Small Food Brands, Big Successes

Charleston South Carolina is positively brimming with amazing small food brands, we could use some professionalization in distribution, marketing, and investment – but there are amazing brands here, like Red Clay hot sauce for example… absolutely delicious. The locals go nuts for it...

Let's not forget that at the end of the day, these companies require a return on investment. A lot of these companies are fabulous until they get sold.

One stand out small food brand not mentioned in the article is Marlo's Bakeshop. This company is based in San Francisco and produces a wonderful reinvention of mandel brot in three different flavors. The ingredients are of the highest quality, locally sourced and attractively packaged. There is hardly a day that passes without my cup of afternoon tea or coffee and a "Marlo's".

I am lucky enough to know Mr. McTighe, I have followed Nello's sauce since their beginning. I live 26 miles from the farm where the bio dynamic sauce is grown and it is delicious! People are changing the way they eat, finally, and this article proves. Thanks so much to the food innovators, we need more out there!

One of the inhibitors to developing a small food based business are health code laws that, while designed for safety, end up inhibiting business development for many. The cost of renting a commercial kitchen can be prohibitive and that doesn't include the costs of storage. Lawmakers could keep an eye on food safety laws while also creating ways for home based entrepreneurs to have some way of getting their businesses off the ground. Cottage Food Laws are a start, but they don't go very far.

The original cake mixes called for only one ingredient but they started having the consumer add eggs because it didn't feel like baking if one only added water. When I give in to a mix I always add extra items and flavors so it's mine.

The greatest technological inventions of humankind have been driven by inborn laziness, a desire to make something that makes llife and work easier. This is my interpretation of the subtitle on the picture, that Linsey Rosenberg's parents found "a mix they had picked up that required the addition of just one ingredient".
One can only wish all the best of luck to the innovators and inventors of edible concoctions, remaining however cautious of the quality and permanency of the product.