R & D

Hi Everybody,

Over the past few weeks, I've done some cost research on hummus ingredients, ranging from chickpeas to tahini to my super-top-secret specialty ingredients (not really that secret - spices like cumin, paprika, etc.). Given the nascent character of my operation so far, my suppliers would have to be retail stores to begin with. My initial research was at Shaw's (Porter Square) and Foodmaster (Route 16 and Broadway), where I expected I would find overpriced-by-volume versions of everything I needed. I actually thought Foodmaster would be the cheaper option, given its seedy atmosphere and general slumminess; however, Shaw's proved to be the better value across almost all categories - they also had a lot better variety and more niche products to choose from. Still, although accessible and able to be a one-stop shop, Shaw's still had prices that would make this a more expensive operation that it needs to be (however, they did have dry chickpeas at seemingly low cost - I'll have to project the equivalent value from canned chickpeas to see if this is a worthwhile option - and of course I'll have to factor in time to hydrate). Fortunately, Mom and Dad gave me the greatest gift any parent could give their child: a Costco membership. OK, maybe it doesn't rank as high as a college education, but it sure is sweet. After a rather sketchy bike ride down Route 16 past Wellington, I found that Costco had the best value on most ingredients, usually beating Shaw's by 40-75%. Obviously one would have to buy in bulk, but in reality the quantities were quite reasonable and I intend to crank through them rapidly anyways!

Following my week of supply research, last weekend I took a nice trip to Vermont with some friends. Between sampling delicious local craft brews (Vermont Brewers Festival) and dunking myself in Lake Champlain, I did some number-crunching with the figures I collected from the suppliers to determine how much it would really cost to create batches of hummus suitable for resale (IE consumer-sized packages). I was quite pleased to find out that the cost-per-pound would be pretty reasonable for a small operation. Transposing those numbers over to what a retail shop would charge to be competitive with existing brands, I found that I could potentially sell to stores at a decent margin. Of course the volume levels would have to be somewhat substantial to realize a good cash flow from the operation; however, I believe I underestimated my production capacity during my initial analysis.

This weekend, I finally got back on the horse and started experimenting with recipes again. While I adjusted ingredient quantities, I also gauged the speed and efficiency at which I could produce. Although I faced two tough obstacles at the outset (molded garlic cloves - humidity; and a broken Cuisinart), I realized that I can crank out over two pounds of hummus in less than 10 minutes. At twelve pounds an hour, that means I could produce 96 pounds of hummus in a standard day's work. If I were to be packaging in 8-ounce containers, that equates to 192 individual packages ready for consumption. Now of course, I haven't gotten to the packaging stage in my research yet, so I'm sure that number would drop down once one factors in time and effort to put product into packaging, seal, label, store, etc. However, this is far beyond what I was expecting capacity-wise, and an encouraging finding.

Over the next few weeks, I will most likely continue to experiment with the ingredient balance of the basic version of the product; my roommate and I (and our soon-to-be third roommate) continue to search for a new place to live, so I may have to scale things back further until we figure that out. However, I do know that we need to find a place with a kitchen that would work!

Happy end-of-July.

Steve

Kitchen Prep

Hi All,

Yesterday I finally put pen to paper the capture some of the thoughts I've been having on starting a company. Of course it’s always (and yes, I mean always) too early to tell where a venture is going to go, but it seems like my first foray will be unexpectedly into the food industry.

You see, I have a thing for hummus. That fact in itself is nothing out of the ordinary. It is a delicious and nutritious food that millions of people worldwide love to eat. It has become arguably more popular than ever as a healthy alternative to the heavy meat and dairy staples of the American diet.

However, being the do-it-yourself, autocratic perfectionist that I am, of course I thought I could make hummus that tasted even better than what I bought at the store. So I dusted off the old food processor and gathered the requisite ingredients a while back and set out to craft my own blend. The first thing I noticed was that like with store-bought hummus, I tended to plow right through every batch in about one sitting (probably negating any good nutritional value of the food by overloading on it – trust me, I’m working on getting better with this).

So I had the nascent idea that I was going to have to increase the scale of my operation - this thought happened months before I even considered producing hummus for a consumer base larger than my own stomach, and certainly long before I thought that this could actually be a profitable endeavor.

I experimented with a few semi-traditional ingredients over the next several months to see how combining various palate-pleasing tastes would turn out. Being an avid Mexican food fan, my first inclination was to incorporate other bean varieties to the chickpea/garbanzo base. This worked well, so I moved on to peppers to see what they had to add to the mix. After a few teary-eyed attempts (not heart-warming, but rather heartburning), I settled on a few selections that would round out but not overpower the flavor. I stopped here, and let it be while I focused on some other things in my “real job” and the rest of life.

On June 9^th, I stopped into a great local deli/pasta shop/independent and local food retailer to grab a sandwich for lunch. While waiting for my order, I perused the refrigerated section where they keep some of their tastier and fresher treats and noticed that hummus was conspicuously absent from the shelves there. Perhaps they stored it elsewhere, but I got thinking – do they need this void to be filled? Are other places like this looking for the type of product that I could offer?

The first thing I did was not to rush home and make a sample batch; nor was it to immediately build a business model. To keep my imagination in check, I went straight to the Massachusetts government website to see how many barriers to the free market the Commonwealth could put in my path. And to my surprise, there did not appear to be that many. The code was relatively easy to navigate and for the most part intelligible to the layperson.

Knowing now that there may be space in the market (and in the eyes of the government) for a hummus-producing operation, I started looking around at potential suppliers (aka supermarkets). With a list of supplies in hand, I jotted down the per-unit costs to see if the ingredients I’ve been using were cost-effective compared to other options.

And that’s where I’m going to leave off for now, because that is as far as I got. I’ll check back in soon, but I’ll leave you with some “food” for thought:

While writing, I asked myself the question: why am I blogging about this? Well, It’s marketing. It’s a way for me to wrap my head around what is really going on in this process by forcing myself to recount the experience. It’s a way for me to share the story with people who want to know about it. It’s a way for me to share the story with people whom I want to know about it. And finally, I hope it is a way to promote this so that we can share a plate of hummus together sometime.