Whether it's a hot sauce, pickle relish or spicy mustar -- Blue Ridge Food Ventures in Asheville is helping food entrepreneurs realize their dream of starting their own business. Since opening its doors in 2005 Blue Ridge has helped nearly 170 businesses get off the ground.
In another installment of our NC Rising series, Christine Rogers traveled to Buncombe County to see how this incubator is nourishing agribusiness in North Carolina.
Visit Blue Ridge Food Ventures most any day of the week and you will find the 11,000 square foot commercial kitchen buzzing with activity. Located on the Asheville Buncombe Technical Community College campus, Blue Ridge is helping dreams come true for budding entrepreneurs.
"Well the official name is actually a shared use value added food processing center," says Mary Lou Surgi, Blue Ridge Food Ventures Executive Director. "We don't say that very often we call ourselves a kitchen incubator or food business incubator. We grow small food businesses."
Erhard Schoeffmann is hoping to bring a little of his native Germany to western North Carolina. "I was setting out to recreate the taste from my childhood," he says as he was making Bavarian style pretzels. "This place is great it has a mixer and an oven and a table and that's pretty much all I need."
Blue Ridge Food Ventures provided Erhard with a place to try his business without a big financial investment. "I mean this is great because it's pretty low risk you start from zero."
Surgi says Blue Ridge is able to lower the cost of failure. "We give people an opportunity to try out their dream. They've always wanted to make their Grandma's pickle relish or hot sauce, but if you start looking at equipping your own kitchen you're putting one hundred, two hundred thousand dollars just to get the facility to try and see if anybody wants to buy your product."
Leslie Suber uses Blue Ridge to make Sadie's fishcakes. Sadie is her mom, the person who taught her the family recipe. "Blue Ridge has been absolutely immeasurably valuable in getting my business going," she says. "I couldn't have done it without this commercial kitchen."
Once a real estate paralegal Leslie Suber moved from New York to Charlotte in 2007. "Unfortunately soon after I got to Charlotte I got laid off. I've always wanted to start my own business just focusing on what I'm really good a--the first thing I could think of was this food product that my family has made for years and years."
While she always had thoughts of starting her own business, Leslie admits it felt a little like jumping in the deep end of the pool without knowing how to swim. "It was extremely frightening I have never been more scared."
Leslie's friend Olive Stewart, who is also from Charlotte, didn't share the same apprehension. "I was always an entrepreneur by heart I'm like the little kid you saw on the corner selling lemonade. I had always been an entrepreneur."
Olive was an insurance claims adjuster for nearly 20 year--like Leslie she was laid off. That's when she decided to make her part time Bushelle's Seasonings business a full time job. "In corporate America you know exactly what you're going to do, but I just love the fact that every day brings something new for me. I love being an entrepreneur. I marvel at the fact a year later we're still in our house, food, not struggling and that's all just my faith."
Stewart says with faith you have to have action and commitment, something Surgi says is essential for entrepreneurs to succeed. "We want it to be a true business," she says. "It's not a hobby, it's not just because everybody loved grandma's pickle relish. In order to really make it a successful business you've got to put aside the emotional attachment."
Out of every 100 people who approach Blue Ridge with product ideas, Surgi says only about ten actually end up in business. While the odds are tough there are plenty of success stories. Take for example Buchi, the kombucha beverage maker. Kombucha is an ancient fermented beverage that originated in the Far East and traveled thru Russia and the spice trade.
"It was quite an adventure," says Buchi co-owner Sarah Schomber. "My business partner and I didn't know each other and we dove in and started doing this together in her kitchen."
When Sarah and her partner outgrew the home kitchen they ended up at Blue Ridg--but just a year later they moved into a nearly 7,000 square foot production facility. "I don't think we would really be where we are here now in this space without Blue Ridge Food Ventures," says Schomber. "It would have been too big of a leap."
With no experience as entrepreneurs Sarah and Jeannine Buscher say Blue Ridge provided them guidance and marketing advice to help grow their business.
“The demand has been really, really great," says Busher. "We're just trying to fill the need and expand at a sustainable rate."
If Blue Ridge food entrepreneurs have anything in common it's the joy and pride they take in owning their own business.
"It's definitely more fun to work for yourself," laughs Erhard. "And it beats staring at a computer screen for 10 hours a day which is what I did before."
While they start small, Blue Ridge encourages clients to think big. Leslie Suber hopes in five years she will have her own manufacturing facility and at least two or three different products under the Sadie's name.
Her friend Olive also hopes to outgrow Blue Ridge. "I would like my own facility and employ people and give back to the community, that's where I would like to be in the future."
This was the first food incubator in North Carolina. Several others have since been created across the state and Mary Lou Surgi sees that as a good sign of the possibilities of nurturing homegrown businesses. "For the economy of North Carolina having a network of resources in place that people can go to get help with the marketing of agricultural products or creating a business I think it's really important we expand across the state."
Entrepreneurs who use Blue Ridge Food Ventures rent out the kitchen on an hourly basis. Currently it has 60 businesses that operate at the facility on a regular basis with some of the products found in stores from California to Florida. Reported sales exceed 3 million since 2005.
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