a new beginning?
It has been three years and fifteen days since we launched overnight this crazy jam business. (All the background info is on our website below for those of you who don’t know much about us). The original plan back then was to keep ourselves very hidden and private and interaction from our site just to email due to our limited time. We had a policy never to have our photos taken, and even thought of posting one photo of the two of us with wigs and huge sunglasses incognito.
Flash forward three years and we have become more public. One of us, Eric, has become visible doing farmers’ markets and supermarket demos, and is full time with this venture. Phineas, the other half of this duo, has an incredibly demanding full-time job and is rarely seen. He is the silent partner who does extraordinary things behind the scenes.
It is our goal here to offer more in depth postings about what we learn day by day running a food businesses and being surrounded with all elements of food basically 24/7. We hope this area can spark friendships and discussions between our customers locally and nationally who mostly don’t know each other. And since we come into contact with so many people who have so much to offer, some postings will be sparked by what they share with us.
For example, I (Eric) do demos most weekdays in supermarkets and just last week at the Los Gatos Whole Foods met an extraordinary bunch. Most knew what Blenheim apricots were and had personal stories of working on local orchards as kids pitting them (or cutting cots which is the local lingo). They all bemoaned how these orchards have virtually disappeared. We have one customer who lives in San Jose who is in her 80s and told us back when she was in her 20s, she could drive through what is now called Silicon Valley with the windows rolled down in the summer and the air was thick with the smell of ripening apricots.
an old abandoned farm house in Gilroy
Then there was the woman who told me about a secret apricot orchard up in the west San Jose Hills owned by an old timer who no longer could pick all the fruit and I should contact him. She gave me detailed directions and I am just waiting for some free time to go and knock on his door to see if we could help. Many of our customers want fresh apricots in the summer and if they could pick them off his trees that would solve everything. I was told a few months back about a similar story up in the Saratoga hills but had no luck getting in touch with anyone.
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I learned from another customer about a Chinese Cultural park her parents created in San Jose I never heard of.
Chinese Cultural Garden
Then there was the fellow who had a former student who was starting a food business and wanted advice. I felt like saying: ‘Stay away!’ But I was nice and answered all his questions. Then he asked what I would say to this women. And this is what I will tell anyone:
Starting our own business is what many of us dream about. You are the boss, get to do what you want and have bragging rights when you are at dinner parties. But on the flip side after you get into your own business you realize that it assumes a life all of its own, and that you become more a slave to it than you ever dreamed. Why? Well if you are small like us and do everything, and are in sales, everything is customer driven. Sure you want to hang out with friends Friday night, but instead you get a big order for bbq sauce and have to drop everything to make it. And don’t even mention summer vacation to us. We work basically 24/7 from July through September making the apricot and plum jams. It takes several months to recover. Phineas also uses up all his yearly vacation to take the time off to help leaving him exhausted and with absolutely no vacation off from work for the rest of the year.
The two of us have pretty much resigned ourselves to devoting all our time to this venture. It is incredibly demanding emotionally, physically and financially – especially since we had to build from scratch a commercial kitchen which was definitely not cheap. A good comparison of how we feel would be if you got laid off, had quadruplets, just started building two houses, had all your in laws move in and started training for a triathlon all at the same time. Maybe throw in a tornado knocking over one house and breaking a leg for emphasis and you can get a feel for our daily lives.
Another analogy that makes me feel better sometimes is to call all of this just one big adventure. Where every day brings surprises, new people and new things to learn. So in that light, yes, this is very exciting. And meeting our customers who are so sweet, appreciative and full of compliments really makes us feel maybe we made the right decision to drop everything for this venture. But then I am the crazy person who loves taking huge risks and despite my complaints of always being stressed out and broke, secretly this is just one fun roller coaster ride with no end in sight. If this sounds like you, then welcome to the club and jump right into adventures in jam. Of course you can live vicariously from the safety of your computer. That is what I recommend.
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