Fire & Flavor owners found each other, success
Self-described foodies and entrepreneurial spirits, Gena and Davis Knox married in 2002. A year later they married their shared interests when Gena formed a company called Fire & Flavor.
Both unions have prospered.
The UGA grads recently had their first child. They say their business, which sells grill-based cooking products including wood planks, rubs, brines, skewers and seasonings, has hit $4 million in annual revenues. It has 14 employees working in a 40,000-square-foot warehouse outside Athens.
Fire & Flavor has had 197 percent growth in the last five years, and the Knoxes regularly add new products and retail outlets while building in-store displays to assure growth continues.
Georgia economic development officials tout the job benefits of the state's food industry, and the Knoxes' company is one of its success stories. Its products are sold in all 50 states in thousands of grocery stores such as Kroger, Publix, Whole Foods and Safeway, and the firm has attracted national media attention.
Gena, 33, whose photo graces product packages, started the business after reading about plank grilling and not being able to find planks in stores. While Davis, 34, held onto his day job in marketing for an aviation services company in Atlanta, she began pitching retailers, scoring early success.
Although she studied and initially worked in landscape architecture, Gena grew up in a central Georgia house surrounded by a food-loving family. She also flashed early entrepreneurial instincts, selling boiled peanuts on the streets.
"It was always something," she said -- something related to food. While briefly living in Colorado, where Davis worked in the fly-fishing business, she launched a fresh salsa making company.
Fire & Flavor, she said, "was just a natural evolution for me."
Davis joined the business full time in 2005 when it still was small, but showing potential.
"It was kind of a leap of faith," he said. "I had a great job."
He focuses on marketing and operations while she primarily concentrates on new product development and sales. Among their related projects, she has written a cookbook, the self-published "Gourmet Made Simple." A second is scheduled for this fall.
The Knoxes, who have no equity partners, say they got into the food products business at the right time and that they priced their products correctly, generally about $6 or $7.
The economy hasn't been a huge drag, they said, although they have leaned more heavily on discount coupon promotions recently, and they've seen sales rise at value-oriented retail outlets and slip at higher-end stores.
John Bowler, regional seafood coordinator for Whole Foods, placed the first big order with Fire & Flavor. "Back then, I said, ‘What the heck, let's give it a shot. But they've endured and grown greatly."
