chain thank you for watching us and i'm so pleased to be here today with my new guest christine meyers who is the creator and owner of madison park foods so as you can see she has brought an ama a ray of her products for us to sample and tell you all about today and i so look forward to her sharing her story so first of all christine welcome to the show thank you for having me you're so welcome pleasure to have you and i would love to learn more about you know madison park and why that name in the first place so madison park food is just actually a creation of a bunch of us getting together and as you're going to hear about the original product the popcorn that really comes from the midwest and there madison's all over the midwest yes and that's what one point talked about when we thought about it people in the midwest know about this great popping corn out here in the east where come park avenue you you don't they have never as sophisticated as the are out here they've never had this wonderful amazing thing that the midwest folks know intimately so it's kind of a juxtaposition of it's grown in  madison and it's going to be sold out here in park avenue so and we created a logo to kind of reflect for me one of my favorite places in new york but that that place for you to have a picnic that place where even in  one that's how it came about oh interesting so tell us a little bit more about the products that you broke so when i grew up we moved to around a lot when i grew up we looked a lot in the midwest and we live autonomy but when we moved i could never find it again and we love that entire family loves popcorn home i could never find anything like it and i honestly it was twenty five years later when i was on  go through this ok so so the challenge was to get people to know that there's a different corn it's as if you only had the no ice cream ok well you never tried to stash it like my don't know that that exists and so that we'll talk about that i know you're going to ask me about challenges a little later but our goal with creating this line of seasonings was to kind of improve the profile make it a little more sophisticated get people to think about popcorn not as a junk food and the one on the right is what we're used to and those holes are very hard and they get between your teeth and they're a hard to digest that's because the popcorn industry figured out how to make hybrid s dissolve basically they they're so tender they dissolve when they pop when you get when you eat them to wow crunchy taste and then it dissipates so not that i play doctor on t v or anything ok but if you have stomach issues teeth issues were lighter yes yes actually to see the different right sort of what i want we have is this one ok just hours very nice and color you can see the difference in these so this is five or six different brands of organic gram a popcorn that you would know right off of that and they're all the same they look all the same don't day i think so yeah so how different they are all are lighter right and just so much better for you and it has a taste ok as a tailor so it is but the but where i'm leaning with that with the story is that my husband who was just nice trade of very nice marriage for multiple it really is well get to that but none of those are my husband but but it was his idea to create a line of seasonings to elevate the profile of our popcorn and get people to understand that they  could define their own way to eat it and have their own taste profile so and we say it turns an ordinary snack into an extraordinary appetizer or another snack or dinner for me sometimes yes so it was my husband who was in this and not handing calories in so many unknowns or just laden with all sorts of crap right and this is so low right right and one of the reasons we started out and right now sell it in a in a the kernel form you so that you get to decide ok what the nutritional value and the taste is like ok so if you want to add all sorts of butter and all sorts of other things go ahead if you want it just pure and simple it's just so low in calories to eat that way it right right and you never know that there's something different really nice audience this is really good popcorn  about this later that they are at a trajectory of their own they are so wonderful to use on other products to try to have friends out you might want to get a little food and try it to the last one  let's say the colonial tavern right in front of you has a story of it own program were asked by a history channel chef if we had ever thought about making a seasoning that was made only from ingredients spices and herbs that would have been available to the eighteenth century american colonists when my husband went on this history exercise ok about where they were to what spices and herbs they would have had at their disposal in the port of origin because the port of origin where you get your your mace where you get your not meg where you get your sugar is is changes to the taste of it and that is certainly the case with cinnamon and so this is made takes on the flavor of the thing that what you're cooking it really does have a lot of versatility yeah and then let's say well when one morsel of one of the a little goes a long way by the way everybody just a little yes a little bit i really did have to be sensitive to what was sabi seasoning would be like as opposed to straight was sabi yeah right and so that allows you to do other things with it ok you have some chefs and you use submit whatever product and if it's if that needs to be cooked with they'll cook with it and give them serving ideas and thousands of people across thirty six or twenty seven basically the runner up aboard the finest award only behind space hunter was a global company wow and i will tell you i was in a meeting and i got to kind of went through it through my email that i was being considered seriously but i didn't know what that really had as i had never done it before and i saw the number come up and i walked out of the meeting and the director of marketing congratulated us and it was really a phenomenal benefit so for those folks who are listening who are getting into the food business i was really shy about entering the year before and luckily a friend of mine who was a food and said you know how to do it yeah but you  intimidating but after that we got great publicity and had a fantastic time at the show and people take you seriously now if they did it that i could speak english that invalidates your right folio your products  and you know people are interested because if the specialty put association thinks it's good enough to win an award then we want to know about your product exactly right so that's great now you're also going to be doing something else that's very exciting that you qualify for to help spread the word actually gain sales internationally right right one of the things that i learned early on again just talking to different food companies and folks that had started before me was to join an organization called food export sort dot org is the handle but it is out of our department of agriculture and of natural level and it allows young companies like us like me to take being helped to learn how to export your product so ok the rules are that you have to actually have an agricultural base and that fifty percent of your product has to be made in the united states so we did have to make some adjustments to be able to accommodate that from even from a spice perspective even the fifty percent of the spices have to come from united states yes oh it's untrue we did have to you know we we used domestic garlic we used domestic or regular we did have to make  things to adjust but the benefits are so incredible so they food export out or not only will they educate educate you they will teach you about the markets and where our seasoning mark or bad or who imports or exports more popping corn and what do they with it and then you can actually go on buying trips so i will be going in february to then cooper i have by and in preparation for that we have talked with the market wrap and canada we are sending forth our samples she's going to pre see the market for us and then we get to go up and meet with buyers and spend it day really around vancouver going from stores meeting buyers understanding how they merchandise things how they look on the shelves how big are the products are they little are they big what's important what what is the feel of it so as you go  and why one word of caution for anyone who's thinking about exploring that where they should do so before they enter something domestic trade shows ok i want to do a trade show on your own here prohibited from getting reimbursed so it pays to explore the food export group early on early on before doing it on your yes so you've got to be with them from the beginning yeah and right very good point for those to know so let's segue a little  bit you actually came from a different industry and that may also tie some of your trials and tribulations and challenges that you've had and while you're doing that i'm going to reach over and we're going to try your chicken oh boy so tell us a little bit about what you decided to stay home so i could i was travelling far too much for me to be able to manage both now and then i went into consulting strategic planning and development for technology compan then we found the popcorn on a family trip i don't family right college but so now i do this full time but i am also a freeholder in mars county right well right it's a big world too yeah you know it's very good audience it's different but you don't expect it very nice yeah well i'm going to continue to munch will you tell us more about your background and how you said wade and some of the challenges that you so so these the same way was the say quote was easy the good news about food is everyone loves food may include it and that when i have my son actually is the person who said why are you doing this technology consulting you really don't care about it and we love the popcorn can you just try and start so we met so it really was an easy segue and using the background that i had my corporate background the first part was very easy for me how do i set it up what do i do my competitive analysis see the obstacles were were not very high for me to be able to ok to get from here to understanding my market plan and write my business plan and the forecast the challenge for me was hitting the obstacles one you don't know that you don't know about and was honestly running a company all on your own so yeah i had an i need a pro and i had a marketing them down here the supply chain the supply campaign for for small businesses is important so if you do not have a ready to eat product and you have to look for coke packers and you have to look for ingredients and then logistics and shipping and shelf life and packaging that can be an enormous task yes give yourself time don't they juergen accomplish it on the first try and understand you're differentiate yourself and certainly the popcorn which nobody even knows they don't know anything about right so you have a challenge and good inroads but you have to educate to to understand that there's a reason they should be going absolutely and i'm still facing critical getting some things like this opportunity is great way for people to say you should go try it as opposed to letting people go into a store and having to select yours from a number of one hundred other different items social pretty critical do you find what if you found the most effective marketing method thus far it's a been just doing demos as a been some p r that's come about so so right now it is demos and understanding that you need to stay a little bit local and all right and cutting your teeth on and love ok for me who was a global tim person that was very hard you know i just want to go to tackle the channels and we have we have products that cover different categories the turkey robber the poultry roach got a great name ad of everybody could see the name but it chairman of the right words there we were able to make a lot of inroads with that one product easy to get a raise your head around a poultry rug got it ok and now let's see the rest of your portfolio those opposed to big i guess a common stake or maybe just for me to understand that the people who bought our popcorn were not responsible for buying season eggs and it only works when they're together so one of the reasons for changing our labels is so that they can be separate zero interest so yeah ok right so i would say social media and p r if you can get it is critical and then when you're out there you just you just need to commit to be being out there and well i hope you enjoyed hearing christine meyer story as much as i did and i was really lucky because like us to sit there and try everything and munch on this delicious chicken and potatoes and really it's really delightful concept to be bringing back an old traditional popcorn and combining it with actually even old and new flavor combinations very innovative so wishing you lots of lying to us and thank you so much for being a guest on food p