On October 12, 2023, UC Davis food science professors of Cooperative Extension shared their important work. Every delicious jar of pickles you’ve eaten has made it safely from the farm to your kitchen table, thanks to food safety measures. The UC Davis Food Science and Technology professors of Cooperative Extension support food businesses through classes, research, resources, and an open line of communication to food business entrepreneurs, industries, and communities to identify issues and develop innovative solutions.
[MUSIC PLAYING] LINDA HARRIS: There are going to be three of us the cooperative extension specialists or Professors of Cooperative Extension myself, Erin DiCaprio, and Selina Wang. I am the most senior. I started here at UC Davis in 1996, and Erin and Selina have joined the ranks more recently.
But the Department has a long history of working in Cooperative Extension. In the past we’ve had expertise in dairy science, meat and poultry processing, seafood, fruit and vegetable processing, and consumer attitudes and behavior. So we’ve had a long history over more than 50, 60 years of working in this area.
So what is extension? Extension communication which really we are working in the area of communication. And so this quote I attended a lecture just recently that they used this quote to describe extension and I think it fits. The process of extension education is one of working with people, of helping people
To become self-reliant, of making people central actors, providing people with tools that they require to help solve their own problems and in doing that, we are helping people to play a role in their own success. And that’s really what our goal is in translating the information we
Generate at the University out to people who can use this information. So I’m just going to talk a little bit about what that entails as an extension program. When I first started at UC Davis there was a lot of phone calls. Now, it’s almost exclusively email with possibly Zoom or a follow up
Phone calls. But we also do in-person training that can be anywhere from a day or two or a week to an hour. We also go to conferences and participate in other people’s conferences, give our own conferences. We can do things like tours or field days. There’s some more passive types of transmitting information
With print materials that are largely now online. Selina has an active Twitter account or X account. And increasingly we have a presence in YouTube with videos either of recorded lectures or actually on specific topics that would be useful for our clients. And then we’ll show you a little bit about the resources
That we have on our websites. So a little bit about myself. I’m a microbiologist and specifically I work with bacteria pathogens that are found in food. So Salmonella and E. coli and Listeria monocytogenes are the pathogens that I most commonly work with. And over my career at UC Davis I’ve worked primarily
With California commodities. I show just a few of the commodities I’ve worked on here. And I’ve also been able to work on those commodities from the field from growing and harvesting all the way across the supply chain to how consumers handle those products in their home
And everything in between, including processing and regulations. I’m going to give you one example of how this works. So this is a recent example of tying research to extension. And this started as a lot of my research does when there was an outbreak of salmonellosis.
In this case with a brie cheese that was made from cashews. So this is an increasing trend with the vegan marketplace with a wide range of plant-based traditional dairy products. So dairy analogs. And in this case, 20 illnesses, five hospitalizations across the United States that occurred in 2020 to 2021.
So I had been working already in the space of looking at soaking tree nuts for consumption, soaking walnuts, and soaking almonds. I had done some research in this area. And so when it came to looking at cashew cheese where the first step in making the cashew cheese
Is actually soaking the cashews my interest was piqued. And so one of the first things I did was to partner with an extension specialist at Purdue University Betty Feng, and she is a consumer behavior specialist. And so the first things we did was to do a consumer survey
As well as do a content analysis of online videos and online blogs that were explaining or had a recipe for making dairy analogs from soaking tree nuts. And so we used this information, understanding what people were doing, what was most popular, how
They were using these nuts then to inform some of the work that I subsequently my students and myself did in the lab. So this is just a high level overview. We figured out how to make laboratory cashew cheese.
And so what we do in the lab is to mimic what would go on in the home or in a commercial process. In this case, we were using a lactic acid bacteria starter culture which was being used by many consumers and also was used in the case of the outbreak.
We also are able to handle pure cultures of pathogens in the lab. So we’re able to inoculate with pathogens. And so that’s a second version of the cheese we made was with salmonella only. And then finally, the third batch we looked at making a cheese with salmonella and lactic acid bacteria together.
And so we essentially went through the steps inoculating cashews, soaking them, blending them, adding starter culture, salt or citric acid, and then fermenting them. And I’m not going to go into the results tonight but just to say that we were able to show that yes, indeed salmonella could grow in this product
Especially if you didn’t include the Lactic acid bacteria to drive a rapid fermentation. And so what do we do with that information? Well, we use that information to push out that information, translate it into many different types of formats. So we have worked on 4 to 6 scientific publications
For our colleagues at other institutions and for regulators to have access to that information. We’ve given multiple presentations in-person and online about the research and what our conclusions are. And that audience has been other scientists, the food industry, other educators, regulators, and also consumers.
So we’ve really reached out to a broad range of stakeholders not only in the state of California but all across the country. In doing that, we were put in contact with the British Columbia Public Health Department in Canada and they had, had an outbreak associated with cashew cheese a few years ago
And they were revising some industry guidelines that was going to be released across Canada. So we were able to help them by reviewing their guidance document and providing some input based on our research. And then we’re working right now on extension materials,
Written guidelines for consumers if you want to make this in the home and as well for small processors like the company that was involved in the 2000 outbreak. So we’re trying to provide the tools that consumers and small processors can use to make these products safely.
So that captures just one slice of the pie as far as how we work to generate research and then translate that research and then extend that research out to a wide range of stakeholders that might need it. In my case, to help prevent future outbreaks of foodborne illness.
So now I’m going to switch a little bit to talk more specifically about what we do in the extension space related to support for food entrepreneurs. And in preparation for this evening, I went back and I actually found a copy of my written mid-year review. And this was six months–
I wrote this six months after I started at UC Davis. And in that review I noted that there was a need for resources for food entrepreneurs because of all the questions that I was getting from a variety of people interested in getting into the food business.
And so I noted in my review that I was working on a two-day workshop called Getting Started in the Specialty Food Business. And then when I looked at my record in two years later to see what I had actually done it turns out that indeed yes right after I wrote the mid-year review
In June of 1996. The first two-day workshop was taught in November of that year. And then we continued to teach it for multiple years, for the first couple of years, twice a year and then once a year after that. My role in that class was teaching about microbiology and safety but also regulations.
And so that meant that I had to do a deeper dive into regulations for all different kinds of foods that people wanted to make and all different kinds of situations they wanted to make it in. I also gave presentations on quality control and essentials of sanitation.
And then more information on packaging and quality control, especially as it related– the packaging especially as it related to food safety. As we’ve come forward to the present in the last couple of years, I’ve really been more focused on online courses which of course, are much more accessible to a broader audience.
For the courses we taught in 96 and 97 and beyond people had to travel to come to Davis to take the class. Of course, that’s more expensive. You have to take time off work. And so the classes that I’ve been working with more recently
Are actually held over a longer period of time, sometimes weeks but they’re taught with one or two classes per week short one hour online and so accessible to a much broader audience. And so those have been interesting and a pleasure to teach as well. The other parts of these classes were always
Focused on the business part. How are you going to market your product? How are you going to sell it? How do you price it? All of those other things that go into selling a food in the marketplace. My role has always been on the regulations and the safety
And making sure that whatever is being sold to the public isn’t actually going to cause foodborne illness. In 2012, California published the Cottage Food Law which really changed where you could make food for sale. And so this law allows people to make certain types of foods.
There is a definite list of foods that you can make in the home and sell. Prior to this law, you could not make food in your home and sell it anywhere. So this law really changed a lot and lowered the entry point for people wanting to get into the specialty food business
Because they didn’t need to rent a commercial facility to make those products. And so when this regulation was published, I worked with my colleagues in agriculture and natural resources in the counties, and we developed a program that is published on this website. We looked at all of the different categories
That you’re allowed to prepare in the cottage food regulation and wrote documents on the do’s and don’s for each of those. All of which are published on this website. I also want to highlight our website so the UC Food safety website. I started this with my assistant Zan Gates.
And when Erin joined our team in 2016 she became an integral part of maintaining this website. And so it has a lot of information on a lot of different topics. But for people getting into the food business under the processing and distribution subtab,
You can find all sorts of relevant information and entire tab on starting a food business but also a lot of information under product types, a lot of links to various regulations. And then the one that says food industry contacts, gives us a database of all sorts of information
For contacting companies that provide services to the food industry. Under these tabs for getting started in the specialty food business I want to highlight a couple of things. So for example, my colleague Nina Parkinson who also works in associated with the food science department at UC Davis, we have a publication called Is
Your product an acidified product. And since we’re talking about pickles later on, pickles are an acidified product and this is one of the more popular types of products that people prepare when they’re get into the specialty food business. And so we always get asked questions about this.
And this document walks you through the questions you have to ask to see if you are considered an acidified food or not. And Erin partnered with a Community Alliance for family farmers to publish three different documents I’ve shown them here on the bottom of the screen. This is actually three documents.
One on value-added on farm processing, another on the California cannery license program and that’s for preparing canned shelf stable foods, and then a processed food registration timeline for people who want to establish a processed food business. So all of those are available and provide I think a wealth of information for people
Getting into the food business. Now, I’m a lot less comfortable with producing videos but luckily my colleagues Selina and Erin are truly comfortable with this format. And so both of them have been involved in preparing videos that are accessible on a wide range of topics related to especially small food processors and people
Getting into the food business. And so Erin has her own YouTube channel where many of the videos that you would find on our website would be hosted. And so with that, I’m going to pass the baton over to Erin. And I think I’m going to be advancing your slides Erin.
ERIN DICAPRIO: Yes, please. LINDA HARRIS: Yes. OK. There you go. ERIN DICAPRIO: Thank you, Linda. Hi, everyone. I’m Erin DiCaprio. I’m an associate professor of Cooperative Extension and my program focuses on community food safety. So if you read through my bio, you’ll see that I specialize in Virology.
So a subfield within the field of food microbiology. But today what I’m going to present to you is really some additional information about my extension program which is really focused on providing food safety and regulatory guidance to small scale growers, food processors, entrepreneurs, as well as consumers.
So I’ve really benefited from a lot of the programming and resources that Linda developed that she’s already talked about. But I’m going to hone in a little bit on some offshoots of that traditional program looking at some niche groups of stakeholders that we also serve through our extension program. Next slide, please.
So where I’m going to start is highlighting a program in collaboration with some great colleagues within the UC Cooperative Extension system that support our UC small farms program. So all of the folks you see pictured here on the slide are part of that statewide small farms program
Team that help our culturally diverse smaller scale growers across California with numerous kinds of issues. From things like disease management to managing nutrients during production and now we’re branching into the side of food safety. And so this team was established with funding from our State
Department of AG to the California Food and Drug or sorry the California Department of Food and Agriculture funds this program. And so what we do is provide our smaller scale growers with required food safety training that is now part of an overarching Federal Food safety regulation that applies to on farm production.
We also provide them with one-on-one technical assistance to help them implement processes on their farm that will assist with compliance with that particular regulation. We also have a website that we developed with different resources targeting those small growers in California with resources available in numerous languages to better serve our stakeholder needs.
Next slide, please. Another really important partner in our work on the consumer food safety side is our statewide master food preserver program, which is also part of our UC Cooperative Extension system. And so the UC master food preserver program goes out into their communities and teaches
The public about safe methods for food handling in the home with a major focus on safe methods for home food preservation. So I get to work with this group providing food safety training to incoming volunteers to that program, provide guidance on resources that have been vetted for food safety
For them to use in their programming. And more recently, here I’m just highlighting a project that I had in collaboration with Professor Maria Marco and the Food and Science Technology Department. Here at UC Davis looking at developing new resources for fermentation for consumers to use in their homes.
So we actually launched this project during lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic to engage with students to actually do some of these fermentations at home. We evaluated the safety as well as a little deeper dive into some of the microbial diversity in these smaller scale fermentation. Next slide, please.
Another area that I’ve started working in is supporting food safety and regulatory compliance for food hubs. If you’re not familiar with a food hub and their functions as a business, these essentially serve as produce aggregators for smaller scale growers within a community thereby giving greater market access to those growers.
So they’d be able to sell to hospitals, larger institutional buyers by aggregating the harvest from multiple growers in one location. And that’s really the goal of these food hubs is to expand that market access for growers within their community. So working with partners in the UC sustainable agriculture and research and education program,
We were able to engage with these food hub practitioners and actually do on site visits and help them evaluate their food safety programs. We developed a webinar series specifically targeted to food hubs addressing some of the food safety and regulatory concerns that we had encountered in those on-site visits.
I’ve also learned the importance of peer-to-peer learning in my extension program. So this is the first project where we really actively engaged with food hub practitioners and had them be the ones teaching, sharing their experiences, any challenges or successes they’d had related to food safety and regulatory compliance.
So that’s something I’ve definitely carried forward in my extension work and we really value being able to work with these stakeholder groups directly in our extension education programs. Next slide, please. We also get contacted by folks working in novel product spaces. And so this next project I’m going to talk just briefly about
Is related to an emergence of interest in products based on elderberry. So there is a native species of elderberry that is native to California and Oregon. It’s unique among other elderberry species that are found across the US. And a group again with the UC sustainable AG research
And education program was investigating the potential to use these elderberry plants as hedgerow plantings to promote sustainable AG practices in farming operations as well as potentially serve as a value-added product line for the growers that incorporated them into those hedgerow plantings. If you’re not familiar with elderberries, look on store shelves.
The next time you go out shopping you’ll see elderberry food, beverages, supplements, also personal care products that contain elderberries because they’re considered a superfood. They’re very high in antioxidant and other nutrients. And so folks are really interested in incorporating elderberry in their diets as well as in their health regimens.
But there are some unknowns related to the safety of elderberries and how they’re grown, harvested, and processed post-harvest. So we were able to develop some best practices in relation to food safety for production, harvesting, post-harvest processing, and value-added processing related to the Western blue elderberry that’s native here in California.
We held a really wonderful workshop just this past August where we took participants out to our UC Davis Student Farm where we have wild elderberries growing. We were able to show them proper harvesting techniques, what to look out for in terms of food safety issues, walk them through different post-harvest processing
Both on the Student Farm and back in our food science department and our pilot plant facility and our food Innovation Lab. One of the things that we do know about elderberries is that the stems, leaves, and unripe berries can harbor hydrogen cyanide precursor. So really important that those berries
Are de-stem that there aren’t any unripe berries or leaves or stems incorporated in products that are going out to market. So again here in this workshop, we engage with practitioners folks that are already in an established elderberry business having them walk through how they manage acquiring destemming
Equipment for their operation, how they navigated food safety regulations in California, and learned about the risks and how to manage those in this unique subset of products. Next slide, please. And the last thing I’ll talk about is just some work that we’ve done in the community
To help address an issue that was actually brought to me by some folks within the UC Cooperative Extension system, that we’re working with gleaner organizations. So these groups that go out into the community or go into unharvested produce fields and recover that food for donation to the food insecure.
And one of the issues they were hitting up against was around food safety regulation and where these gleaning organizations fell within the scope of food safety regulations. And for me, this was a really great learning opportunity because initially we had a study design
To sit down and have focus groups with gleaners, food Banks, food pantry employees and really hear what they had to say about food safety regulation. And what came out of that was a number of different state federal regulations that either had direct or perceived impacts on their operations.
So as a team we were able to develop a strategic plan to a path forward, how to get around some of these barriers and make it easier for these organizations to take food that ultimately would be wasted and get that food into the hands of someone that needs it.
So I’m really excited for our discussion today. And with that, I will turn it over to my colleague Dr. Selina Wang. SELINA WANG: Thank you, Linda and thank you, Erin. I feel very fortunate to be in a department in an organization that are very supportive and has really tremendous amount of knowledge
Across different disciplines. So I was trained as a chemist, organic chemist. So what I do in our work together is focus more on the chemical quality and then how that’s affecting shelf life. So I can talk about some of the research in extension program in my group.
I don’t want to take too much time because I know you all have questions and we have more speakers. And so I would just summarize all of my research in extension into one little slide. Linda, next. So my work can basically be put into four different areas that
Is food quality, authenticity, sustainability, and processing. I started working on olives and olive oil 15 years ago and that was on olive oil quality and authenticity. But my lab and my research program and extension actually covers a lot more than that. Although, we do have a expertise in lipid oxidation, which
Is why we have focused a lot on olive oil, avocado oil, high lipid foods such as almonds, walnuts, and pistachios. We’ve also worked on refined oils such as high like sunflower, oil high like safflower oil, soybean oil, canola oil. We also work in other crops in California such as tomatoes
And grapes, grape byproduct from winemaking and duckweed which is an aquatic plant that is very, very high in protein and we’re looking at as a source of alternative protein. So we look at quality, we look at authenticity, we look at sustainability. A lot of that work is focused on making valorisation
Of agricultural byproducts as that is contributing to a part of our environmental problems. And we do think there’s quite a bit that we can do to address this as we are facing incredible climate change challenges. We also work on processing in the sense
Where how do we process things more efficiently than we can reduce agricultural food waste and we will have less waste product to deal with. We also look at how to process foods to maximize nutrition as well as yield and shelf life. So the food industry has adopted a lot of methods
To minimize spoilage with the use of natural preservatives, novel processing systems, refrigeration, packaging material. But these techniques are not able to control spoilage if the incoming material is not of high quality and if they’re handled under good sanitary conditions. So here’s a picture of some olives that you can make olive oil from.
We’re within the picture of olives. So on the left side, these are rotten olives. There’s no way you can make high quality extra virgin olive oil from. To make good quality olive oil we need to start with good quality olives. So that’s more like the picture on the right side.
On the left, the olives actually start fermenting before oil extraction. So the oil is going to have sensory defects. And this is also one of the reasons why if you eat olive oil fresh extra virgin olive oil, it doesn’t really smell or taste like the olives you eat.
It’s because the olives you eat if they’re fermented and they have the fermentation flavor and fresh olives, olive oil that’s made from fresh olives should not have any fermentation. So in all these cases, the shelf life of many foods can be extended if the foods are prepared to minimize
Bacterial contamination before final processing. So on the next slide, you can see that we have these resources on our website, which is a sister website to the UC Food safety website. So UC food quality website it’s not nearly as developed as the UC safety website, but we have started
To put some information out there. And this is where we tie our extension and research all together just like Linda and Erin and then put that information all available for processors, for people who want to start their own business, and for consumers.
So if you have any questions, you can check out the website and it has all of our contact information. So now we would like to introduce Andrea and Meaghan to talk a little bit about their pickles. ANDREA WASKO: Great. Well, thank you very much and welcome everybody. I’m glad that you’re here.
We’re coming to you from our kitchen, which is where we started our business. And surprisingly, it was a great– MEAGHAN GILBERT: Segue. ANDREA WASKO: Yeah. It was a great trip down memory lane because we had our original brochures from when we took the courses.
So it was a great to go down memory lane. All right. We’ll start into our presentation. All right. So a little bit about my background. My background is– OK. My background is not in the food industry it’s in medical and medical devices. And I moved here from Western Pennsylvania,
But I always loved my mom’s canning and pickling when I was at home. And so when I moved out here, I’ll tell you a little bit more about my journey. Meaghan. MEAGHAN GILBERT: Yeah. Thank you again for the invitation. This is an honor. Anyway my name is Meaghan Gilbert.
And for the most part background and career background I come from the high tech industry in Silicon Valley. ANDREA WASKO: OK. And in Pennsylvania, we did canning and pickling as a way to preserve the harvest. And so we would pick the vegetables when they were fresh
And do them the traditional canning and pickling way. And it was very laborious, I must admit. And I started doing canning and pickling with my mother when I was four years old. And I was really short, well not much taller now,
But I was short so my mother would put a chair next to the stove. So when we were doing the canning and pickling that I would be at the level of the stove. And it was a way of getting the harvest and having it throughout the year.
So we would have it through the cold winters to get us through. I was missing my mom’s pickles when I moved out to California and my mom would ship me cases of pickles they’re the traditional jarred pickles. And we had some mishaps, there were some broken packages that came
And items that came leaking. And also I wanted to figure out a way where I could have my mother’s pickles out here without doing the laborious canning and pickling method that I had done when I lived in Pennsylvania. So that led to the start of Connoisseur Creations.
So in 1996, we started our company and we’re a women owned company. There are four partners in the company at the time. So myself and I work primarily on product development. Meaghan worked as the vice-president on product development and financials and pretty much project management.
And then one of my colleagues from graduate school Ying Ying was a CFO in another real estate company. So she joined as our CFO. And my mom behind the scenes had helped with the product development. And canning and pickling had been in our family for over 100 years.
So a lot of the recipes that my mother had, were recipes that had been passed down from generation to generation. So the goal of Connoisseur Creations was to figure out how could we create a safe, quick, simple, and natural way to pickle any vegetable with minimal effort
And that they would be ready much quicker. And after hearing some of the other professors talk, our main goal was really not to have any pickles that look like this. The next step that we did is we sat down and we did our business development work
And we tried to figure out what aspects of our company we needed. So we did a SWOT analysis. Looking at the strengths, the weaknesses, the opportunities, and threats to our company. And we found that we needed assistance with food industry specific knowledge because none of us had the background of the food industry.
We were all good in our respective areas but not in the food industry. So we looked at each other and said, now what? Where are we going to get this knowledge? And it just so happened that this brochure came in the mail and we received it already after the November class had passed.
And so it was about January when we received this and said, well, let’s look at signing up for this. I’ll be honest, I didn’t even know where Davis California was. None of us really knew where Davis was, but we signed up and we realized that this was something
That we really needed to take. This is the binder from the original class, we still have it today and use it frequently as a resource guide. Our company has morphed and changed throughout the years. So it’s always been a resource tool that we’ve used to go back to.
And in attending the two-day seminar that we did which was in May of 1997, we learned that about product development. We learned about product safety testing. We learned about packaging and labeling, how to source vendors, manufacturing or co-packers, how to price a product for various channels of distribution, marketing, advertising, sales.
It was just– MEAGHAN GILBERT: Very encompassing. ANDREA WASKO: It was very encompassing, and two days our head was spinning while we were there but we met a lot of great people during that time. So we went back and said, OK, can we do this.
And the answer was yes, based on the tools that were given to us. We felt like we could come up with a product. So we launched the quick pickle kit and we’re able to reach our goal. So the goal was to have a quick simple natural way
Of pickling any vegetable in the fraction of time and with minimal effort. MEAGHAN GILBERT: And safe. ANDREA WASKO: And safe. Safety was first. Coming out of the medical industry I knew that safety was always number one. So we wanted to come up with pickles that were healthy, low in sodium,
Would stay crispy and crunchy, and be a nutritionist snack for people. Also I’ve heard some of the other people, the other presenters talk about food waste and food reduction. So pickling is a great way to reduce food waste. Pickles have a lot of uses. They can be used on sandwiches, appetizers, garnishes.
Some of the other creative ways that we’ve used pickle juice because we say don’t waste anything. Don’t throw that pickle juice away. So we’ve used it as a sport drink for both active in the outdoors, using it as a sport drink, using it as a dressing, in cocktails, and in mocktails.
It’s also a thoughtful gift for a variety of people. By listening to our customers, we understood that there was a need that they had. And even though the quick pickle kit came with the reusable half gallon 2 liter jar, a 44-page recipe booklet, a quick start guide, and three starter packets of seasoning,
We were receiving calls from people that said, OK, I’ve used the seasoning packets now what do I do? And so we noticed that there was a need that our customer wanted convenience as well. So we launched a line of spice pickling packets.
And these can be used as refills with a quick pickle kit. We have customers that say I have my own jars and rings, and everything at home but I really like your recipes. I know they’ve been in your family for over 100 years and they’re really tasty.
Can I use my own jars and process at home? So the answer is, yes. And we have four different flavors dill, bread and butter, sweet, and assortment. Next, we went on to develop several other products. We utilized world class chefs, product development people,
And safety experts and developed 20 plus products of our own. I’ve always enjoyed healthy snacks. And in the 1990s, I was trying to find a way to incorporate more plant-based foods into my diet. I’m Eastern European so most of my diet growing up was meat and potatoes.
And so we developed a line of soy-based spreads. The soyamole was one that could be served with tortilla chips and wraps or with quesadillas. The soyiterranean which could be served with crackers, toss with pasta. The soyasian is great with rice crackers or in sushi rolls.
And the soymus which is a soy-based hummus and that can be used in pita bread or in sandwiches. And we see now that plant-based spreads are very popular. The version that we introduced was actually a shelf stable version. Since then, we’ve developed several other versions that are available being refrigerated, frozen, vegan vegetarian.
Next. By listening to our customers, they said that they loved making their own pickles but just like us their lives had become really, really busy, but they loved the taste of the finished product of having pickles. So we decided to introduce a line of premier pickles.
And these are using the recipes that have been in my family again for over 100 years but this isn’t a jarred ready to eat pickle. So we had the bread and butter, the garlic dill, and hot garlic dill varieties. Also my mother always made these excellent marinated medleys
And we wanted to introduce those as well. One is a mushroom medley which has oyster and wild porcini mushrooms in it and the other version is a pepper medley. And these can be used as for a variety of items. Right now charcuterie boards are really popular.
So all of our items fit in well with that as well. So all of a sudden now we’ve got our operations and manufacturing division set up. We have always self-funded our product development in our company. So we decided to do pretty much everything ourselves. We did the incorporation ourselves, we
Did intellectual property, product development. We outsourced to other people product safety testing, but we really brought in the people that we needed at the time that we needed them rather than having them as full time staff. So we continue to grow. We literally went from selling our products locally
One quick pickle kit at a time to selling our products nationally. And the next step was that we utilize more of the information that we learned in the seminar about utilizing brokers. So we hired brokers to sell our products throughout the United States.
And one day we received a phone call from one of our master brokers on the East Coast. And she said, I have this great group of guys they are importers, they’re located in New York, and they’d really like to get their products into the West Coast market,
Would you be willing to help them and would you be willing to be an international food broker? I said, I’ve never been in international food broker, but I will definitely give it 110% and if you’re willing to mentor me and teach me I’ll give it my best.
So overnight we became international food brokers and launched our international brokerage division. So now we’ve added all of the gourmet specialty, we have ethnic products that we’ve added, vegan products, kosher, certified organic products, allergy-free products. We were actually doing gluten-free before, gluten-free was kind of in.
And then we were doing health and beauty products as well. Being frugal in the business, we did one show initially and we were literally as master brokers we were running around to all of the different booths at the fancy food shows because we had so many manufacturers
And so many importers that we were supporting. So we decided, why don’t we just host a broker booth? And we have one space where we can all share the space together. So rather than us running around and trying to take buyers from booth to booth, we’ll
Have one meeting place where all of the people can come and can see all of the products that we have. And we can also split the cost. So it really was cost effective and lowered the barrier to entry for smaller people that wanted to get their products into distribution as well.
We worked on developing new set concepts. We had end caps that we did. And some of the products that we brokered are we had vinegars, we had olive oils, products from Spain, products from Holland, natural and gluten-free products. And this is just an example of some of the products that we had.
We also started doing gluten-free sets in stores as well as we did international sets in stores. So a lot of the mainstream grocery stores the photo that you see on the left is an international set, and those are mostly Eastern European products that we brought in.
And so it was introducing products from Eastern Europe where there are a lot of people who are already familiar with the products here, but now they had a prominent place to go to in the grocery store. The products that we have on the right are vinegars and oils, some risotto and other products
From around the world, primarily from Italy and we did pasta sauces. And those were all imported products that we had. So when we started our company, we wished that we had one person that we could go to that could do everything for us that
Had a broad base of knowledge that could help us with manufacturing. And we’re grateful that we had the class but we could not find one person who had a general knowledge of all aspects of the food industry. And so we decided to– because a lot of people were coming to us,
We decided to start our own research and development and consulting division. And we helped pioneer 12 new companies and over 1,000 products into regional and national distribution. And that literally happened we would have one manufacturer that would come to us. We would do a great job for them, they
Would go and tell another company. And they were happy with what we were doing so they would tell another people, another company and other people. And before we knew it, we had 12 companies that we were working with and products we had were from 20 different countries.
And the goal always was to provide business solutions in an expedient manner with minimal amounts of monetary investment. Because when we started our company we just did not have the money to put into it nor did we know if we were going to be a success.
In 1996 when we started the company, we didn’t know if we were even going to be around the next year or if we had the knowledge if we could really do what we wanted to do. So thankfully, it worked out and we’ve been able to do that.
Some of the retailers that we’ve worked with have been Whole Foods, Cost Plus, World Market, Raley’s, some of the independent grocers. And what working with us brought to the independent grocers and the smaller independent grocers was that they could produce a private label product,
A store branded product that they could have in their store. And we would do smaller volumes for them to get them started and then we would grow with them. So looking back on the years that we’ve been in business again, we went from selling one quick pickle kit to one person,
And then we’d sell a case of quick pickle kits to a local retailer. Then we went to selling pallets of quick pickle kits to a distributor. Then all of a sudden we’re selling container loads, 20 and 40 foot container loads of product to 99 only stores.
And we were literally selling from every store that you can imagine. I mean, we were selling at the bargain stores as well as high-end natural and gourmet products. Our company has always been about giving back and caring. We’ve won several awards for our company philosophy and our social entrepreneurship.
And I’m proud to say that we’ve been in business for over 27 years. We’ve been innovating since 1996. We provide jobs for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Always looking at ways that we can reduce food waste, and we allow nonprofits and schools to use our products as a healthy fundraising tool.
So rather than selling candy bars or other products that might not be the healthiest for schools and nonprofits we allow them to utilize our products and to keep the profits. Also being in the medical industry, I literally saw from the inside
Out what happened to a person’s body if they didn’t take care of it, didn’t exercise and didn’t eat right. So rather than being on the treatment side, I’m happy to say that now we’re on hopefully on the prevention side of health and we always believe in promoting health.
We’re very active in the community. These are some of the areas that we’ve been in. Always having the customer at the forefront. We still do free local deliveries in our area. We ship products free of charge so that when people order off our website they’ll receive the products and receive free shipping.
Also this year we tried a new venture and we supported and sponsored a pickleball tournament. And we had to play in the pickleball tournament. So we got these shirts for the pickleball tournament. And the pickleball tournament was to provide much needed meals for seniors throughout California.
It’s called meals that connect also known as meals on wheels, and it was really an honor for us to be able to support that endeavor and to enjoy it. Also the day that we did the pickleball tournament it was a two-day event. It was 100 plus degrees.
So the pickles and the pickle juice really came in handy. And we were literally running around the pickleball tournament handing out shots of pickle juice and giving people pickles so that they could stay hydrated. These are some photos of the adults with developmental disabilities that we’ve supported.
We also believe in teaching students and mentoring the next generation of entrepreneurs that are coming ahead of us. And so we go into middle schools, community colleges, and we also help support colleges as well. We’ve been in business 27 years. The one piece of the advertising that we learned about in the course
That we really haven’t paid much attention– well, we’ve paid attention to it but we’ve never needed it is that, for 27 years we’ve never paid for advertising. We’ve just been a company that has integrity that has very high quality products, that is doing good in the community. MEAGHAN GILBERT: By word of mouth.
ANDREA WASKO: Yeah. So it’s word of mouth, and we’ve been blessed to have people that believe in what we’re doing and believe in our story. One of the most recent ones was a national publication that we were in American Lifestyle which is in the middle of the page.
But people just really like a story about social entrepreneurs and doing good in the community. We’ve also received several awards for our business model. One was the Small Business Persons of the year award presented by the Small Business Administration pictured there with our local congressman. And international awards for innovation and excellence.
Also other people recognizing the success and milestones in our company. Over the years also, our relationship with UC Davis has really grown. We thought we were going to take the course, it’d be one and done and then we’d be moving on maybe not have anything to do with UC Davis afterwards.
We didn’t know. However, in 2011 we were blessed to have three stray cats. MEAGHAN GILBERT: We can say we’re foster failures. ANDREA WASKO: Yeah. We’re foster failures. We were fostering three stray cats that had been abandoned. And well, what can I say? They came home and they moved in with us.
We found out that the littlest one on the right has two congenital heart defects. And so we wanted the best care for her that we could get. So we reached out to UC Davis vet Med and started a relationship with the vet Med school. We were so impressed with the quality of care
That we received there that we decided that we wanted to leave a legacy gift and to support UC Davis vet Med and to help with some of the cost of Education for our futures of vets. So as we’ve done that we’ve also joined the shield society and further supporting UC Davis.
In 2017, we had another opportunity to go a little deeper with UC Davis. The fires had broken out in California and we heard about cats being exposed to wildfires, developing cardiac disease. And we learned that UC Davis had a Veterinary Emergency Response Team.
Meaghan and I are both proud to be members of our local community emergency response team and founders of our neighborhood emergency awareness team. So when we learned about the efforts of the VERT team we said, we’ve just got to do something to help support them.
So we donated the proceeds from one of our products to support the Veterinary Emergency Response Team. In 2020, we received a call from the UC Davis graduate school of management. 2020 was when the pandemic had just started, and we learned that there was going to be a start up career fair.
And that the career fair was either going to have to be canceled or go into a virtual version. So they asked if we would be willing to be panelists at the virtual startup career fair. At the virtual startup career fair we found that a lot of the MBA
Students had their internships cancelled for the summer because a lot of the larger companies wanted interns that were going to come in-person. So we decided that we would mentor five interns for the summer. But we’ve only met one of the interns in-person
And we did everything via Zoom, and we had a great time. MEAGHAN GILBERT: For five months. ANDREA WASKO: For five months. And it was a great time to allow these individuals to come in and to learn about all aspects of the business.
We really were open book with them and let them come in and learn about our company. And we had a great time doing it. It was really fun. So we’ve been in business 27 years. We sat back and were trying to figure out, what do we do next?
What are the market opportunities that we had? The products that we have are all plant-based, which the market is growing. They’re healthy, tasty, gluten-free, low sodium snacks and condiments. And when we looked at the numbers of the market potential they’re staggering and looking at the potential of our products.
And we’re currently a two-person company and we outsource for everything that we need. So we decided well, what do we do? Should we scale up? And what we decided is that it’s time for another company to take our products to the next level. And we’re happy to help them.
So we’re looking at some point in the future transitioning our company and allowing someone else to have the opportunity to take the products and to take them and to be able to reach the market potential. We also have several other ventures, social entrepreneurial ventures that we have.
Always at the forefront is something happens, how can we give back? So these are two of the other ventures that we have. What I’d like to say is thank you. Thank you to Linda. Thank you to your staff and to everybody who came before you.
Thank you for the vision Linda to have the opportunity to start this program that has benefited us and so many others. Yeah. So it’s really been– we’ve utilized the tools that we had in that class. And I’ll put up our information if anybody
Would like to reach out to us, feel free to take a screenshot of this. You’re welcome to reach out to us. But thank you. MEAGHAN GILBERT: Thank you so much. LINDA HARRIS: Well, thank you for sharing your story. It’s a wonderful story of a journey that’s taken many, many turns
And I’m pleased that I was able to play a small role. I think you are the team that did all of this. I was tickled that you had the brochure still, but even more tickled that I took the time to go look at my records to get the dates that I actually
Took the classes and that we matched up perfectly there. So it is a true story. Yeah. So we have a couple of questions in the chat. I just want to remind everybody that if you have a question for anyone you can type it into the Q&A. There was one question
On a recording of the webinar. So this webinar has been recorded. It will go up on the RMI website. They’re going to clean up the beginning and the end and I goofed up a couple of times with advancing the slides but within the next week or so
It will be up at the RMI website. And I think it’s also going to be on Andrea and Meaghan’s website as well. So there’ll be plenty of opportunity for anybody who wants to review the information to have access to that. I did want to ask a couple of questions.
So when you were starting out and/or through all the different directions you took the company, what was the most challenging thing that you faced? ANDREA WASKO: I would say the most challenging piece of it was, we started out as a company of four but we’re really a company of two.
So the most challenging was really finding the people that we needed with the expertise that we needed. And finding the right people, luckily we found the right people and we continued to build a relationship and utilize their services. But I think really trying to keep up with everything and doing everything.
And everything changes so quickly. All of the regulations changing, the labeling, nutritional label changing. So what was really important for us was not trying to do everything ourselves, it was really trying to find the experts that had the expertise in those different areas. And so I’m happy to say that we found people,
But I would say that’s the most challenging. Do you have anything to add? MEAGHAN GILBERT: So there were a lot of challenges. But I think for me because of who I am and my background, just bearing the people, the sources that we were being introduced with.
We went through some situations where it wasn’t the best for us. It was actually better for the other party. So it’s a learning experience, right? So it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just one of those growing challenges that we as a company were going through.
But as we went through those situations we just learn from them. We actually made us feel more confident in our business model and in the way that we were interfacing with other people. And that’s why when going with the presentation that Andrew went through is word of mouth.
The reputation that we had was very positive and it just built from there. LINDA HARRIS: Yeah, in working with smaller companies I think that they often are starting with one or two people and that’s very manageable when they’re selling at a farmer’s market. And then all of a sudden sometimes they
Get somebody is interested in the product and now they have to go from making a case a week to making a pallet a week. And that jump is often– that transition I think is a challenge for a lot of people.
And then you get to another level and then it’s stable for a while until you get to the next level. Yeah. So sometimes we also see that companies when they grow too fast that they can’t keep up maybe with some of the regulations or what was easy to do safely at one level
Becomes more challenging as you get bigger. And so being able to manage all of that as you grow I think is a typical challenge. OK. So I’m just going to– there’s one question that is Erin related and one question for Selina but you can answer that I think, Selina quickly.
Do you have any published data on duckweed? But for Erin maybe you could talk about– somebody asked us about home canning that they were concerned about botulism. So Erin maybe you can talk about some of the resources that we have for people who want to can at home. ERIN DICAPRIO: Sure. Yeah.
I appreciate that you’re concerned about botulism. That’s definitely something we worry about with home-canned products. So I did put a few links in the Q&A but again, just to point you to the website that Linda showed earlier in her presentation. So if you Google, you’ll see food safety that
Will take you to our home page. And there is a subpage dedicated to home food preservation. So there you’ll find resources developed by the UC as well as resources developed by other universities on safe home canning practices. So those recipes that were developed by UC, other universities, all
Of those recipes and the processes. Right. So how long a jar needs to go in a water bath canner or a pressure canner, the ratios of ingredients, all of that is really important to managing botulism as well as other food safety risks with home-canned products. So we recommend starting with those most
Definitely because we know that those recipes and processes have been tested to ensure they meet those different criteria that will mitigate the risks. Again, want to plug our statewide UC Master Food Preserver Program. So in California, we’re really blessed to have this program in multiple counties across the state.
I would encourage you on our website there’s also a link to the UC Master Food Preserver home page. So you can see if there’s a program in your county assuming you’re in California. And if not, if there’s a program in a neighboring county where
You might be able to go to a workshop on pressure canning or canning pickles and learn more the hands-on part of canning in the home and be sent home with lots of resources and recipes to try yourself. LINDA HARRIS: Or you could buy a pickle kit. ERIN DICAPRIO: Correct. LINDA HARRIS: Yes.
Well, I see we’re at the 6:45 so I don’t know if Dr. Spang you want to come back on. It’s been a really full evening and it’s gone quickly. NED SPANG: Yeah. The time flew by on this one, I’m sorry we didn’t have a chance to answer all the questions.
But we do have a bunch of links in the discussion where you can look up further information on pickling. It really is an amazing resource we have through our extension program. So I encourage you to visit Linda and Erin’s page that they’ve worked so hard on.
But thanks to everyone, I mean what a wonderful discussion. Andrea and Meaghan your story is incredibly impressive and it really highlights the impact of the importance of our extension program at UC Davis. It really has that multiplier effect when we spread the knowledge out of the University.
Industry can take it to all different places. And I just kept thinking, all the places you’ll go with pickle power because it seems like the sky was the limit for you guys. But the other part of the story that’s so nice is the reciprocity in terms of supporting UC Davis
And it’s really incredible and we thank you so much for that. That’s really, really kind of. I also want to thank the participants for tuning in to the discussion, we really enjoyed having you here. And if you enjoyed tonight’s presentation, please consider joining us for some of our future events.
We have a savior event coming up called Brewing Change Craft Sake in the United States on November 8 that has a virtual component. And we have an upcoming Walt cleanse lecture, which focuses on wine and business economics. This will feature Karen MacNeil the author of the immensely popular Wine Bible.
So before you leave, also please a quick reminder to fill out the survey link that will be provided at the end of the Zoom session. And if you don’t have time to provide feedback now, we’ll also send a link in a follow up email.
And please consider signing up for our newsletter at the website or linking to our social media accounts. So thanks again for attending. Thanks to our panelists for a fantastic discussion and have a great night.