The makers of F.A. Nino's gourmet hot sauces and dry rubs admit they didn't know much about the grocery business in May 2011 when a young man walked up to their sales booth at the Cotati farmers market.
"We had no idea how to get into stores," recalled Frank Ross, one of the Petaluma company's four partners and the uncle of chef/product creator Chuck Ross.
But the young man liked what he tasted and said he would tell his bosses at Oliver's Market. And Cotati-based Oliver's became the first of more than 40 Bay Area stores that now carry F.A. Nino's products.
Sonoma County has long had local food makers, but much is afoot these days to help such entrepreneurs launch new products. Local and regional efforts include new types of financing, "foodmaker forums," a new state "cottage food" law and a planned fall conference aimed at helping the business community understand the opportunities that food makers bring to the county.
"I think that Sonoma County is hitting its second wave of being sort of a hub of small food manufacturing," said Tom Scott, vice president and general manager at Oliver's Market.
The first wave came three decades ago, with such natural food producers as Amy's Kitchen, Alvarado Street Bakery, Traditional Medicinals and Barbara's Bakery.
Now, members of a new generation of local food makers are producing such artisanal and specialty items as kombucha tea, organic chicken fingers, kimchi, heirloom tomato sauce and gomasio.
Small food makers say that starting and growing a business takes considerable work — much more than they ever imagined. Even so, they credit the county's grocers for their willingness to stock local products and help introduce the items to customers.
"They legitimately want to help and support our brand," said Serafina Palandech, a partner in Sebastopol's Hip Chick Farms. "They want to support the little guy."
Palandech and partner/chef Jen Johnson began selling their gourmet frozen chicken fingers, wings and meatballs in early 2013 after raising $25,000 from friends and supporters in a Kickstarter campaign. Today, their products are sold in more than 300 stores, and they soon plan to release both organic and gluten-free chicken fingers.
"We're in like the hotbed for natural foods in the whole world," said Palandech, who with Johnson will present their story next month in San Francisco at a "foodmakers forum" sponsored by Whole Foods Market.
Grocers say they keep watch for local products because consumers love them.
Scott, who oversees three stores in Cotati and Santa Rosa, said last year Oliver's worked with more than 300county farmers, wineries and foodmakers. The local products constituted 9 percent of his stores' individual items but 27 percent of sales.
"You can tell how much our customers are demanding these products and are enjoying these products that come from this part of the world," he said.
Similarly, Whole Foods co-CEO Walter Robb said in a presentation last fall in Santa Rosa that the county is "tailor-made" to benefit from the unprecedented demand for healthy, locally produced foods.
"We're on the doorstep of a food revolution like I've never seen," Robb said in November at the first North Coast Food and Agriculture Industry Conference.
Whole Foods seeks to have about 25 percent of its items come from local producers, the company reports. In Northern California, about 60 percent of the produce sold comes from about 120 of the region's growers.
Whole Foods has begun new initiatives to find the region's small food makers and help them build their businesses.
About eight years ago, the national company began making up to $10 million a year available in loans to small food producers. And this July, the company's 40 Northern California stores will provide their first "foodmaker grants," where customers will go online to choose 40 small producers — one for each store. Each winner will receive 5 percent of their store's one-day sales — a grant estimated between $3,000 and $6,000.
As well, Whole Foods in 2007 appointed a "forager" for the Northern California region to assist the buyers at each store who have long worked with small food makers.
Harvindar Singh acknowledged that some people hear about his job and think he must be "an exotic wild mushroom hunter." But being a forager actually involves finding local products and "developing relationships with great, really cool, local food entrepreneurs."
If Whole Foods is going to stock a local product, Singh said, "It's just gotta taste amazing."
But other factors come into the decision of whether to place an item on the shelf, including packaging, price and the details of its production. For example, the company has a list of more than 75 "unacceptable ingredients," including artificial colors, high-fructose corn syrup, nitrates, partially hydrogenated oil and monosodium glutamate.
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