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Produce Show Daily 3 7 Thursday, October 17, 2019 Ruth's Mustard Named Small Business Champion By Lorrie Baumann Founded in 2012, Ruth's Mustard LLC, founded by Laurel Smith along with her husband Ed, is a New Hampshire compa- ny that's one of the businesses operating out of Genuine Local, a shared-use com- mercial kitchen located in Meredith, New Hampshire and owned by Mary and Gavin Macdonald. Like the Macdonalds and some of the other small food produc- ers there, Smith lost the use of her previ- ous facility when it suddenly closed with little notice. "When that went out, we were out," Laurel says. With a four- to five-hour trip to the next-closest avail- able commercial kitchen, that might have been the end of the business, but Ruth's Mustard was rescued by the Macdonalds' decision to build the new shared-use facility and open it as Genuine Local. "They bought all the equipment and kept it going and kept us going," Laurel says. Genuine Local is still a two-hour drive from her home, so she still spends a lot of time on the road on mustard-making days, but that's just part of the price tag for keeping the business going. "When we make it, it's a haul, but we want to keep doing it," says Laurel. The "Ruth" in the mustard's name is Laurel's Grammy Scranton, who used to make her special mustard for family cel- ebrations. "I thought everyone ate this as a kid. I didn't know it was a unique fla- vor," Laurel says. "They'd eat it with ham. It was usually what she put on the ham – just drizzled on. Now people use it for everything." Laurel herself started making the mustard without a thought that she'd ever sell it. Instead, she gave jars to friends. And then friends asked for more. They said they'd buy it. Suddenly, she had orders for 61 jars, and she had to step up her produc- tion from the eight jars a night she'd been making when she was handing them out as gifts. "We were now up to 24 jars a night to get this order done," Laurel says. As the orders kept coming in, it was obvious that she was either going to have to scale back or move out of her home kitchen. "I got an idea, which are the words that totally make my husband cringe," she says. The idea was that if they took Grammy Scranton's mustard into real com- mercial production, they could use it as a vehicle to help others, as Grammy Scranton herself would have liked. "You always felt welcome, and she always made sure people had enough, and she was always concerned about other people," Laurel remembers. "When we started this, we didn't feel like it was ours, so we used her name and put her picture on the label. And we said we'll make sure we share." Today, Laurel and Ed are making nine flavors of mus- tard in batches of 250 jars. The two of them can make two batches a day, and the mustards are sold in shops across New Hampshire and online nationally – Laurel's son Cory handles some of the sales. Ten percent of the profits are donated to charities, which have included local charities that serve the homeless, the Make a Wish Foundation and St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital. "We'll give 10 per- cent to feed the need of others, whatever their need may be," Laurel says. "We feel if you have it and you share it, it comes back. She had the attitude of, 'Give your best, and God gives you the rest.'" In 2018, Ruth's Mustards was named a Small Business Champion by SCORE, the Service Corps of Retired Executives, the nation's largest network of volunteer, expert business mentors. Ruth's Mustard earned the title of American Small Business Champion by submitting an online application describ- ing what makes their business one of the best small businesses in their community, and how they plan to use the prizes to grow their business. Nominations that garnered at least 100 votes were then pre- sented to a judging panel of small business experts that determined 102 winners – two for each state plus the District of Columbia — including Ruth's Mustard. Ruth's Mustard stood out for many reasons, according to the judges, not the least of which is that the company was donating that 10 percent of its profits to charities. Ruth's Mustards' nine flavors include Original Hot & Sweet, Sweet Grillin' Glaze, Cranberry, Raspberry, Garlic, Horseradish, Jalapeno, Cracked Black Pepper and Maple Mustard Marinade. In addition to single 7 fluid ounce jars, Ruth's Mustard also offers three-jar gift sets packed in miniature crates made by Laurel's son Dwight from recycled wooden pallets and gallons for foodservice use, and she also takes pri- vate-label orders. All of the mustards are gluten free, and the Maple Mustard Marinade is paleo. "All of them have vinegar, mustard and sugar – except for the maple. The maple is made with natu- ral organic maple extract in addition to local maple from our area. There's no coloring or salt – most of them are three or four ingredients," Laurel says. For more information, visit www.ruthsmustard.com and look for Ruth's Mustard on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Barbecue Sauces for the Sugar-Shy By Lorrie Baumann For health-conscious consumers who've woken up to the realization that condi- ments and sauces may contain ingredi- ents that they're no longer comfortable with ingesting, Maurice Jenkins, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Mugger's Marrow LLC, has created Stick 'em up! sauces. These are an organ- ic spin on traditional barbecue sauces that contain no granulated sugar. They're also low calorie, low sugar and low in sodi- um. A long-time grilling enthusiast, Jenkins got his start in the food business when he looked at the ingredients label of the barbecue sauce he'd been buying in his local grocery store. "I noticed that there was a lot of stuff that isn't good for you," he said. "I just looked at that and said, 'That stuff has no business going in your body.'" Other barbecue sauces on the shelf presented much the same issue to him, so he decided that he was going to have to make his own. At first, the sauce was just for his own use, but then he decided to take some barbecued ribs with him over to a dinner at a friend's house. The fruit that he'd been using as an ingredient happened to be out of season at the time, so Jenkins had to do some tin- kering with his recipe, substituting in dif- ferent fruit, but he had new sauce ready when it was time to fire up the smoker, and the ribs were a hit with his friends – and, more importantly, with an older rel- ative who was visiting his host's home. "Older folks will tell you the god's-hon- est truth about how something tastes. He just loved it," Jenkins said. "He had a big smile on his face, and he nodded and let me know that he really enjoyed the sauce.... That gave me the inspiration to go forward.... The flexibility of the prod- uct just gave me the impetus to try to market it." He's now offering his Stick 'em up! sauces in four flavors: Spicy Orange and Pineapple Jalapeno, the first two in the line; Mango Habanero and Agave Garlic. The sauces work well with any sort of meat, fish or chicken, according to Jenkins. "My vegetarian customers love it as well. It's very vegan friendly," he said. "It can go into dips, nachos, pizza topping. Mango Habanero, in particular, has been used as a cocktail sauce for oys- ters, and it makes a great Bloody Mary mix." Each of the sauces is based on agave and garlic, with three of them containing some peppers for a kick and some fruit to balance out the heat with some sweet- ness. Spicy Orange is a smoky sauce, the most like a traditional barbecue sauce, with paprika, cayenne and chipotle to provide the smokiness. "Pineapple Jalapeno has a nice balance of sweet and spicy," Jenkins said, "and the Mango Habanero brings the heat along with the great taste." They're packaged in 15-ounce glass jars that retail for $12 apiece. Jenkins drop ships the product directly from New Haven, Connecticut to customers nation- wide. For more information, visit www .muggersmarrowllc.com. True Salt: Clean, All Natural, Affordable By Lorrie Baumann True Salt is a brand based on the simple idea that the culinary world needed a pure sea salt that would enable high-end chefs and home cooks alike to make the switch from mass-market iodized salts to a higher-quality sea salt in a price-neutral way. "We had been looking at a number of opportunities within the ingredients stack – areas that we can disrupt and add value to the ingredients eco-system," said True Salt co-Founder Kelly Egan. "We spend a lot of time keeping it as natural and untouched as possible, and that comes out in the end product." True Salt is harvested in Mexico on the coast of the Sea of Cortez, one of the cleanest water bodies in the world, according to Egan. "What's great about the Sea of Cortez is that it's not really touched by the global water flow. It's phenomenally clear and pure and beauti- ful, with sun and consistent temperatures that create a wonderful environment for both salt and natural evaporation," he said. There, the company produces a nat- ural, unfiltered, unprocessed sea salt that's separated from the sea water by natural solar evaporation. "It creates wonderfully clean and beautifully tasting sea salt," Egan said, adding that top chefs in the southwestern U.S. who've tried it have told him that they still taste the sea, with its brininess without overly heavy salty taste, and the True Salt really acts to bring out the natural flavors. From Mexico, the salt is imported into the U.S. to Phoenix, Arizona, where it's hand-sifted and packed into 1-pound bags for retail sale at around $3.79 and larger bags and buckets for culinary and hospitality applications. There are cur- rently four products: a fine-grain salt, coarse-grain salt, a kosher grind that's milled to the same size grain as mass- market kosher salts and a cocktail rim- ming salt that's a mixture of fine and coarse grains. A flake salt is on the way. "We priced competi- tively, so we're able to switch these chefs and restaurateurs away from their iodized salt and enable them to use an all-natural sea salt in their foods and enable them to tell that health story," Egan said. "We are leading demand for the industry to move to a healthier product." The retail product is currently being sold in Oregon, with distribution into other areas of the Pacific Northwest on the way and nationwide distribution pro- jected for later this year. For more information, visit www .truesaltco.com.