THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, March 6, 1995 TAG: 9503040317
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Ted Evanoff
LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines
Chris St. James has this idea. American food companies make substandard fare. Nothing's wrong with restaurant and supermarket meat. It's just not as tasty as it could be.
St. James has a solution. Baby Blake's Beasty Sauce, Brazilian Mustard Glaze, M.D. Pepper Marinade and spice mixes with other catchy names are blended in Portsmouth and shipped to 46 states. This summer he plans to expand production capacity.
What's going on at TWB Gourmet Foods Inc., the business founded by St. James and wife Loetitia, has the appealing air of young Henry Ford tinkering with the internal combustion engine. Or, maybe more to the point, it's the young Japanese engineer Soichiro Honda exploiting a flaw in Detroit's behemoth auto industry.
St. James, former research and development director at Doughtie's Foods Inc. in Portsmouth, contends the major packinghouses in the United States have a monopoly on the meat market.
Intent on shipping tons of beef, poultry and pork thousands of miles, the processors have overlooked innovation. And in doing so, they have completely missed something. Consumers want higher quality.
At least, that's the way St. James tells the story. And so far, the numbers bear him out. TWB Gourmet Foods comprises 15 employees, a new 10,000-square-foot plant capable of bottling a jar every second and an adjacent 10,000-square-foot warehouse on Portsmouth's Elmhurst Lane.
Using less-than-truckload carriers and overnight express, TWB ships 46 glazes, sauces, marinades and spice mixes under the Thunder Bay label. Gourmet food stores are prime customers along with restaurants. Big meat processors in the United States are being courted.
Plans call for expanding TWB's warehouse in June and devoting to production the floor space in the plant now used for storage.
St. James, 31, a trained chef from Cincinnati, has assembled a staff to build the company. Loetitia Adam-St. James, who herself once launched a gourmet foods business, handles finances. Andrew J. Feldmann, a distributor of Haagan Daz ice cream in Richmond and Norfolk, manages sales.
Richard Christy, a kitchen veteran of 23 years, is the executive chef. The plant chemist, Samuel A. DeGuzman, was a quality control manager for Pepsi Cola International. Plant manager Joe Szuba ran a Ragu Foods plant in Kentucky and worked with Chris St. James in the mid-'80s, opening a processing plant for Supreme Foods.
Successful foodmakers are nothing new in Hampton Roads. Food processing has been one of the few expanding sectors in the region's manufacturing base.
Last June, 101 food plants employed about 9,700 workers in Tidewater, compared to 7,800 workers in 89 plants a decade earlier.
What makes TWB stand out in the industry is its tactics. In courting the large packinghouses, TWB has focused on their prime commodity, whether it's beef, pork or poultry. TWB figures it can improve their product.
Honda did much the same thing with small cars in the late '70s. What happened next in Detroit is history. Automakers realized customers wanted well-built, fuel-efficient cars.
St. James may never do to the food business what Honda did to the car business. But there's no doubt he's spotted a market niche neglected by the major food companies.
Few meat processors employ flavor technologists. Most processors tend to rely on spice labs where the specialist usually is a meat scientist expert in no more than a handful of spices.
That raises profitable possibilities for TWB. For example, tons of turkey thighs are exported at low prices into the Third World. Most processors won't prepare the tough thigh meat for consumption in the United States.
St. James has a recipe. TWB blends as many as 60 spices to make a single sauce. Soften the tough thighs with a machine and soak the meat in a TWB marinade. The turkey, St. James said, will taste like beef.
What has him convinced there's a flavor niche for his spices is the trend in dining.
Fast food has changed. Once it meant cheeseburgers. Then pizza and chicken, Mexican and Italian treats became fast fare. Now the chains are sprucing up the menu. There's little wonder.
``Americans are tired of the same old, same old,'' St. James said. ``People are willing to pay for quality products.'' by CNB