It's a recipe any entrepreneur would salivate over: Find a niche. Add liberal amounts of food industry experience, a dash of chutzpah and a catchy name.
And a great-tasting product doesn't hurt, either.
Those ingredients have whipped up a hit for Dorene Humason of Folsom, Calif. In less than two years, her Chinese-inspired salad dressing mix -- Jaden -- has landed on hundreds of store shelves across California, including Nugget, Raley's and Save Mart.
It's been tapped as a "What's Hot, What's New" item by West-Sacramento-based Raley's, which noted Jaden's "versatility" and -- at $2.59 for a 2.2-ounce package -- its value.
"This local product gives our customers many options -- a dressing, marinade or seasoning, all in one," said Raley's spokeswoman Amy Davis.
Humason, whose company, The Chef in Black, is named for her signature black chef's coat, which she started wearing while doing food demonstrations during a grocery sales career.
She got her start in the early 1980s with local food distributor JB Sales, which sold natural food lines like Captain Carrot and Odwalla juices to Raley's supermarkets. For the last two decades, she made her living in outside sales, repping products for a food distributor to groceries and supermarkets.
"You had to know what the trends were," Humason said. "It gave me a big advantage (with Jaden) because I was astute on where the market was going. It had to be a viable product that made sense."
Using her years of industry knowledge and in-the-aisles research, she found her opportunity in mix-your-own salad dressing.
A powdered mix, she figured, had very limited competition, only grocery mainstays like Good Seasons and Hidden Valley ranch-style packets. There was almost nothing similar to the Asian flavor profile that she wanted to develop.
In 2007, she left her sales job and headed to her Folsom kitchen, using $250,000 in seed money to launch her company. She scoured local Asian markets for authentic ingredients and hired n to fine-tune the recipe.
"This was not another salsa. It wasn't another ranch dressing," said Humason, who went through 18 different recipe combinations before she hit on Jaden's distinct blend. Combined with peanut oil and rice wine vinegar, Jaden can be used as a marinade for meat or dressing for salads.
Once Humason locked in a recipe, she went after manufacturing and distribution deals.
She also put on her sales hat. Just months after Jaden's launch in January 2008, Humason said she had commitments from 1,300 California stores to carry the dressing.
Today, Humason sells about 200 cases a month of dressing packets. She declined to discuss company profits but said she hopes to boost sales to 500 cases a month.
Nor is she worried about trying to ramp up sales amid an uncertain economy.
"More people are eating at home, but they don't want to give up quality," she said. "Our time is limited, and our budgets are even more limited. I couldn't have timed it better."
E-mail Darrell Smith at dvsmith(at)sacbee.com
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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