conference will also feature First Lady Karen Baldacci and Gov. John Baldacci. Speakers Larry Fisher, Director of Food Ventures for the Appalachian Center for Economic Networks in Ohio, and Ron Tanner, the editor of Specialty Food Magazine, will focus on industry trends.

Members of the Maine Grocers' Association (MGA) are also holding their Spring Issues Forum at the Augusta Civic Center that day as part of The Taste of Success Conference. Joint sessions with MGA members will be held, affording opportunities for value-added food producers and local grocers to meet. A networking reception and gourmet and specialty food showcase concludes the day.

Katherine Arno is the Director of Training and Communications for the Maine Small Business Development Centers (www.mainesbdc.org) in its Portland center at the University of Southern Maine. Kate owned her own small business in Maine for eight years. Today, aside from working with small business issues at Maine SBDC, she helps her husband with the small business that he has owned in Freeport for 12 years. She can be reached at Karno@maine.edu.