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

Jeff , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Quality control is a challenge almost every entrepreneur has had to focus on when growing – any advice, stories or insight around how to best ensure quality is maintained as your business scales?

First, we are in our relative infancy as a company. We went from making a couple of hundred gallons for ourselves and friends, then to farmers markets and local stores, and now producing almost 3,000 gallons in less than 12 months.
The process of making vinegar is the oxidation of ethanol (alcohol) into acetic acid by beneficial bacteria called Acetobacter. We convert the sugars of a plant/fruit in alcohol (wine) through yeast fermentation, followed by a second fermentation where the alcohol is oxidized into acetic acid (vinegar) by the bacteria.

Our process does not allow for short cuts. Sure, there is equipment that can speed up the process of making vinegar, but you do sacrifice quality for quantity. The benefit of producing a stable shelf product is that you can build inventory. In fact, the longer the vinegar bottle ages – the better the flavor. To maintain quality, we do not change the actual process at all – “it’s ready when it’s ready”. The smell and taste tests are the same, how we determine when it is ready to bottle remains the same as well.

We have all our vinegars, ciders, wines, drinks, etc. tested by an ISO certified lab for things like ABV, acid, PH, etc. One of the challenges we had is that we used wood and steel 200-liter fermenters, and each fermenter might be at a different point in the biological oxidation process – and it became time consuming and expensive to determine when the final chemical change took place. To solve this, we have invested in handheld testing equipment to instantly determine alcohol and acid by volume.

I would never sacrifice quality for growth. In fact, we are looking for ways to improve the taste by harvesting when the fruit is not just ready but optimal, sourcing local ingredients we don’t grow from “expert” farmers, and investing in temperature-controlled storage.

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?

We are a women and veteran owned business. Our business stems from the love of our farm, the things we produce from it, and the animals that live on it. We have several different entities: Harpers Ridge Farm, Harpers Ridge Wine, Old Mission Ciders, TC Spirit Donkeys, and Little Long Ears Provisions.

We produce a single wine from our vineyard where we grow Pinot Gris grapes. We also produce one hard cider a year called Old Mission Ciders – “the Kitchen Sink”, which is a blend of all of our cider apples and will be completely different every year. Our main business brand is Little Long Ears Provisions which focuses on extending the wine/cider making process into aged vinegars. We currently have apple cider vinegar, pear vinegar, Fire Cider vinegar, beer malt vinegar, and Michigan cherry vinegar. On deck, we will have small batches of red wine, white wine, champagne, black garlic, blackberry and red raspberry vinegars. Finally, we also have lots of farm animals including mini donkeys that people rent for photo ops at their parties, weddings, and other events.

When people think of us, and vinegar in general, we would like to say that it makes your food taste better. Besides the health benefits of vinegar like probiotics, anti-oxidants, and cholesterol/blood-sugar control; vinegar is the best way to add more diverse and complex flavors to almost any dish. Most chefs would agree that it is their condiment of choice.

We do work hard, but I think the thing we are most proud of isn’t something we did, but how our hometown community of Traverse City and Northern Michigan has embraced us (and the many other small businesses out there). We wouldn’t be here without the retailers who took a chance on us, the other small businesses we cross pollinate with, our supporting farmers, and of course the customers who spend their hard earned money on our products and services.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

Our farm was our side-hustle! We both worked in the corporate world (one of us still does), but personally never felt fulfilled. We started by planting some cherry trees and grapes – because what else would you do in the Traverse City area?! We then planted a big garden and more trees, this time apple and pear. I have been making beer and alcohol for a long time, but started experimenting with apples, pears and grapes. When one of us was laid off from their job in 202o, we began to do farmers markets and craft shows. We determined that there were better market garden farmers out there than us, so how could we monetize our investments in the vineyard and orchard? By accident we created some vinegar which tasted really good and we pivoted and focused on non-perishable and shelf stable products. In parallel, we got our wine making license and bought a production facility that is licensed to by the department of agriculture and the liquor control division. Making quality vinegar, requires quality alcohol – so being skilled in one, helps the other.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.

We use Etsy and are building out our new website on Shopify. In the past, we were using Square Space to host/build our website – but have found that Shopify is better designed for ecommerce and has a broader ecosystem to other third party applications that support revenue capture and growth. Things like subscriptions, cart building, upselling, email marketing through apps like Klayvio, etc.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.donkeyprovisions.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/littlelongearsprovisions/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/littlelongearsprovisions/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-kane-9bb2b57/

Image Credits

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