Has this thought ever crossed your mind? “That was the most delicious thing I ever made. I could sell that!” If you need some inspiration, here are three metro area food entrepreneurs living the dream of selling something delicious they created.
Beautiful Briny Sea
Inside an ordinary industrial-looking building on the northern border of Atlanta’s Grant Park neighborhood, Suzi Sheffield and a crew of folks who call themselves “The Saltines” spend their days mixing up any number of the sweet and savory mixtures that are the stock in trade of Beautiful Briny Sea.
They might be mixing up French Picnic Salt with mustard, garlic and herbs. Or Hickory-smoked Campfire Salt with sumac, chili and cumin. Maybe it’s a batch of Friends Forever, a salt and honey mix. Or it could just be they’re concocting a whole lot of Pocketful of Starlight vanilla sugar, a mix that just won them a 2016 University of Georgia Flavor of Georgia Food Product award.
The whimsical names reflect the sensibility of founder Sheffield, who named the company after a song in the Disney movie, “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” and designed a logo that features her father as a Naval Academy student looking out over the Pacific Ocean.
Walking into the kitchen, or “salt studio,” visitors are greeted with smiles and an intoxicating mix of pungent, floral, smoky, sweet and herbal aromas. Fifty-five pound bags of salt and sugar are stacked on pallets, staples of the kitchen that are ordered in batches of 2,500 pounds at a time.
And as for the exotic aromas? They come from the more than 300 jars and tubs of herbs and spices that go into the company’s 15 mixes.
“We are currently using about 180 different seasonings. The rest are for our experiments. We have a big wall full of Mason jars and apothecary jars full of things we don’t use every day but are here so we can play around with different ideas,” says Sheffield.
Sheffield founded Beautiful Briny Sea about six years ago when she returned to hometown Atlanta after running a small restaurant in Columbia, South Carolina. Coming home, she didn’t want to open another restaurant but she wanted to stay connected with the people she loved in the food business, particularly local chefs. What could she create that was shelf stable but still connected her to the things she loved? Her brainstorm was flavored salts and sugars.
The first small batches were salts with single flavorings. Rosemary Salt. Mushroom Salt. Lavender Salt. The mixture have evolved to more complicated flavorings with the most recent addition being Sultan Papadopoulos, a mixture of curry, Greek herbs and Turkish spices.
Sheffield says her mission is to create a great product and just as importantly a great place to work where everyone treats each other well. She’s been just as thoughtful in planning for the company’s growth, developing a custom salt bar for Whole Foods Market and special flavors for Williams-Sonoma.
Beautiful Briny Sea maintains an open door for local chefs and bartenders. They can come into the salt studio and experiment to create their own custom combinations. Six Feet Under mixes up its special blackening seasoning there. And the chefs from Gunshow came in to build a gunpowder black finishing salt.
What’s next for Beautiful Briny Sea? These days Sheffield is intrigued by sour flavors like those produced in fermentation and the flavor profiles created when combining elements that are earthy, spicy and sour.
Where you can find it. Online at www.beautifulbrinysea.com. Also The Cook's Warehouse, the Beehive, Your DeKalb Farmers Market, Peachtree Road Farmers Market and Freedom Farmers Market at the Carter Center.
Queen of Cream
Cora Cotrim is the Queen of Cream – a title coined when the pastry chef decided to tackle the one sweet thing she didn’t know how to make.
Ice cream.
“I got into making a lot of it at home but it wasn’t good. It was too icy or the flavor just wasn’t there. I played obsessively until I got it right,” she says.
A friend labeled her the “Queen of Cream” and the rest is history.
In 2013, she took her Queen of Cream cart on the road, starting out small by limiting the cart to events and festivals. In the next two years she began selling at farmers markets like Grant Park and Decatur and took on some wholesale accounts and private catering as well.
This year she’ll be at those markets as well as others. The cart also makes occasional appearance at other markets such as Serenbe’s Saturday morning market in Chattahoochee Hills.
“I love the markets because I love walking around and talking with vendors. And the customers are happy to be there. They want to talk about your products and they like to taste new things.”
But the carts have their limitations. Each one can only hold about six flavors, which change every three or four weeks but may include varieties such as Key Lime Pie, Lavender Honey Comb and Bangkok Cream.
How to overcome that limitation? Open a shop.
Last September, Cotrim opened the Queen of Cream Ice Cream and Coffee Parlor on Highland Avenue. The shop now houses the production kitchen where all ice cream is made from scratch from locally sourced dairy. And customers can choose from at least a dozen flavors of ice cream with at least two non-dairy options.
The shop is also where the team bakes cookies and brownies “and other things that go with ice cream” and on weekends offers breakfast. “We don’t get too crazy. The offerings are pretty simple and vegetable driven.”
Her advice to other budding food entrepreneurs? “The food industry is hard. It’s long hours and with ice cream, there’s a lot of heavy lifting. When you’re starting out and you’re tired and you’re faced with all the ups and downs, you have to remember that there’s a bright future ahead.”
Where you can find it: Queen of Cream Ice Cream and Coffee Parlor, 701 Highland Ave., Atlanta. Also Peachtree Road Farmers Market, Grant Park Farmers Market, Decatur Farmers Market and Green Market at Piedmont Park.
Mo’Mint & Thyme
A cultural trip to Havana introduced Jamaica-native Byrma Braham of Mo'Mint & Thyme to the mojito, a heady combination of rum, mint, lime and cane sugar. She fell in love with the drink and came home ready to enjoy more of the sparkling combination.
Disappointed with everything she found in the market, she crafted her own mix, even growing her own “Mojito” mint to recreate the authentic Cuban flavor she remembered.
She co-owned an art gallery in Marietta, a stop on the monthly Marietta Square Art Walk. Since the gallery was a bit off the beaten path, she dreamed up a promotion – “Come for the art, come for the mojitos” – and created a concentrated syrup to be mixed on the spot with club soda and rum. Braham knew she had a winner when everyone ignored the wine and drank the mojitos.
Fast forward a year and Braham had her food preparers’ license to sell her mix, access to a shared commercial kitchen and was producing ‘Mo’Mint Mojito Mix.’
She started selling at the Saturday morning Marietta Square Farmers Market. “I thought a local farmers market seemed like the perfect incubator and testing ground for our mixer. The mojito mix was a hit. It was the right place for our hand crafted, all natural product.”
Inspired by her mother’s homemade ginger beer, Braham went on to create a Zingy Ginger mixer and then a variation called Happy Hibiscus based on a Jamaican sorrel drink.
Where you can find it: Online at www.momintandthyme.com. Also Marietta Square Farmers Market, Sandy Springs Farmers Market, Woodstock Farmers Market and Tucker Main Street Farmers Market.
