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GOURMET NEWS DECEMBER 2015 www.gourmetnews.com NEWS & NOTES 1 0 Incubating Continued from PAGE 9 Dowsett had been working as a private chef aboard a yacht and had found that the guests he was feeding liked the gourmet sauces he was making. And then he met an American girl and eventually married her. While the couple waited for the eight months it was going to take for Ashley to get her registered nurse's license in Aus- tralia, they decided to bottle their sauces for retail sale. "We thought we might be able to turn this into a real business," Dowsett says. "I wanted to run my own business. Because I was traveling, and the girl I met was from a different country, try- ing to open a restaurant was impossible." Warrick and Ashley Dowsett started Wozz! Kitchen Creations in Australia's Hunter Valley wine region in December of 2010. After two years in Australia, the couple decided that they wanted to move back to the States to be closer to Ashley's family, so Warrick applied for his green card and they packed up their bags and their recipes and moved to New England to stay with Ash- ley's parents while they found a new home of their own and relaunched their business. "The first thing we did when we touched down was start looking for a kitchen," Dowsett says. They thought they could per- haps find something similar to the kitchen they had in Australia, which was a com- mercial kitchen whose primary function was as a not-for-profit commissary for a Meals on Wheels program. "It had the space and lots of ovens," Dowsett says. "It was all stove top kitchen, and we were fill- ing jars by hand." What they found, just across the White Mountains from Ashley's family's home, was the Vermont Food Venture Center, which had opened its doors in 2011 and was fully operational at the beginning of 2012. "It was a real saving grace," Dowsett says. "We settled and ended up living in the area and found work in the area, and all those decisions were based on where the Food Venture Center was, so it changed everything in our lives.... We looked at other options, but they weren't equipped for how seriously we were taking our busi- ness." We were really looking for something we could grow into, he continues. Once we looked with that in mind, there weren't many options.... The Venture Center sur- passed anything we thought we'd find, so it was a very easy decision to make. The couple had their business operating again in January 2013, and almost imme- About 30-50 clients per year operate in the shared space, making products that range from Wozz! Kitchen Creations' condiments to chocolate truffles, baby food and dog biscuits. "All of them are very different in the way they use the building," Waring says. The Food Venture Center provides space and equipment and offers food safety train- ing and advice on regulatory compliance, food business planning, marketing and how to scale up a food business from cot- tage industry to commercial endeavor. "Networking is part of what we emphasize here," Waring says. "A lot of people are di- rectly working with each other so they can buy things in bulk. We want them to un- derstand that working together can help them save money, but also help them grow. For instance, if two of them are using the same distributor to deliver their merchan- dise to the same places, they can save on trucking charges by packing their merchan- dise in the same pallets. That's part of what's so great about all being in one build- ing together." Most of the center's incubator clients come from Vermont, but some have come from as far away as Virginia, drawn by word of mouth contact with existing clients, sometimes through the Specialty Food As- sociation's Summer Fancy Food Show and sofi Awards program or at a conference, Waring says. "We work very closely with other food business incubators in the state and the region. Some of us are for-profit, some are nonprofit, some are connected with school systems. It's been a tremendous opportunity to increase our learning as shared-use kitchens." Connecting Specialty Food Businesses to Farms The Vermont Food Venture Center repre- sents only a part of the activities of the Center for an Agricultural Economy, which originally started about 10 years ago with the mission of making a sustainable and healthy local food system, according to Waring. "We started by working with local schools, looking to get more connection between schools and fresh, local food," she says. "Then we realized that a lot of what was happening in rural areas was that the lack of good jobs was putting people in a diately started impressing some of Amer- ica's most demanding critics with their line of ethnic condiments with a fusion twist. Wozz! Kitchen Creations was a three-time sofi Finalist in 2014 for Ginger Soy Infu- sion, in the Outstanding Dressing category; for Triple Ale Onion Spread in the Out- standing Condiment Category; and for Spiced Beet Finishing Vinegar in the Out- standing Vinegar category. The Triple Ale Onion Spread won the sofi Award for Out- standing Condiment of 2014. The Ginger Soy Infusion won the sofi Award for Out- standing Dressing of 2014. Then, a year later, their Kiwi Lime Salsa Verde was named Outstanding Salsa or Dip for 2015. The Dowsetts are in a kitchen at the Ver- mont Food Venture Center once a week for a 12-hour day. "The food processing equip- ment is very industrial," Dowsett says. "It's bigger, and it speeds up everything, which when you're paying by the hour is pretty important." The hourly rental charges to use the space and equipment are steep enough to force the Dowsetts to be very efficient in how they use their time at the Food Ven- ture Center. "By the fact that they're not cheap, you've got to go in with a serious plan. A lot of people go in with a bit of a food dream, a bit romantic. With an incu- bator, having a bit of a background cer- tainly helps. Because it's expensive, you've got to hit your targets," he says. "It's made us much more competitive, to always be looking at the big picture.... As you grow, all of a sudden, you're dealing with costs you weren't counting on. With this, we're always having those costs in our face. It's made us really efficient producers." Having the Vermont Food Venture Cen- ter as a resource has made it possible for Dowsett to make his award-winning prod- ucts without compromising on quality or the range of his line. "We have a large prod- uct line. Getting cheaper glass or labels or ingredients is great if you do six products. But for us, every product has a different ethnicity, a different set of ingredients," he says. "With the Food Venture Center, it can grow with us. As our most popular prod- ucts get more volume, we can expand those parts of the product line." When Dowsett isn't in the kitchen mak- ing and bottling his condiments, he's usu- ally on the road. "I'm still traveling, getting the brand and the product out there. I'm on the road all the time, selling, promoting and even just sourcing ingredients and that sort of thing. After all the moving and con- stant travel, we've bought a house. We have a garden and a veggie patch, and we're get- ting out in the sunshine," he says. "Not liv- ing out of a suitcase has its merits, and I was ready for the change, so this could be a permanent thing." Vermont Food Venture Center The Vermont Food Venture Center is lo- cated in Hardwick, Vermont, which had a population of 3,010 at the 2010 U.S. Cen- sus. The town's population had a median income of $33,636 per household and a per capita income of $14,813. The Vermont Food Venture Center started as an economic development effort with money set aside by Vermont's Con- gressional delegation that allowed the cen- ter to start in an office building, but over time, that office space had deteriorated to the point at which it was no longer usable. "The building was completely depreciated – that would be the kind term. It was either going to close or to move," says Jasper Hill Farm Cheesemaker Mateo Kehler, a long- term anchor tenant at the Food Venture Center. "There's a group of us that got to- gether to organize the transition into our community, and to facilitate that, we signed a contract to lease space. That was in 2007 or 2008 And then the economy went down." When the economy crashed, American Restoration and Recovery Act money be- came available, says Sarah Waring, the Ex- ecutive Director of the Center for an Agricultural Economy, the nonprofit organ- ization that now owns and operates the Vermont Food Venture Center. We were fo- cused on how food could add value to our local economy. We jumped up and down at the opportunity. With $2 million in federal and state grants to work with, the Center for an Agri- cultural Economy authorized the start of construction on the building in 2010, and the Vermont Food Venture Center opened its doors in 2011. It is a 15,000 square-foot building with facilities to process shelf-sta- ble food products. It's not USDA-inspected, so no meat or dairy products can be pro- duced there. It has three shared kitchens, each with different specialty industrial equipment, that rent for between $28 and $35 per hour and two long-term anchor tenants, Jasper Hill Farm, which produces award-winning artisan cheeses, and Grass- roots Distribution, a local brewer. The two anchor tenants have their own spaces that are isolated from the shared-use facilities. Continued on PAGE 12 "After all the moving and constant travel, we've bought a house. We have a garden and a veggie patch, and we're getting out in the sunshine." — Warrick Dowsett, Wozz! Kitchen Creations "A lot of what was happening in rural areas was that the lack of good jobs was putting people in a place where they couldn't access local food, even if it was available. They simply couldn't afford it." — Sarah Waring, Center for an Agricultural Economy