Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Nancy Bruns. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Nancy, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love for you to start by sharing your thoughts about the pros and cons of family businesses.

Our family has been in business since 1813, 7 generations. There have been a lot of challenges, successes, failures and lessons learned. It gets complicated when there are conflicts with family members. You can’t just fire someone and move on. You are always family, no matter what is happening in the business. Having a shared vision, and a heritage, helps drive the mission and growth of the business.
J.Q. Dickinson Salt-Works is a revival of the original family business that operated for 160 years. The family made salt on an industrial scale for meat preservation. It was started by William Dickinson and Joel Shrewsbury, who were brother-in-laws. They built a great business but had many conflicts that caused the original company to reorganize into separate salt companies for each of them. There was a long, drawn-out law suit, that wasn’t settled before they both died. I often think of this and wonder if they could have found another way.
Today, I am the one that runs the business. My brother, Lewis, is the co-founder and he worked with me for several years before attending to other responsibilities. I would love to have a child of mine, or my niece or nephew, join me and eventually succeed me. All four of them are pursuing their own careers now, which is great. I don’t put any pressure on them. We’ll see how things develop.

Nancy, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a chef by training. I graduated from college and went on to Culinary School in Vermont for 2 years. I love the food industry and worked in many aspects of it before buying a restaurant in North Carolina in 1999. It was a great little cafe, retail wine and gourmet food shop, and we did catering. We were a busy place. I sold the restaurant in 2008. I did a lot of volunteer work as well as strategic planning with non-profits. I was searching for my next chapter. I started digging into my family history and discovered the details about the family salt business. I am a West Virginia native and the salt business operated here for 160 years but not while I was growing up. I had been collecting salts from around the world. I was fascinated by the textures, varied flavor profiles, and colors. It was as if the stars aligned and I saw my path. I came home and revived the business with my brother on our family farm (currently owned by our 3rd cousins) where salt was produced many years ago. Our ancestors used timber, then coal, to stoke their furnaces to boil down the brine (which comes from deep underground). We take a different approach. We wanted to have a minimal environmental footprint so we use sun-houses (greenhouses) where the brine is evaporated and crystallized. We hand harvest the salt. It is very labor intensive but provides a clean, bright, delicious product. We sell to retailers and restaurants around the country. We also have a very active website for sales direct to consumer. The salt production is the core of our business but we do much more now. We have many great relationships with other Appalachian producers so we started carrying their products. The on-site shop and website have grown into what we call the Appalachian Mercantile. It is important to us to be good members of a sustainable economic community by keeping as much money within our region as possible. We have expanded this idea into a seasonal subscription box. Four times a year we ship a curated collection of products to our subscribers from producers and crafters from the region.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

We have a very clear vision. We want to be the best sustainably made American salt. We stay true to our methods everyday, in every step of our process. We take people on tours so they can see first hand the care we take with our product. We are very transparent. We’re not chasing trends. It is important to live and breathe your mission and vision.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

I love the Zingerman’s family of businesses in Ann Arbor, MI. One of the founders of the business, Ari Weinzweig, wrote a series of leadership management books that are really helpful in creating a good working environment, helping employees feel empowered, and also solidify the vision for the business. They have helped me be a better leader and be more self aware. They also offer onsite training for management teams. I hope to go and take some key employees with me one day.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://jqdsalt.com
• Instagram: @jqdsalt
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/jqdsalt
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/102980533
• Twitter: @jqdsalt
• Youtube: @jqdickinsonsalt-works1199

Image Credits

Lauren Stonestreet