Without Integrity, You Have Nothing
This is why I haven't posted in a month...
When Wayward Gourmet was in its development stages, Liz and I had many a long discussion on how we wanted to make sure that everything the company touched had a piece of us in it. This included making sure we knew the source of every spice going into our blends, agreeing on flavors and recipes, and being open and honest with our customers through our blog and recipes. Transparency would be priority #1 as we'd be making food you serve your family. We knew that it would be easy to make a product that cost half as much, but the quality of spices would be lacking, and the flavor would be sub par. That wouldn't be something we'd be willing to put our name behind. We'd rather be proud of our products that make an additional sale or 2.
So why am I writing this, you ask? Recently we were approached by a rather large grocery store chain that specialized in "high quality/healthy" foods. They made a lucrative offer to purchase our blend recipes and their names so they could manufacture them in their factory, sell them in their stores, and pay us a royalty on each jar sold. On the surface it sounded too good to be true.
It didn't take too many meetings with this company to realize that if we took them up on their offer, we'd be relinquishing complete control over our spice blends. On top of that they had plans to transfer their spice supplier to a large food company that begins with "M" which is notorious for their ethical and quality integrity (yes, that company.)
The offer was a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it would change our business forever. On the other hand, it would change our business forever.
Dilemma...dilemma...
When the smoke cleared, we arrived at the decision to not accept their offer. We didn't invest so much time, energy and love to simply hand over the company reins for a paycheck. Most of all, we didn't want to be associated with a company that wasn't in sync with our core beliefs.
This experience has reinforced our original goal to make sure we put a piece of ourselves in everything we do. We love going to the kitchen to make our blends by hand, ourselves. We love experimenting with high quality spices to create new a fun flavors. And most of all we love interacting with our customers, hearing of the delicious food they make with our stuff and seeing the smiles on their faces.
That is something that can't be bought.