A Piece of the Pie… Introducing Our New Line of Fruit Tarts

I wrote a few blog posts ago about the process of product development (at least from our side in the food industry). The past few months, we’ve been keeping our fingers busy (and sticky!) working on refining and launching our new line of fruit filled tarts.

I can definitely say we’re pretty excited about the outcome. We work hard on keeping our products top quality as we scale and grow.

Our fruit tarts have been a long time coming. Not so much in the product development (that’s what January and February were for), but considering how to figure out where best to address the market demand.

Ever since our first farmer’s market we’ve had customers come up to us and ask if we were doing fruit tarts. My very first presentation to New Seasons Markets, the buyer asked if we were doing any fruit versions. I knew the market was there (but back on both occasions, the timing was wrong).

In the past 18 months (against a flat economy, to say the least), we’ve been growing and morphing into the next stages of where I want to company to be, and after this past holiday season (where we did some small fruit tart tests), I felt the timing was right to get on getting fruity in 2011.

We’re keeping to the classics, as our target audience hits all ages. I want our fruit tarts to be something kids would enjoy as well as adults. Portable for picnics and lunches or dress up with a scoop of ice cream (and um, eating for breakfast as we discovered).

In this past week, we put our fruit tarts out to market (starting exclusively with New Seasons around Portland).

Our flavors out of the gate: Cherry, Strawberry and Ginger Peach.

Have you tried one? Let us know what you think! I’ll let you know how they’re doing after a bit, and if there’s a clear favorite of the group emerging.

And I’m Always on the Run… Five Favorite (Fast) Foods of 2010 (in PDX)

As one can imagine, I spend part of my days (weeks) driving to client deliveries, meetings and just running around in general. In reality, I am my own ultimate client searching for great tasting food to grab on the run. When I’m not munching on our own tarts, here are a few of my favorite fast treats from the past year.

Pain Au Chocolat, Florio Bakery. Carrie Birrer & staff do a great job turning out flakey goodness in pastry form from their small bakery in North Portland and their pain au chocolate (chocolate croissant) is certainly worth stopping by and saying hello for.  

Vegetable Bahn Mi, Best Baguette. Bahn Mi really nails the fast, cheap & good trifecta of food. It’s even more appealing that they have a drive through, allowing for even faster food while on the run. The mixture of tofu and vegetables (usually carrots and taro or radish) is well seasoned with enough dressing to offset the bulkiness of the bread. If you see someone driving down 82^nd with a long white sandwich bag protruding from their mouth, it’s probably me.

Caramel with Salted Dark Chocolate Ice Cream, Ruby Jewel Scoop Shop. I’m hot, I’m cranky or I’m tired (and cranky or maybe just cranky) and like a little kid, ice cream will hit the spot and while maybe not make everything better, a sure heck of a lot sweeter. I’m a big fan of Lisa, Becky & Co. and when they decided to open physical ice cream shop I hoped we’d see other great ice cream creations from them. I was not disappointed. The caramel with salted dark chocolate ice cream is like an adult sundae in a scoop, creamy, salty chocolately… just don’t let me buy a pint! 

Roasted Mushroom Sandwich, Meat Cheese Bread. For a sandwich shop that specializes in their namesake, the menu item which is generally my only menu option, has turned into a favorite. (Though it’s a bit messy, I don’t recommend trying to eat this one while driving).  See my previous post about why I enjoy this sandwich (then go get yourself one!).

Where would Portland be without coffee? Something needs to cut through our damp gray winters and a cup of Mudd Works Mudd House will have you bright, upright and ready to conquer your day. I tend to grab a cup when I’m at Mr French’s Coffee Kitchen (a friend and a fave coffee house client of ours). 

Judging from above, I’m fairly well-fueled for our week (and working on our 2011 goals). The downside is, the tart mobile could really use a good vacuuming! 

There’s No Crying In Baseball (Jumping in on the End of Year Wrap-Ups)

Photo by Allison Jones

The past year has been frightening enlightening, and while we reached for our goals (like some below), it was tough not to get sidelined by every hurdle, sand storm and trial by fire this tough economy has thrown at us. In many ways, it’s made me a far better manager and (I think) stronger business owner, while reminding myself if running a business was easy, everyone would be doing it.

So, how did we match up to my goals for 2010? My philosophy with the goals to make some progression large or small, keeping our momentum moving forward.

Here’s a brief recap of a few of them:

Gluten-Free Tarts: Soft launching and test marketing a gluten-free line of tarts. From past posts you can tell we spent time (lots of time), working out our gluten-free crust. The response has been highly positive - to the point of a few emails from fans crankily succinctly requesting we add them to our online store. Working out how support a larger scale production of them (which includes investing in some additional equipment) will be part of 2011.

Expanding our Social Media: I’m social! I really am, if you were sitting next to me in a bar, on a plane or in the stall next to us at a farmer’s market, would you hear an ear-full about all sorts of things. Just starting this blog was a huge step. I like the tweet and try not to over load anyone who likes us on Facebook. I aim to tell you more about our company culture, what we are working towards and what I like/dislike. A content plan is something to aspire to, until then, I’m shooting off the cuff.

Growing our Distribution/Sales Region: The year was about loss and gain. We lost some of our smaller coffee house clients but in turn upped our sales and distribution a bit to larger clients (I’m not going to say our sales wildly grew, however I see a chance at a turning point in making gains). We’re dipping our toe into the Seattle market (w/PCC Natural Foods) and we’ll see where this takes us. 

As the year wraps up, I’m pretty grateful that I was able to keep us floating through. More than a few of my peers can’t say the same, and while there’s no crying in baseball, every small business owner has some emotional attachment to the thing they’ve built and some days, just opening the door and turning the lights on is the largest (and most satisfying) goal achievement.

2011 goals are rattling around and being vetted, then we’ll be social. Really!

Oh, and a friendly elf promised me a new phone soon, so with a better camera you might actually get some decent pics to peruse. Progress, eh?

The Figlet Made Me Do It (or What We’ve Been Occupied With)

Holy carp have the holidays landed on us like frozen turkeys falling from the sky and I can’t say I’m complaining (well, my feet might be a bit more tired and there’s certainly less laundry getting done at home, but who really complains about not doing laundry?).

I haven’t abandoned you, my few readers, but the coming weeks will be a bit content scarce as we truck ahead on our projects, like making pies (Pecan, Vegan Pumpkin, Apple Cranberry) for New Seasons Markets.

The photo above is one of the specialty items we’re “trying out” with them. This one is a fig tartlet (smaller format than our regular tarts), with our vegan crust and a spiced fig filling. At the sampling I did back in September, one person remarked that it “tasted like Christmas”. Hopefully customers will enjoy them enough at Thanksgiving we’ll have them through December. It is a little product trial by fire, but I am thankful to have a supportive client that is willing to take a risk.

Upcoming things I’m thinking about (when not scaling pecans or corn syrup in my sleep):

-       Website revamping (or at least updating)

-       Review of goals from the past year (I’m sure I wrote them down somewhere)

-       Goals for the coming year

-       List of cleaning projects around our kitchen (see top parens)

-       A better camera… maybe… someday

So bear with us as single handedly split our kitchen into sweet & savory, which I’ll recap once I unglue my fingers from the sugar and cranberries (and our regular tomatoes, spinach, mushrooms…)

You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby. Five Lessons I’ve Learned in the Past Five Years.

As we progress as a company, everyday I learn something new in running Little Pots & Pans Co. While most days, I feel like that old cigarette ad “you’ve come a long way, baby”, it hasn’t been without learning a few lessons along the way.

Sometimes these lessons come gracefully and sometimes they drop on you like the anvil in an old cartoon scenario (Beep! Beep!). The best you can do is absorb the knowledge, take it in stride and keep moving forward. Below is a selection of five, which, um, struck me.

Business is not predictable.

Really, if the past 18 –24 months have taught us anything, it’s to expect the unexpected. We’ve seen sales rise with some clients only to loose others along the way. It’s not always an even one to one, and just because you’re on an upward trend doesn’t mean there won’t (or can’t) be a dip.

There will be snap decisions, go with your gut.

We are still small, and moving fast. Opportunities, ideas, recommendations present themselves and can’t always wait for analysis, review and/or discussion. Trust that you’re making the right decision. You know your vision and your company best.

You can never have enough cash.

I could have five times the cash banked in our company bank accounts and I’d want more. There’s always an expenditure lurking on the horizon. Equipment breaks, you need more inventory/equipment/employees to increase sales. Unfortunately, item #1 has a direct effect on what can be in the bank at any given time.

HR is it’s own special entity. 

I’ve come to appreciate people in the past who uphold a company’s policy, screen candidates, deal with hiring and firing (and all the associated paperwork). It becomes necessary at a certain point and I’ll take it as a sign we are growing.

Embrace risk.

You can’t run a business without embracing a certain amount of risk. Everyday presents a challenge and if you’re not able to take some leaps of faith with your risk to gain ground or reach for a business success, you’re not the right person to run it. (This is not to say I don’t lose sleep some nights agonizing over said leaps of faith).

I’ve certainly grown a lot in the past five years with the company, and while we’ve come a long way, I quite expect, we still have a long ways to go. I’m already working on the next post of five things… 

The Recipe Outgrew the Apron. Reflections from the Past 5 Years.

Our first recipe book.

When I launched Little Pots & Pans Co. 5 years ago, I started small, dipping our toes into the product development side of the grocery business. Testing out assumptions I had made about tart product varieties and pricing, and watching our (then clients their customers reactions to us.

I began working by myself in a rented kitchen at night. (Insert your Jewish yenta/Italian grandmother here – oye! It was dark! oye! It was a lot of work! oye! You never called/wrote/came to visit!) But then one day I realized perhaps I could afford a little help. Someone to come in and help with production, making the nights smoother and less lonely.

Prior to beginning to sell our tarts, much of my recipe development took place between my home kitchen and the commercial kitchen I was renting. At home, I have one taste-tester, in the kitchen there were at least 4-5 other companies working at any time that I could call upon to proffer input. (Don’t get me started on the um, challenges of trying to work in an over crowded kitchen with everyone clamoring to use the same equipment for their production and still only put in a 7 hour night).

Both were a big help in finalizing our original set of recipes, but as it still just me working, my notes were sort of my own. Some modifications got written down, some didn’t, I knew what each one was, and how each filling should taste. It wasn’t much different than holding up your grandmother’s apron and reverse engineering her recipe for brownies (or red sauce) from it.

The first person I ever had help out in the kitchen, showed up on the first night, ready to go. I pointed her to where the knives and a cutting board were and what she would be making. Her first question… “Is there a recipe for this somewhere?”

I still have a penchant for jotting recipes down on paper, with notes and revisions (some things get typed, some don’t). But I do keep some plastic shelves around to drop them into so at least their staying power has a fighting chance while I fight for time to properly type them up. 

A Tart and a Toaster Walk Into A Grocery Store… (Tales from Tart Sampling)

At some point prior to starting Little Pots & Pans Co., I must have been sitting on my couch thinking… ‘You know, these 48 hours in between Friday and Monday are really too much, there must be something I can do with all this time’. Now I find myself spending many Saturdays traveling around to our customers promoting our tarts and handing out samples.

One of the best ways to get people to try your product is to hand out samples. There are several ways to do this – provide extra product to your client for them to give out, hire a professional (and supply them with product) to do in store sampling, or do it yourself.

The upside to being on site is that no one knows your product better than you, and it’s easy to let your passion and enthusiasm show. The reality side is that sometimes your own experience ends up seeming like a rendition of one of those home video shows.

People love trying free samples, to many it’s a veritable buffet, some stop and are truly interested and others avoid the table like you were going to demand something untowards from them. For the people who stop and try our samples, I’m just happy to get them tasting as I do see it generating interest.

I get all sorts of questions and comments, most very encouraging and positive but some that just have you wondering. Some of that fall on that side include:

“ This would be great with some cheese” (the sampler selected the only vegan sample on the table)

“I’m dieting, I really shouldn’t” (sampler ate multiples of all flavors on the table)

“There’s no flour in this, right?” (After asking what the crust was made of)

“What are the blue speckles in the crust?” (We add black pepper to our vegan dough)

The odd questions help shape how we talk about our tarts, what we should be saying (or perhaps not). And, since my weekend is less than 48 hours, at least there’s a chance of some humor to it.

Weekday Cooking: Tarting Up The Vegetable Left Overs

We’re in vegetable harvest heaven right now (isn’t everyone?) and as much as I enjoy the summer bounty, there are generally left over harvest remnants from the week. A few tomatoes, an extra ear of corn, a partial bunch of basil, I know I’m not alone in this.

During the week, the goal is to find dishes that allow something to simmer/bake/marinade while the rest of the meal comes together (or sometimes just cooks on it’s own while I relax on the couch).

I dislike wasting food, especially during our local growing season when everything is at it’s peak and that encourages me to get creative using up the bits and pieces. It was a pleasant enough day that using the oven wasn’t out of the question, so I arrived at a simple ricotta tart as the base for a simple salad of vegetable remnants.

The tart is simple to put together: 15oz (one small container) of fresh ricotta, 3 eggs, one cup grated cheese of your preference (I used aged parmesan) and two teaspoons of herbs.  I had chives in the fridge and thought they would work well.

Grease a 9” round or square pan and bake at 350 for about 40 minutes. (Everyone’s oven is different, so check on the tart after 30 mins).

You’re welcome to use a pie crust as a base if you’d like something more fancy, but I was serving the tart with garlic bread and didn’t want to over starch us up.

While the tart was baking, I diced up the tomatoes, sliced the corn from the cobb and added it to the tomatoes then hand tore up a few leaves of basil. It came out to be a little less than 2 cups of salad. I tossed the mixture with a tablespoon of olive oil, a teaspoon of red wine vinegar, and pinches of salt, pepper and oregano.

After pulling the tart out of the oven and letting it rest for 10 minutes, I cut the tart into wedges and spooned some of the marinating salad over it.

The ricotta tart is a great base for most vegetables as the herbs you add can be tailored to whatever your mood. I’ve made it to go with various vegetable sautees, fresh tomato sauces and in colder weather warm sauces. (And in our house, it’s also great for breakfast!)

Now I just need to work on not photographing things on our black plates… 

Drive

I come from driving folk, where long Sunday rambling drives “just to see what’s out there” were a common occurrence while growing up. Later in life, while living in NYC, it was never a big deal to throw a bunch of friends in the car and zip up to Cape Cod (5 hours on a good day) or to visit friends in Maine (8 hours, likewise).  And as we’re an “all hands on deck” type of company, when our delivery driver decided to take a vacation week I (got) volunteered to deliver to our clients in the outer metro area.

Below are a few snaps (taken with my Blackberry) of the morning:

All loaded up (my share). The large black object in the back is one of our “coffin” coolers. It has great volume, and probably many alternative uses than tarts & ice.

Sometimes there aren’t a lot of landmarks around to guide you. It was a beautiful morning for a drive, however. For those of you in Portland, this is the corner of Cornell Road & Cornelius Pass in Hillsboro.

 Our client’s bright and sunny colors were out in full force.

Some of them are even out of this world.

I try hard to get out and about to connect personally with our clients when I'm able to. It goes without saying that all of our clients are important, and a few minutes spent chatting can lead to insights you might not learn otherwise.

So 3 hours and 6o miles later it was nice to spend some out on the road seeing our clients (you’re bringing food, who’s not pleased to see you?) and enjoying the morning. I only managed to get slightly lost once! Hillsboro, sheeesh!

A Wee Bit About Gluten-Free

In the past couple of weeks we’ve been doing a soft-launch of our new line of gluten-free tarts. This has been a learning process for us. Much like crawling before walking (then climbing the living room bookcase), my team has been testing the limits of our dough recipe and its ingredients. For all of us, it’s new territory and we’re up to the challenge.

We’ve been getting requests for gluten-free products for the past couple of years. Those of you whom I chatted with at farmers markets (or in your home kitchen, and also over the phone) were subjected to a litany of questions such as - can you eat corn? (50/50 split), do you eat dairy? (also 50/50) are you vegan? (almost everyone wasn’t). I wanted to learn more about where the boundaries of people’s intolerances lay (and learned a lot more about their personal eating preferences to boot).

Then one spring Saturday afternoon, I was sampling our tarts at a local Whole Foods and in the course of two hours, four people came up to our table and asked me if we had anything gluten-free. Hmmmm, if that wasn’t a sign it was time to test out some gluten-free crust ideas, I don’t know what was.

Thus far, we’ve been able to set aside a day to for gluten-free dough making (and rolling), when no wheat flour is in use. We have separate equipment for creating and filling the tarts. At the moment my team is producing the dough in small batches, by hand, until we can justify adding additional equipment to make their production larger and faster.

Also along with the process, we’re feeling out which of our fillings customers might be interested in (so far anything dairy-free is winning, which is interesting since most people I spoke with about being gluten-intolerant ate some dairy).

So expect more questions from us at the farmer’s markets if you purchase one of our gluten-free tarts, we’d like to hear what you think.

Retail Not Right (Now)

At the farmer’s market, sometimes by phone (my apologies to the woman who called at 7:30am one morning that we could not accommodate her reservation) but more often since our article in the Oregonian, we get asked if we have a retail store.

People are always flummoxed when we tell them “no”. 

I can see the appeal of “doing retail”, opening a little spot where people could drop in for a tart and maybe some other goodies. A place to direct customers who buy from us at local farmer’s markets. But is it right for your business as a whole?

It depends on the goals of your business and food product(s).

We are product company, focusing on growing our line of tarts (hence the name of the blog). Our business and daily tart activities center around servicing current customers, while working on expanding our client base. This alone requires much focus and effort. From my current point of view, as she who runs the books (bookkeeping, not bookmaking) and expends much of the effort, our time is best spent continuing forward growing ourselves as a product. To branch off into a tart shop, or small café, would be a risk and effort undertaking I can’t justify.

This is not to say I’d never open a tart shop or small café under our company umbrella. The idea would need to be very carefully thought through. Details such as location (e.g. our current location is on a busy street, but is not conducive to foot traffic and doesn’t have much of a neighborhood surrounding, which immediately rules it out), marketing/planning for vagaries of retail and staffing come immediately to mind.

It could be right one day, just not right now.

In a bold move, Elizabeth of Sahagun Chocolates, who appeared on the Neely's FoodNetwork episode with us (which will air again June 17th), decided recently to scale down her retail operation in order to focus on the growing wholesale demand for her chocolates. I don’t doubt it was a tough decision as to where she should focus her time for the best (and growing) results.

On our current path, I am pleased with the rewards that come in landing a new client, having a current one excited about a new flavor we’ve developed, or realizing we’ve gotten a tad bit busier in the past weeks and it’s time to up our ingredients order or risk running out of items (oh, it’s happened). I enjoy meeting with buyers, food service directors, executive chefs and coffee house owners walking them through our product niche of tarts we’ve created and how they could be a growth product for them. I also enjoy time spent interacting with farmers discussing what we’re going to be using their produce for and… hmmm… I think I just bled into our next blog post!  

Riffing is a Good Thing

Fairly frequently, I get asked why I chose to call our products tarts instead of hand-pies (or pasties (pah-sties)).

Traditional pasties (pah-sties) regardless of if their fillings are vegetarian or meat contain onions and potatoes as a base ingredient. The fillings tend to be a bit “heavier” as in closer to what you would find in a pot pie*. The fact that I feel I need to explain their annunciation in every mention brought us to realize we’d spend more time teaching audiences about the derivative of the word vs. our products.

In truth, our tarts are closer to hand-pies than pasties (pah-sties). When I think of hand-pies, fruit fillings come to mind (like apple turnovers which we use to devour at our local orchard in the fall). The crust we use is very similar, though we incorporate an extra few steps to create the irresistible flake you see on them.

Our tart fillings are derived from a mixture of family recipes and eating experiences across globe with the goal of taking our customers to new places with all of our varieties (even if it is through a few short bites). With that in mind the idea of a “hand-pie” seemed a little too traditional while “tart” added a little extra character in embodying our products.

Besides, who wouldn’t rather be “Queen of Tarts” over “Queen of the Hand-Pies”?

What comes down to being most important, is however, that our customers enjoy them!

* This is not a dis on the pot-pie, we’re big fans of them!