Chefs put their names to work

The Triangle's best-known chefs may not have the international celebrity of a Bobby Flay or a Rachael Ray, but that's not preventing them from borrowing their business strategies.

Like their national counterparts, area chefs are dabbling in the business of branded products - jams, jellies, sauces and other food products that they are selling in stores.

There are many reasons to try it.

Adding a product line can be an important source of new revenue while the restaurant business continues to struggle.

Sales of such products provide another way to connect with a restaurant's fans - as well as those who may not yet be patrons

And - let's face it - there's just something cool about putting your name on a product.

Jason Smith, the chef-owner of 18 Seaboard and Cantina 18 in Raleigh, plans to start bottling and selling his restaurants' popular sangria this year.

"The great thing about it is that there's unlimited upside potential," he said. "That's hard to find. There are only so many meals I can serve in a 24-hour period. This is different."

Of course, launching an upscale food line with a still-shaky economy is risky. Even in good times, not every chef who tries it succeeds.

But it's the possibility that the product will be a smashing success that draws curious chefs, said Mat Mandeltort, senior consultant for Chicago food industry tracking company Technomic.

"Maybe it is incremental sales and that may be all they're looking for," he said. "They're not looking for international fame. But sometimes it can find them."

The timing is good for local chefs to test out the product market.

Mama Dip's restaurant in Chapel Hill has been selling its barbecue sauce for 10 years but has been adding products including poppyseed dressing and cornbread mix. Spring Council, who manages product sales for the restaurant, said a second barbecue sauce is in the works.

"We used to only be in A Southern Season," she said. "Right now we have it in A Southern Season, Whole Foods Markets, Earth Fare, Parker & Otis and NOFO."

In addition to more sales, marketing the products aggressively by doing in-store cooking demonstrations has helped the restaurant reach new customers, Council said.

"A lot of times we go more into the Raleigh area, and we have people who still don't know us because the people here are so transient," she said.

The popularity of the Food Network and its celebrity cooks has made chef-branded products commonplace, said Louise Kramer, spokeswoman for the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade, which represents 2,900 small food makers. She called it "the cult of the chef."

"The Food Network has turned chefs into big personalities that have instant brand recognition," she said. "Chefs have grown into important people who are trend-setters. Chefs had not been celebrities really until about a decade ago."

Some people are cutting back on eating out, Kramer said, opening the market even further for eat-at-home products. Sales of specialty foods are going up.

In 2010, 63 percent of American consumers purchased specialty food, up from 46 percent in 2009, she said. There's no way to know exactly how much of that is related to celebrity-branded products, but they are surely a growing part of the specialty food business.

"It's a time when people are looking for that seal of quality from chefs they know," Kramer said. "Especially in these economic times, people are eating more at home, but they'll treat themselves to a great sauce, say."

Selling worldwide

Bob Passarelli has been cooking in the Triangle for decades and likes to joke that he was the chef for every state governor named Jim.

About three years ago, he began selling an espresso rub for use on steaks, seafood and other items.

Since then he's added a few more products, including a decaf version of his espresso rub. He sells them online through his website, http:// chefbobbybuzz .com . Over the years, he's sent orders all over the world, including to Germany, Canada, France and England.

"My biggest fear, honestly, is to go to my Paypal account or my e-mail and have an order for 1,000 of something. I have a couple hundred of all the items here, but I'd have to go back to my packer."

Business is up at Bobbees Bottling in Louisburg, a company that handles the bottling of products for people in states all over the East Coast.

Jack Pyritz owns the business with his wife, Patty, and said the company has done 100 new product launches this year, significantly up from previous years. The growth comes from a hodgepodge of customers looking to cash in on their specialties.

"I have caterers and chefs and retail stores direct and entrepreneurs," he said. "Some of these folks are retired and they buy two or three batches a year, and some of them are million-bottle customers."

Not all fun and games

Still, selling your own products is a lot harder than bottling up some sauce and slapping a label on it, said Sara Foster, of Foster's Market in Durham. Foster has a number of gourmet food products and cookbooks with her name on them, including her most popular product - a seven-pepper jelly.

"It's kind of been a frustrating road for me," Foster said. "We don't make our own products because we don't have the facility and we're too busy. ... It's really difficult to find a co-packer. They're either too large or too small. Lots of them won't do a run unless you need 10,000 cases."

It's been about 10 years since Foster started selling her own products, both in stores and at www .fostersmarket .com . While she said she likes the ones she offers, she has held off on adding more.

"I wanted to do a whole line, but I've kind of put it on the back burner," she said. "I haven't given up. I would love to do a line of 20 products, and I already know what products I want to do."

There's also more red tape involved with a mass-produced product, said Ron Salerno, executive chef at the Crabtree Marriott, who has been bottling and selling his barbecue spice rub and two barbecue sauces. The products are sold in the hotel gift shop, used in the hotel kitchen and given away to VIPs as gifts.

"It probably took us about six months to get all of the paperwork done," he said. "We had to go through a lot of legal things, especially since we used the Marriott name. All of the products need to be tested to make sure it's safe."

And, once all of that legwork is done, it's tough to know whether there's actually money to be made, said Smith , who is in the final stages of planning his sangria launch.

"It's nowhere as lucrative as I thought it could be," he said. "Just to produce the wine is only about $1.50. But when you put the bottle and the label and the cap all together, you've got another $1.50 in there.

"The winery needs to get their cut, too," he added. "Our business needs to get their cut. I have to pay an accountant. I had to pay a lawyer to set up the LLC. Then the retail end has to get their cut and there's taxes. These days it's really hard to make money on anything unless you're doing a whole lot of it."

Finding a niche

But the addition of new products may have additional benefits even if they are not direct profits, industry analyst Mandeltort said.

"This is another way for chefs to reach out to their heavy users and get them to bring it outside the four walls," he said. "We see this mentality with takeout. If a standard meal takes 90 minutes at a casual dining place, but if you can get people to come in and pick things up and take them out, you can keep the back of the house cranking."

And, there's always that outside chance that some product will be found by the right person.

"Sometimes [chefs] enter these things in contests or fairs, you put it up on your website that it's award-winning, and some goofball like me is surfing the Web and finds it and orders a jar," Mandeltort said. "And then all of the sudden you get an order for 1,000."

And if that happens, Sara Foster said she's got a plan: "open a canning facility."