We recently connected with Suzy and Clark Neal and have shared our conversation below.
Suzy and Clark, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
Clark and I live in the mountains of northeast Georgia, and the wine industry was a small but growing industry in our area, The Unicoi Wine Trail was established in our area, with about 6 local wineries, and I saw an opportunity to get involved. No one at that time was making jelly from local wine, so I ordered a canning pot and jelly pot from Amazon. Clark brought the big boxes in the house, and asked what was in them. I replied, a canning pot and jelly pot. He asked what I was going to do with them, and I shared, make jelly, of course. And so it began! We brought two products to market, one using local wine, and one using local apple cider to make a spicy sweet jelly. Our products are naturally low in sugar, and as thus, are classified as a fruit spread, not a jelly or jam, as those products contain more sugar. Our current catalog consists of 5 flavors, Salted Caramel Peach Spread, Apple Cider Pepper Spread, Strawberry Vanilla Spread, Cherry Jalapeno Spread, and Cherry Key Lime Spread. When the pandemic hit, supply chain problems plagued us too, and we put our local wine jelly in the vault.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Clark and I are serial entrepreneurs, and passionate home cooks. I always look for ways to promote Unicoi Preserves, and am very proud that we’ve bootstrapped it the whole way! In 2015, I saw an amateur food competition, Jekyll Island Shrimp and Grits, and entered us in it. We were selected to compete, and I told Clark we were entering our first competition as a way to promote Unicoi Preserves, and I wanted to use one of our products in our recipes. This is funny for a couple of reasons, first being that Clark doesn’t even EAT shrimp, and second, jelly in shrimp and grits? Not one to turn from a challenge, Clark embraced it, and made candied bacon with our Apple Cider Pepper Spread to top our shrimp and grits. We won first place and People;s Choice. After this event, we used more cooking competitions to promote our brand. I won an apple pie contest using our Apple Cider Pepper Spread. Clark and I have used our cooking experience to become recipe developers. We create and film recipes for Ingles Markets that they use for publications, tv, and digital. Sometimes the recipes will use our products, https://www.ingles-markets.com/recipes/napa-picnic-sandwich https://www.ingles-markets.com/recipes/summer-fruit-and-cheese-board https://www.ingles-markets.com/recipes/air-fryer-blackened-fish-tacos Other times, they do not https://www.ingles-markets.com/recipes/vegan-corn-chowder We have created a lot of recipes, and have a real passion for it.
How did you build your audience on social media?
Social media has changed so much since we’ve founded Unicoi Preserves. When we started out, I posted daily to Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. I also paired our products with more well known brands, and was thrilled when Palmetto Pimento Cheese did shared a post using our product and theirs together. https://pimentocheese.com/hawaiian-rolls-with-pc-and-strawberry-vanilla-spread/ The advice I’d share is to keep trying new things on social media, and experimenting to see what platform works the best for you.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
The pandemic was a challenging time for our company. We had supply chain issues on everything, jars, lids, vanilla, wine, even fruit. In addition, all the live events and festials where we’d sample and sell our products went away. We did the best we to keep Unicoi Preserves rolling on social media. It was during this time that we realized that in addition to owning Unicoi Preserves, with our creative cooking, outgoing personalities, and recipe developing skills, we ourselves are a brand. This has led to another very exciting arm of what we do, creating recipes, and filming them with Ingles Markets professional team of marketing and creatives.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://unicoipreserves.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unicoipreserves
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/unicoipreserves/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgKXyDffxz73dGQP-sEqljQ View my playlist for our professionally produced videos
- Other: https://www.ingles-markets.com/ingles-table-food-experts/upreserves https://www.wjhl.com/community/busy-mom-solutions-recipes/ https://www.foxcarolina.com/sports/tailgate-tastes/