Sunday, May 11, 2008
Food
Happy meals
Local moms’ frozen organic baby food company, Jack’s Harvest
Photo by Spark St. Jude
Jack’s Harvest founders and their inspirations: (L-R) Sadie, Jack, Heather Schoenrock, Lucy, Avery, Connie Pope and Kathryn.
By Hope S. Philbrick
Mom-owned and operated Jack’s Harvest is an Atlanta-based company that produces frozen organic baby food with an emphasis on local, seasonal produce. The Sunday Paper recently met with founders Connie Pope and Heather Schoenrock for the inside scoop.
Q What inspired your company?
Connie: We’ve been friends for years and would get our kids together for play dates. Heather had her son Jack one month before I had my son Avery. I do not like to cook. Heather loves to cook. She made baby food for Jack—applesauce with a little cinnamon in it, peas with mint. She brought some over for me to feed Avery. Once I saw it, smelled it, I said, “I can’t go back to junk now! I’ll pay you to make baby food for me.” She said, “It’s really easy, you can do it yourself.” I said, “I don’t make dinner; I’m not going to make baby food.” She said that she’d do it for me; I said that I’d pay her. Two of our other friends had babies around the same time, and, in a matter of two weeks, Heather was cooking for four babies. I had a light bulb moment: Obviously people wanted it, so there might be a business there. That’s how it started. It was just one of those things where you see an opportunity and can’t say no.
Heather: It did evolve very organically. It started as a fun idea, something to do. We’ve grown at a pace we can keep up with and are comfortable with.
What is new and different about your products? Isn’t organic baby food available elsewhere?
Connie: Most other baby foods are in plastic containers and four-ounce tubs. Our food is frozen in one-ounce cubes, which is a really nice size for babies who are just starting solids, and packaged in a 12-ounce Ziploc bag to reduce waste. Just read the labels; some other baby foods have a lot of assorted ingredients whereas ours is literally food. Another one of our differentiators is spice.
Heather: Spices are used for specific reasons. For example, cinnamon is antibacterial and anti-inflammatory, and mint is good for digestion. My oldest daughter Lucy, now 9, was a very sick baby. We took her to every doctor, and nobody could pinpoint why. Nine years ago, organics were hard to come by, but I noticed that the more organics she ate, the better her health. You can heal yourself and shore up your immunity. And why shouldn’t baby food taste good? I love butternut squash soup with sage and apples and realized it would be a great baby food flavor.
We worked with the Department of Agriculture to become USDA certified. Each time I develop a new recipe I have to submit a profile. It’s an in-depth process.
How are recipes developed?
Connie: We test out new flavors. We’ll sometimes add a sample bag with four cubes of a new flavor to orders to get customer feedback. When moms call us and say, “I need this,” we add it to the roster.
Heather: We have roped in neighbors and friends to test something new. It’s interesting to see who will try it. We have 5-year-olds who won’t eat fruits and vegetables but will try our food as “pro tasters.”
Connie: Another interesting thing is that moms will buy our food for older kids and use it in recipes, because it’s just pureed frozen fruit. We did a home show for a bunch of friends who wanted to know how to enhance recipes with these purees, and we showed them dishes like mango smoothies and pancakes with applesauce.
Heather: We have “succulent succotash,” “go bananas with a cherry on top”—our whole list of flavors is on the Web site. We just did a new flavor, which is pear with turmeric and cinnamon. We’re always coming up with new stuff. SP
For more information, visit www.jacksharvest.com.