In fact, they agreed to co-brand the product.  We would enroll in their private label program, which generates many of The Fresh Market’s labeled products, but still carry our name on the bottle as well.  It is such a blessing to have this kind of exposure with such a prestigious store.  We are truly gracious for this great opportunity. (If you’re not familiar with The Fresh Market, I urge you to, at a minimum, visit their site and learn more about them.  Better yet, find a store near you and visit them for the total experience.)

And the news got even better.  As an added bonus from our cutting, we discovered that the Meat and Seafood department was interested in our sauce as their new teriyaki marinade.  This was a development we had not foreseen.  Basically, the butcher department superbly offers marinated meats, like chicken and steak, ready for purchase — for us it could mean chicken breasts and/ or kabobs. This meant we would need to produce the sauce in gallon-size containers in addition to our retail bottle.

So we had to start down a new path of learning how to produce and pack our sauce in gallon-size containers.  While we had toyed with the idea of somehow finding a kitchen and producing the sauce ourselves, it was becoming clear that it was time to find some help.  The next step was to begin looking for a “co-packer”, that is, someone who could take our recipe, mass produce it, and bottle and ship it to our new customer.

Let me tell you, that was quite a process….

Everyone began to sample, choosing their favorite foods.  There were lots of good questions and lots of good feedback.  Many commented on the smoky and sweet flavor of our sauce that makes it so unique.  We discussed other foods that it might be good on, including some I had never tried.  But then, that’s why these guys are highly successful “in the business”.  We also discussed other products we could produce as derivative products.  A glaze was one that really piqued our interest.  We had made a family “gravy” in the past by thickening the sauce with a rue, which works quite nicely on other food items that don’t allow the sauce to penetrate (so, more like a thicker sauce topping).

Another great idea was a low sodium version.  While our teriyaki sauce has no more sodium than any other soy sauce based product, it is, by its very nature, a little high in sodium for some that need to monitor their intake for medical reasons.

All in all, I’d say it went well.  We got some really great feedback and ideas and, most importantly, the top brass found no “show stopping” reasons not to proceed.  So on we went.

Next post:  we announce our deal and the grocery chain that would become the first home for Truly Hawaiian Teriyaki sauce.

They say He works in mysterious ways.  We truly feel that the path we were on now truly had some Divine intervention.  How else would someone like this be put in our path without the Lord’s help?

In early March of 2009, I made my first of many visits to their office.  It took all of 30 seconds to hand a bottle over to him and say, “I hope you enjoy it!”  A few days later, I got the call.  He said they tried it on Buffalo steaks!  I would have never thought of that!  But the bottom line was they loved it.  They wanted to know more, to taste more, and most importantly, to work with us on our Teriyaki Sauce.

We exchange phone calls, emails, and brief conversations on the soccer field until finally around the first of April we met in their offices with their food broker, the man who would hold our hand through this entire process.  It was a great first meeting.  They began turning on the “fire hose of knowledge” regarding the food industry.  I must say I was bit overwhelmed, but taking it all in.  I love to be challenged and I knew this was going to be the challenge of a lifetime!

The next step was to setup a “cutting”, which basically means a taste-testing in layman’s terms.  They wanted all the corporate principals that would be involved in developing this product for their store.  Of course we love to entertain, so my wife and I set right out to plan this event with all of the enthusiasm that had been building up for weeks.

The date was set for April 10, 2009.  We’d bring the food, they’d bring the food selling know how.

In my next post, you’ll find out exactly how it went.

One close friend suggested we offer a free taste test at the local elementary school for the teachers.  So we arranged with the principal to offer Teriyaki Chicken and Rice as a free sample to the teachers.  We really only planned to generate some interest and then maybe later try and see if anyone was interested in purchasing.

After the first 20 minutes or so, we looked up from serving to notice someone had started a sign up list… WITH ORDERS!  We walked out that day with 30 teachers and staff kindly ordering over 40 bottles!

Great! Wait, we only have 28 bottles left!  So it was back to the bottle supplier to order more bottles.  All in all, some had to briefly wait but we got all the orders filled and by the time the other bottles had arrived, we already had re-orders from the teachers.

During all this, we continued to field inquires and fill orders from friends and friends of friends.  It was truly starting to go viral in a small local way.

It was around this time we truly (no pun intended) we got our first big break.  It seems that my son played on a soccer team with another child whose dad just happened to work for a large chain of grocery stores.  We really didn’t even know what he did for the store at the time.  But we chatted about our family Teriyaki Sauce recipe and how we had decided to start selling it.  He was interested.

It turns out he was a decision maker at the corporate level.  So, we began talking and well, he wanted to test it out for himself.  And that’s when it got really interesting.

But we’ll talk more about that in the next post.