Home-grown marketing opportunities abound

Project 17 hosted a workshop for small businesses specializing in food products Friday morning at the Bowlus Fine Arts Center.
The group’s larger aim is to improve economic opportunities and quality of life for those living in the 17 counties that make up southeast Kansas.
The focus of Friday’s event was on marketing and e-commerce.
In her opening remarks, Heather Morgan, executive director of Project 17, emphasized the role the organization could play in offering promotional assistance to food sellers in the region. “We know that in southeast Kansas a lot of local businesses don’t have websites and aren’t selling online. This event is really meant to create opportunities for businesses to increase their sales and grow jobs across the state.”
Among the day’s presenters were members from the Kansas Department of Agriculture (KDA), the USDA — whose Rural Development program has provided grant money to Project 17 — the FDA, plus researchers, instructors and students from Kansas State University.
Product safety comes before successful marketing, said Morgan.
Accordingly, a fair portion of Friday morning’s event was dedicated to food safety.
“Most people think that because they eat food every day, they’re food safety experts,” said Adam Inman, assistant program manager for KDA’s Food Safety and Lodging Program. Not so.
Take pepper jelly. According to Inman, this spicy-sweet condiment appeared on the radar of the Department of Agriculture earlier this year:
“Someone said ‘I make pepper jelly.’ Well, they were actually putting the flesh of the jalapeno in. That changes the chemistry of that product. And so we have to have it assessed to make sure it’s not going to be a risk for botulism, which can cause serious injury and death.
“That little change in formulation kicked it into a ‘product assessment required’ category. Regular jams and jellies don’t have that problem; they have plenty of acid and all the moisture is bound up by the various components. You throw in a pepper, it changes the chemistry and now I have to assess that product. I have to look at the specific recipe, including the size of the peppers used.”
One of Project 17’s goals is to bring this level of free expertise to the local food producer in southeast Kansas.
Londa Vanderwal Nwadike, a food safety specialist from K-State’s Research and Extension program, went on to detail the labeling requirements for selling individual food products. There are four: the identity of the product; the quantity per package; a declaration of responsibility (your name or the name of your business); and the ingredients (if there are more than two).
For smaller sellers, nutritional facts are not required, unless you make a specific claim for a product — a certain cereal is high in fiber, say — at which point you are required to list the supporting data.
It is also imperative that any allergens in a product are listed. Julie Vosilus, from the Food and Drug Administration, was on hand to underline this point. “When it comes to labeling, what’s going to get you into trouble are things you know are in your product but you don’t have on the label. We’re very protective of the young, the old, and those with compromised health systems.” According to Vosilus, if you don’t list an allergen — either within the ingredient list or at the end of the list — “that’s pretty much a Class I recall, our most severe recall.”
 
Having determined that your food product is now safe and accurately labeled, you’re ready to market it.
Stacy Mayo was the first speaker to describe the ways her organization is prepared to help. Mayo is the director of KDA’s “From the Land of Kansas” trademark program. The group’s goal is to promote and market Kansas agriculture and agricultural products.  
“A lot of times you have a great product and that’s why you’re a great small business owner. But if I can come in and help you develop your product and develop your business as a marketer, that’s what I want to do.
“We as Kansans are very humble. We’re not always good about taking ownership of what we do…. Consumers want to know where their food is from. And people associate Kansas with a safe, wholesome food supply in the Midwest.”
To that end the trademark program has designed wheat-emblazoned stickers — the group’s official emblem — that you can attach to your product’s packaging, signifying its Kansas origins.
If you want to sell your product in a store, you will need a bar code for each item. If you plan to ship the items in bulk, then that crate or pallet needs its own bar code. According to Mayo, you can purchase these at a below-market rate from the Kansas Department of Agriculture.
“We really love to see companies meet their dreams, and a lot of times they don’t even know what their dream is until we can throw out some ideas.”
It was a theme one of the final speakers, David Lehman, professor in the Department of Marketing at K-State, would build on. But first he did the painful thing that professors sometimes do. He went around the room and asked everyone to introduce themselves and say why they were there.
About half of the 30 or so in attendance had a professional connection to the speakers or to the speakers’ organizations. The rest, though, were small food producers or small farmers from Allen and surrounding counties that Project 17 is endeavoring to assist.
Lehman brought three of his students along to Friday morning’s workshop. They stood in for the larger group of students in his ag-marketing classes who will be working closely with Project 17 to create a marketing plan — whether a new logo or website or social media portfolio — for a number of agricultural or food producers in the area. “We’re here to figure out how we can help you,” Lehman said.

Calvin Parker of Parker’s Greenhouse between Iola and Humboldt attended Friday’s forum.
Parker has been taking his fresh greens, flowers and plants to farmers markets for the past five years. Friday was his first Project 17 meeting.
Parker said he was glad he came and sees the potential advantage in combining his green thumb with the marketing and technological savvy of the K-State students. “I’ve got two boys — a little older than that — and they’ve been telling me the same thing. ‘You need to do this, Dad.’”