Farm-To-Fork with Deja Moo
This article is part of a series of briefs that I wrote documenting Bon Appétit Management Company's Farm-To-Fork program.
Deja Moo – Bon Appétit Farm Brief
When Jim Odney dissolved the Schultz Creamery in Bismarck, North Dakota in the fall of 2004, he had come to accept the fact that it was nearly impossible for small dairies to exist in the modern dairy market. He had established Schultz Creamery as a thriving, innovative, small dairy only to see his customer base disappear virtually overnight. “Basically, the large dairy conglomerates bought up all of my shelf space” he explains. “Without anywhere to sell our product we were dead in the water. I came to the realization that a small dairy’s only chance for survival in the modern market would be to create a product based on the principles of quality, taste, and respect for the cows that produce the milk.”
The modern dairy industry has staked its future on developing methodologies and technologies for producing the maximum amount of milk in the shortest time possible. Thus, most dairies employ hormones, especially rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone), to stimulate milk production in their cows, and they process their milk at high temperatures in order to cut processing time to a minimum. Although this production method is highly cost effective, it robs the resultant milk of a great deal of its nutritional value and sacrifices the fresh taste that is prevalent in less processed milk. As a result of the industry’s steadfast focus on finding production efficiencies, the modern milk supply has become more plentiful, less flavorful, and less healthful.
In January of 2005, Odney decided to revive his dairy and to market Deja Moo, a milk that is free of both antibiotics and hormones. While most large dairies have a small line of hormone-free offerings, Odney’s entire product line would be hormone-free. He would also make maximizing the fresh taste and healthfulness of his milk the foundation of his new dairy’s culture. Contrary to conventional business principles, he would use cold separation technology to allow him to process his milk at colder temperatures in order to preserve its fresh taste. Since he would be at a major competitive disadvantage, he knew that he would have to forge partnerships with discerning customers who could not only respect the principles upon which his product was built but who could also buy large volumes of his product.
“When I was writing our business plan I knew that I needed some concrete prospects and projections to get the necessary financing to reopen the plant,” Odney explains. “After discovering Bon Appétit and the Farm To Fork program, I realized that they represented our best chance for success.”
Odney contacted Bon Appétit and began working with David Toay, Regional Vice President for the Midwest. After meeting with Toay and a team of Bon Appétit chefs, Odney secured a commitment to provide Deja Moo milk to over twenty Bon Appétit accounts, which served as the basis for securing the funding necessary to reopen the plant. “Essentially, Bon Appétit’s commitment to sourcing hormone-free milk and to supporting family farmers made this whole deal happen,” Odney says, “Without Farm To Fork there would be no Deja Moo.”
The dairy reopened in February of 2005 and began shipping milk immediately. So far, the collaboration has been wildly successful. “Deja Moo has really struck a chord amongst our customers,” says Bon Appétit’s Donald Holmblad, Executive Chef of Sandy’s Place at Best Buy Corporate Headquarters in Richfield, Minnesota. “Many of them have commented that they have never tasted such good milk. Our customers have really connected with the Deja Moo brand.” Odney says that Bon Appétit currently accounts for over 90% of his sales, “Without a doubt, they have been the most solid piece of my business.”
Bon Appétit is currently utilizing Deja Moo milk not only in culinary applications and in its beverage services, but is also selling it as a bottled item in its beverage coolers. “We are committed to using Deja Moo everywhere possible,” says David Toay, “we are also committed to expanding our use of hormone-free dairy products and we hope that Deja Moo can provide us with more of these products as well.”
For Odney and Deja Moo, working with Bon Appétit provides not only a much-needed flow of revenue, but also a proof of concept that can be leveraged to create other business opportunities, especially in the retail arena. “My work with Bon Appétit has brought Deja Moo into the kitchens of many of the most respected corporations and universities in our region,” Odney explains. “We lost our business the first time because retailers did not believe in the viability of the hormone-free concept. Now, when retailers ask me where our milk is being sold, I can tell them that we are in the corporate offices of Target, Best Buy, and the Carlson Companies. This has forced our region’s retailers to take our business seriously and this is changing the tide for us. If we can crack the retail market, it will be because Bon Appétit made the opportunity for us.”
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Farm-To-Fork with Omega Farm
This article is part of a series that I wrote documenting Bon Appétit Management Company's Farm-To-Fork program.
Omega Farm – Bon Appétit Farm Brief
In the late summer of 2003, Peter Kaseburg of the Omega Farm found himself in a precarious position. He had just completed the arduous, three-year process of organically certifying his Ridgefield, Washington pear farm and was trying to sell his crop at the Saturday Portland Farmer’s Market. Unfortunately, sales were slower than expected and he began to wonder if his decision to go organic had been a flawed one. “For a time there, I thought I might have to pull out some of my trees and try farming something else,” he explains.
As a supplier of pears for a local cannery, Peter was required to grow the perfect-looking pears, free of blemishes and uniform in size. This methodology required the use of a wide array of man-made fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and fungicides, and placed little emphasis on the flavor of the pears. Cannery prices hadn’t risen significantly since he began growing pears in 1977. By 1999, Peter was paying more for chemicals than he was receiving for selling his crop. Thus, he refocused his efforts, committing himself to growing perfect-tasting pears organically, without the use of any man made agricultural materials. He would abandon his relationship with the cannery, and the guarantee that it would buy his entire crop, choosing, instead, to sell his crop himself.
After a few weeks of selling at the Farmer’s Market, Peter met Sam Currie, a district manager for Bon Appétit, who was impressed with the excellent flavor and texture of Kaseburg’s pears. “Sam put me in contact with some of the local Bon Appétit executive chefs and I began delivering to five of their accounts later that week.” The addition of the Bon Appétit accounts eliminated the risk of Peter’s potential oversupply problem in short order. However, it also introduced some significant logistical challenges. Since the accounts were spread across a relatively wide geographical area, the time required to drive to all of the accounts to make deliveries was nearly prohibitive. Despite the fact that these new accounts were essential to his business’ success, Peter was in the position of having to turn them down because he lacked the time to make all of the deliveries himself.
Fortunately, Richard Calbow, a general manager for Bon Appétit arrived at a solution to Peter’s distribution dilemma; Peter could deliver his pears to one account and Richard would distribute them to the other accounts. “These farmers have so many other things to do, so I try to help where I can,” Richard explains. “The last thing Peter has time to do is drive boxes of pears all over Portland. I visit these accounts on a daily basis anyway, so I figured I could save him a lot of time, money, and gas.” To Peter, the collaborative spirit between Bon Appétit and its farmers represents the quintessence of the Farm to Fork program.
Peter has been moved by how serious Bon Appétit chefs take their sourcing and how much they respect farmers. “They are really good people,” he explains “even when the kitchen is absolutely crazy, the chefs always take time to talk to me.” His relationship with Bon Appétit has been a symbiotic one. Peter leverages his deep knowledge of pears to provide Bon Appétit chefs with the ideal pears for their gastronomic creations. “It is a truly unique situation,” he explains. “The chefs can tell me how they want to use my pears and I work to bring each delivery to the exact degree of ripeness to fit their needs.” Thus, Peter is delivering perfectly-ripened pears to his chefs allowing them to deliver the perfect meal to their customers.
For Peter Kaseburg and Omega Farm, working with Bon Appétit through the Farm To Fork Program has been both an economically essential exchange and a growth experience that has allowed him to excel at his craft. The relationship has been marked both by Bon Appétit’s respect for small farmers and their efforts to facilitate doing business with them. “They are my best and biggest customer and they now make up about one third of my business,” he states. “I can’t think of another company that would help distribute their suppliers products; their level of commitment to sourcing products directly from farmers is unbelievable. Working with Bon Appétit has solved a lot of problems for me.” His alignment with Bon Appétit has helped Peter develop business in other arenas as well. “I am unabashedly proud to be a part of Bon Appétit’s family of farmers,” he says. “When I meet with a potential customer and make the claim that my pears are indeed first class and warrant their serious consideration, my position is greatly legitimized by that fact that I grow pears for Bon Appétit. I like to brag about that.”
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Preamble From My New Book "Love At First Crush: Four Years In The Olive Groves"
How did I come to this point? How do I get there, the place from whence I last came, to here, the place from where I am now writing? I will give you the brief answer first.
Begin by saving the current document on the laptop. Slide the chair back from the desk and turn off the light. Deftly make your way out of the poorly lit, ramshackle garage at 1815 Wood Street, Alameda, Ca. 94501 making sure not to step on any of the rakes or shovels that lie pell-mell near the doorway. Leave the backyard by the side entrance, making certain that you latch the gate behind you, and proceed to the car. Fasten your seatbelt and exit the driveway following Wood Street to Buena Vista Avenue. Take a right on Buena Vista and head to Constitution. Take a right on Constitution and follow Constitution through the Posie Tunnel into Oakland. Follow the signs to San Francisco on I-880 until you see the ones pointing to Sacramento. Follow I-80 past Emeryville and its magnificent Ikea, home of $1.50 breakfasts, Swedish Meatballs, and furniture made from materials that are more akin to papyrus than they are wood. As you drive past Berkeley heading north look to the right for the Campanile at UC Berkeley and savor its view.
Follow 80 past Golden Gate Fields to 505. Follow 505 to I-5 and head north toward Mt. Shasta. Be careful to negotiate the College City turn correctly lest you breathe your last breath at Arbuckle. You are now in the heart of the magnificent, fertile upper Sacramento Valley. Notice the vast breadth of the valley. {If you can time your trip right, try to catch either the sunrise or the sunset as you make your anabasis as this is truly one of the most powerful sensory experiences to which you can be privy in this region.}
Follow I-5 north past Grimes, Williams, Willows, Artois (which I have always mythologized as the Frankish center of the north state complete with its miniature Eiffel Tower), Orland, and Corning, the self-proclaimed “Olive Capital Of The World.” Take the Gyle Road exit and head east toward Tehama taking a right on Truckee Ave. Follow Truckee avenue until it doglegs to the right.
You are now on Gerber Road. You will pass some young walnuts on the left which were planted by my friend and former colleague Brendon Flynn followed by older prunes which were planted by his father Vince. The house on the right with all of the floppy-eared, boer goats, which fetch prices exceeding $150/head and are often served at banquets, weddings and quinceniaras, is owned by Pomposo Vasquez, I worked with him too. Keep your eyes open for a sign on the left that reads “Pacific Farms and Orchards” and turn left into that driveway. You are there.
Take a look around you. If you stay here long enough, you will experience a level of beauty that may often shock you. You will see fantastic and puzzling signs leading to points unknown. Once, while driving down Truckee Ave., I saw a hawk scoop up a rattlesnake from a ditch by the side of the road. I was still shaking my head in disbelief of this omen when I witnessed another hawk snatch another snake from a ditch on the other side of the road. I laughed as I recalled that the Roman historian Livy had recorded that such a portent foretold of great victories to come. I was anxious to taste those victories.
If you ever find yourself here in the middle of the night, take a walk out into the middle of the orchards and look up at the stars. Also, take time to notice the deafening silence. Drive down the levies on the first sunny day after a storm and marvel at the saturation of the bright, blue sky and the crispness of the mountains on either side of the valley. Make sure to look north to the towering mass that is Mt. Shasta and east to Mt. Lassen and the remains of Mt. Tehama. Days like this are the reason why some many local streets and schools are named Shasta View and Lassen View.
If you stay up here long enough, and if you think like me, you will eventually feel wonder at the fact that such a wide-open area can feel so closed. You might feel breathless at times because the weight of the place seems to carry you down. You might feel shut out of the thought process or locked out of the inner sanctum. You may notice open doors that lead to open eyes leading to closed minds. Sometimes you might feel as though you are living at the end of the world. The fact that over a million cars a week drive right through the middle of it might make you feel lonely, or trapped. You may notice a profusion of bumper stickers that might threaten your sensibilities; the provocative confederate flag, the puzzling “Redneck and Proud,” the bellicose “You Can Take My Gun When You Pry It From My Cold Dead Fingers,” the innocuous “Git Er Done.” At times you might find it difficult to keep your mouth closed as your jaw drops to the floor. Just remember, never go to Walmart under the influence of illicit substances and never assume that everybody has a sense of humor and can take a little “good-natured” ribbing.
Please realize that these less savory facets of life are frequently endemic to rural America. Take time to meet the people. Get to know as many of them as possible. Talk to them. Engage with them. Become friends with them. They are beautiful people. They are the salt of the earth.
As you make you way up the driveway at the farm, the first shop building that you will see houses the Olive Oil mill. The project that Brendon and I started, Pacific Sun Olive Oil, was responsible for this building. In a very real sense, Brendon and I built this building. Although the farm paid for it, and other people constructed it, we built the entity that justified the capital investment in the building and the equipment that it houses. We helped pour the concrete foundation with many of the other men on the farm and we made oil in that building that won awards and was served in some of the finest restaurants in the country. Brendon had the idea and the two of us made it happen.
The second shop building that you see, the one with the American flag flying proudly before it, is the main office and shop building. This is the nerve center of the farm where all of the business decisions are finalized and where all of the day-to-day work necessary to manage a diversified agricultural operation happens.
In four short years, Brendon and I went from writing a business plan to sell California Extra Virgin Olive Oil, to making olive oil for some of the more influential players in the California market and for some of the most esteemed chefs in the country. We worked hard, we worked fast, and we cared deeply about the work. For better or worse, my work at the farm became the focus of my life for those years. It was my crusade; complete with its own set of victories, pyrrhic and otherwise, its own failures, and its own losses. Many of the defining moments of my life happened during my tenure at Pacific Farms and Pacific Sun.
Do I miss the farm? Absolutely. Do I miss the responsibilities of raising a crop and turning it into a world-class, artisinal project? Indeed. What do I miss most about that life? Other than the people with whom I was fortunate to work, I miss the fact that every moment spent on the farm seemed to count. Every decision seemed to have some immediacy to it. Every task seemed fundamental.
People often consider the farmer’s life to be slow and methodical. My experience was the opposite, fast and improvised. I never studied agriculture in school but I made a concerted effort to be a student every day I spent on the farm. I was a manager, so I took it upon myself to learn how to drive as much of the equipment as possible and to understand how everything worked. I wanted to understand it all on a theoretical level in case I ever needed to understand it in a practical manner.
Although I was titled “Sales and Marketing Manager” I felt that the best way to sell a product was to make it and to know everything about it. Since I never knew what was going to be the most important thing to know or say or do in the sales and marketing part of my job, I chose to master the production part of my job in order that I would never be in want of an answer. I did my work on the farm and I followed the signs in the marketplace.
Brendon often said that I moved with my eyes open, playing the field like a child plays the “WACK-A-MOLE” at Chuck E. Cheese’s; push the buttons, see what pops up, try to hit it, never over-commit one place, watch out of the corner of your eyes, and pounce as soon as the mole starts to emerge toward fluorescent lights and the neon glow. I always enjoyed that description and I strove to turn improvisation into a workable business methodology.
When harvest time would come, the immediacy would become chronic. I often felt like I was riding on a train on one set of tracks with the window open and a football clutched in the hand of my cocked throwing arm waiting for the train to pass on the opposite side of the tracks. When the train would start to pass I would have to find the open window and throw the football through it. If the ball should make it through the window, I might be able to win Gold Medals, accolades, press coverage, respect and bragging rights. If it were to bounce out or miss the mark entirely, I would get to think about it until the next harvest, which would be one year away, and would have to listen as people told me that my silver medals meant that my product was inferior to the gold medal ones.
However, none of that really mattered while it was all happening. The palpable chill of the dense late-fall, winter, and early-spring air and the attempts to fend it off with Winchell’s coffee while watching the sunrise over the valley provided one half of the bookends that encased the frenetic process of harvesting and milling fresh olives. The glorious sunsets, with their red, orange, yellow, and white overtones spilling over the Yolla Bolly mountains and swirling into the cobalt blue sky provided the other half and encapsulated the arduous days in a sort of cosmic wonder that made the next day’s work much less of a daunting chore and sometimes, a welcome treat.
The dust, sweat, and exhaustion of harvesting the olives was coupled with the pleasant tedium of operating a forklift to load and unload them and driving a truck and a trailer to haul them over rough, scenic, country back roads. There was mariachi music on the radio to dull the ever-present fear of a blowout, a tie-down malfunction, or some other kind of logistical calamity. There were impromptu labor disputes that had to be negotiated in broken Spanish in the fading light of day. Sometimes knives would have to be sheathed with the assistance of a case of frosty Bud Ice, hastily purchased from a nearby convenience store. Trucks would occasionally have to be extracted from the vacuum, red-clay mud by broken shovels or tractors, and those tractors would occasionally get stuck as well, creating a chain of misfortune that could only be broken by a bigger tractor, or an even bigger truck.
All the while, the real work, that of extracting the green or golden oil from the fresh olives was yet to be done. There were an infinite combination of olive varieties, degrees of ripeness, methods of irrigation, and philosophies of optimal extraction with which to contend. Custom milling customers had strong, sometimes mystical, and frequently unsubstantiated, beliefs about how their oil should be made. Mill engineers had the desire to exceed the customer’s expectations, and managers had to watch the bottom line and keep the process moving forward in the best manner possible. Frequently, the sunrise and the sunset simply marked transition points in the day rather than acting as hemeral bookends. Mornings frequently began when late-night carousers were finally finding their sleep and days frequently ended where they began. There were over-deliveries when twelve tons arrived instead of six and under-deliveries when there were no olives or the olives were rotten or otherwise irreparably damaged and unfit for milling. The goal was always to mill the olives as soon as possible after harvest in order to produce the finest oil possible and to keep the mill running as long as possible, since stopping the mill meant cleaning the mill, and cleaning the mill was serious and messy work.
Through it all, the flavor of the olive oil is what ruled the day. The flavor was all that mattered and many nights and mornings, many hours of sleep, and many moments of leisure were sacrificed to make the best tasting olive oil possible.
Frequently, we shipped oil directly from the final stage in the milling process to chefs around the country. This was what made all of the effort worthwhile. This was the grand payoff. Instant Karma. Once you have tasted olive oil that is less than 20 seconds old made from olives that you have picked with your own hands, nothing tastes the same again. It is “Love at First Crush” and it can change you worldview and your purpose in life. At least that is what it did for me.
There is a strange sort of energy that comes from utter exhaustion. It propels you past mental barriers. You know that you can get to some new plateau but you think that you are too tired to do it until you realize that you are already more tired that you thought imaginable, so why not push it a bit farther? Logic is warped by the thought of having your current level of exhaustion and the progress that you have made wiped away by your inability to push the thing over the edge to where it needs to be. You feel like Sisyphus and your desire to break the curse overpowers your desire to call it a day.
This is what propelled me for four years. This is what pushed me through the initial salvo of slings and arrows launched by callous grocery buyers and the incredulous distributors I had to convince to push me past those same callous buyers. Trips were made in the wee, small hours of the night to make early-morning meetings with potentially-willing buyers who decided to take the day off instead. Many times I stood, bleary-eyed, with the BBC cricket highlights still buzzing in my ears, suppressing my anger and politely grasping for the life-line that would allow me to keep my head above the waters of crippling self-doubt long enough to find the exit that might save my trip from being an utter failure.
Sometimes it would mean staying over-night in order to catch the unsuspecting buyer unaware as they entered the building the next morning. Other times it would mean mustering the courage to traverse the stairs leading to the inner-sanctum of the store’s management offices in order to find an assistant manager or some store team-leader with whom I could attempt to strike a chord. I would go to virtually any length to keep the trip from becoming a failure. This was not the stuff of a salaried sales manager, this was the stuff of a true believer.
I quickly graduated from being intimidated by the sales process to endeavoring to persevere in spite of it. I learned that the miserable people in this world are miserable because they need love and they need friends. The power-mongering, condescending tyrants are self-conscious and terrified that someone might find them out and expose the fact that they know that they aren’t nearly as good as the want everybody to think they are. Everybody has their own defense mechanisms and their own way of expressing that transcendent sentiment; “Don’t Tread On Me.”
Over time, I realized that it was easier for me to be kind to the miserable strangers to whom my industry forced to grapple than it was to be giving and conciliatory to the people who really mattered in my life simply because the stakes of operating with miserable strangers were so low. However, I thank the industry for teaching me these lessons, I thank my family and my friends for dealing with my proclivities, and I blame no one for my own shortcomings.
There is a lot of my blood spilled on I-5 between Redding and the San Francisco Bay Area but it never necessitated a transfusion. It simply drove me harder and, in the words of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, ”Furthur” out of a fear that stopping would indicate failure and a pathological belief that failure was not an option.
Bob Dylan once said “There’s no success like failure/and failure’s no success at all.” I will leave the curious to search Dylan’s work for the origin of the quote. After all, this is not a scholarly work so there will be no footnotes. Besides, everybody can learn something from Dylan, this is the essence of his greatness. I pondered this line interminably until life taught me that success leaves one with two choices; to either maintain the same level of success or to enjoy the slump.
Our culture loves to tear down success stories. Once someone wins something allegations of cheating, theft, or blind luck are soon to follow. The winner will be scrutinized and every move that they make will be recorded by those folks who want to debunk the myth of their excellence.
If you ever find yourself in this fortunate position, enjoying the first pangs of fame and notoriety only to resent them later, take heart as you are in esteemed company. This story is meant to illustrate the fact that failures can lead to successes and successes can lead to logical ends. Paths always have a beginning and an end. Zeno postulated that you can never actually get anywhere because you are always getting half-way there. I like to think that, although end points sometimes show themselves when we are not ready to receive them, they always mark the beginning of something new.
Turning again to Bob Dylan: “He not busy being born is busy dying.”
10/07/05 Alameda, Ca.
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