5) Hanging On, But Nothing to Hang On To... Is That Smoke?
Episode 5 - Background leading up to my foodie career and The MONETIZATION CHEF
Greetings Cottage Foodie!
In yesterday’s story, Idaho Gifts Wholesale was tanking as we slid into the 2008 recession, and our primary clientele — independent retailers mostly in the gift industry — were dropping like flies.
And of even more concern, Sandy’s cognitive decline was slipping head-first toward dementia.
Today, our story will generalize a dozen or so years of our life, including huge food business pivots.
And you won’t believe the next major tragedy, which indirectly led me to you via the re-launch of the Cottage Food Business FB group. And the companion lift-off of The MONETIZATION CHEF food training company.
CLIENT DISSIPATION… DESPARATION?
With the recognition of her disease (finally), Sandy was terrified of driving long-distance (and refused overnight travel by herself.) We dropped her peripheral routes in Montana, Oregon, and all but a small piece of Washington.
Eastern Idaho, a very profitable territory — but which required a two-week road trip (her longest) — was erased as well.
We kept her two largest and most lucrative routes, Boise and Spokane. But I had to travel with her. She was OK with day trips while I stayed put at the hotel or with a family member, where I worked on the computer. Eventually, that system died too, through continued mental decline and her growing apprehension.
Because Sandy no longer serviced most of her territories, we canceled repping agreements with most of her clients. Out of loyalty, a handful stayed with her, because she’d done such a good job (and/or was their only rep).
Our business sales and related household income plummeted, and (non)-payments to (our over-dependence on) credit cards hit us HARD.
We continued her wholesale-only website, IdahoGiftsWholesale.com (no longer online), selling mostly our own lines, plus by phone and email. And of course, we put more effort into our retail presence, Tastes of Idaho, recapturing a tiny bit of those commissions lost from IGW.
Unfortunately, even the retail site was more and more work, to the point we now depended mainly on marketing by email to our repeat buyers.
Sandy and I were early online. At one point we DOMINATED Google for keywords like ‘huckleberry’ and ‘huckleberry baskets,’ ‘Idaho specialty foods’ and ‘Idaho gift baskets.’ Up to 27 of the first 30 unpaid links on Google (for our target keywords) pointed at our website(s) in those early days.
But by the mid-2010s we maybe had one listing per page, if that. Small business websites took over the internet, and we now felt massive competition.
We had previously experimented with new brands, adding Backcountry Redneck and Backwoods Babe, for selling our humor products outside Idaho. We’d added upscale labels such as Gold Mountain Gourmet for retailers who were not into merchandising our roughneck humor products. All to some benefit, but nothing took off and replaced what we lost.
We tried to do the Palouse Mall holiday show again, but a specialty chocolate company now held our well-known spot, and we bombed — working 14-hour days for six weeks to barely break even.
THE CIRCLE IS COMPLETE - COTTAGE FOODS NOW
For the first time, we entered the domain of cottage foodies exclusively, even though there were no such laws for several years yet, in Idaho.
We joined local efforts to launch a farmers market in Orofino, providing the marketing moxie, and acting as board members. Our gig lasted the first six years of the market (which today is at about year 16.) Small town, no big sales, but kept us in the industry and made a little cash flow, as we worked with Sandy’s health.
SANDY’S HEALTH EPILOGUE
Sandy’s decline continued to the point where she could not hold a conversation many days. I took caregiver classes twice a week, an hour out of town. Our MD had her on Aricept, the first line of pharmaceuticals against dementia. The disease slowed with the drug, which we were told was all we could hope for.
We prayed for an answer.
Serendipitous relief came in the form of a Stanford-graduated chiropractic and naturopathic physician with a main office in Roseburg, Oregon. His wife owned property from a previous marriage near Orofino. So, as it happened, she opened a health food store here, and he opened a companion medical practice one week a month downtown. Among other credentials, he was an expert in food sensitivities.
Dr. Said put Sandy through an exhaustive battery of tests, and among other things determined Sandy was highly sensitive to gluten (which at the time was pooh-paahed by the medical community – outside of celiac, which she did not have.)
Her life history exhibited a litany of gluten-related issues:
· Underweight as a child
· Multiple miscarriages (during her first marriage)
· Thyroid disease
· Lifelong chronic digestive distress
And now, her neurological system. With research, we found a support group online for something called ”gluten-induced Ataxia” which seemed to fit her symptoms. Since then, more information is coming out, including this from VeryWell Health:
Sandy loved bread. But going gluten-free provided quick benefits, and almost two years to the day after the diagnosis, we got her off Aricept.
(Of course, gluten-free products, including bread — largely due to efforts of cottage foodies — are MUCH better tasting now than back in 2008.)
Today, she operates a thriving virtual assistant business from home, for spiritual centers.
HANGING BY A THREAD…
Many, many other things happened over these years, but the Tastes of Idaho retail website kept us in meat and potatoes.
We moved our processing, abandoning the Food Tech Center in Caldwell (partly for competitive reasons I will not get into.)
The Bonner Business Center kitchen (no longer in business) at Sandpoint, Idaho — an hour closer and better roads, was now our go-to. But only a 40-gallon steam kettle, with no agitators. We are now mixing with a large plastic hand paddle during an 80-minute simmer. And two loads now required for the same total output at our previous location with a 75-gallon kettle. Result: LONG days.
Eventually, we went to co-packers for most of our in-house lines, as the travel and the strain of making sauces in a steam kettle and running a filling line, tapped us out. Products without locating a co-packer, we abandoned.
One of the best things we did during this period, was to offer “private label”.
For example, products such as huckleberry jam came to us from the co-packer unlabeled. Besides putting our various brands on them, we offered them up as private label opportunities to small business clients, such as retail stores, real estate companies, big events, and others. We got a label design fee, plus an upsell on the pricing. Steady, repeat sales, and a bump to our income.
But when it was all said and done, our glory days were past.
In 2019, we listed our ecommerce business with a broker. The domain and website at Tastes of Idaho dot com, various assorted complementary domains, our remaining inventory, Idaho Gifts Wholesale website and business, client/customer lists, and most of our intellectual property and branding, were sold to a former customer.
We did keep our Redneck brands and continue to service a couple large customers. (Probably not for much longer.)
By late 2019, we were largely unemployed (by choice), living on proceeds from the sale of the food business baby we’d nourished for 17 years.
IDYLLIC BACKCOUNTRY LIVING
And now to the pinnacle of our tragic little backstory.
In 2000, we’d started renting a tiny, 4-bedroom farmhouse built in 1937, with an addition put on in 1955. Rent was cheap, only $300 a month (plus a little caretaking, and winter feeding the horses kept around to suppress fire danger).
A great place to run our business during those glory years.
Daily walks. Friendly neighbors. Breathtaking views of the Clearwater River canyon.
Living among the woods for those 19 years, with the next nearest residence 1/3 of a mile away, life was heavenly. Our idyllic location was in the upper middle of a 2000-acre estate, with rolling hills, and forests with some open slopes, and tiny creeks.
A smorgasbord of wildlife, including white-tailed deer, elk, moose, black bear, cougar, coyotes, cottontails, quail, grouse, turkeys, pheasants, fishers, wolves (WOLVES!), and one time even a rare Canadian lynx, all danced through our yard over the seasons.
THINGS HEATED UP UNEXPECTEDLY
Of course, fire season was often stressful. Fires as close as two miles away concerned us over recent years.
Used to be, if we made it to September 1st with the cooler days and more precipitation, we were home free. But climate change is erasing that historic weather schedule and associated comfort level. We’ve come to the point where if you live in the hinterlands, it’s a matter of when, not if, you get the evacuation call.
It was Labor Day, September 7, 2020.
Days really weren’t cooling down much yet. Winds normally came from west to east here, being one state from the Pacific Ocean. On this particular day, the air stream was blowing east to west, very strong (71 MPH we found out later, measured at the tiny Orofino airport about three air miles away.)
Sandy and I were putzing around the house, reading and doing errands, enjoying the start of autumn on a lazy Labor Day holiday. I looked out the front window and saw smoke billowing up from a side valley to the east. I asked Sandy to call the sheriff.
Response: “Yes, small fire, we are on it. Don’t get too excited.”
I … SHOULD … HAVE … KNOWN … BETTER.
While in forestry school at the University of Idaho I took classes on Fire Control, Fire Ecology, and an outdoor lab on Prescribed Burning. For the core lab learning we actually started and monitored a fuel reduction fire of several acres under a “prescription”, following weather and fuel moisture guidelines.
And, I’d had three seasons with the Idaho Department of Lands as a summer forester. Some of that was spent fighting wildfire.
When the “we got this” message came, I should have known better. Thirty minutes is forever in an emergency. A half hour after Sandy called the sheriff’s office, they called back.
“Get out, now!” And they asked for names of neighbors who lived up the hill.
Of all the emergencies and grim outlooks during the course of my life to date, this one was most personally devastating.
Next week, we will finish this story (apologetically in cathartic detail), before we move on to what the MONETIZATION CHEF is, and what my future goals are to help you.
I know a good foodie joke right now would be “did you have wieners and marshmallows on hand?” But, even after 4+ years it’s still too early.
Blessings! And a reminder to count yours… every day.
Mal Dell
The MONETIZATION CHEF
Cooking Up Profits for Foodies!