Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Michael Miller. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Michael, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Crazy stuff happening is almost as certain as death and taxes – it’s technically “unexpected” but something unexpected happening is to be expected and so can you share a crazy story with our readers
In 2019 we were selected as a finalist for HEB’s Quest for the Best. We were one of twenty products chosen by HEB out of thousands of submissions. We had developed the first Fermented Bloody Mary Mix made 100% from fresh vegetables. It was unique and HEB wanted it.
Though we didn’t WIN top prize we did get the opportunity to be in about 140 stores in Texas. This was a game-changer for us as at the time we were maybe in 30 stores at the time. OMG! How were we going to scale a product that we made ten gallons at a time to 500 gallons plus? The task was daunting and because we were so original there was no Texas copacker willing to take on the task. So, we decided to self-manufacture and figure out how an ex-oil field guy and a Special Education Teacher (husband wife team) was going to scale up to meet HEB demands.
Oh, did I say we had about 45 days to figure it out too? After experimenting on small scale, we finally realized that IBC totes could get us the volume and were in the budget for a bootstrapped young food company. With gool ‘ole’ Texas ingenuity and lots of trial and error we converted more than 12,000 pounds of tomatoes into our fermantaliciousness. We did most of it my hand, minus the food grade pump we used to transfer into our homemade bucket-bottle filling station. We hired extra workers, and we enlisted the help of many in our local food community to help pt labels on and tape case boxes up to meet our deadline. We were floored by the support even one volunteer stayed until 4am on our final day to complete the first order. It was Friday and we were on our way!
Then a phone call from the buyer. Um, we had the shipment being returned because we are locked down for COVID. Mind you this just so happened to be the first day of a nationwide Covid lock-down. After much back and forth they managed to get HEB to accept it back in San Antonio. Now my freight costs just tripled because now drivers were waiting 7 plus hours in line to drop their loads but now, they had me and to redeliver to San Antonio the price jumped. Hell, I didn’t care it was a $50k purchase and I wanted it in that warehouse no matter what. Finally, by Monday morning I got the call that it was accepted in HEB warehouse in San Antonio. Jubilations were short lived as our product sat in the warehouse for 2 months because we were nonessential. HEB, rightfully so, were more concerned with feeding people than a high-end healthy tomato juice. Obviously, toilet paper and Hamburger Helper were more important to the masses.
Finally, two months later we trickled into 32 stores and three or four more months we were in about 130 stores. However, in-person demonstrations were out and this being a product that required a lot of customer education and introduction; our big launch was a big flop.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Madge’s Food was started by a husband (Mike) and wife (Jody) team back in 2014 as a side project for Jody. Jody is a Special Education teacher and has been for 20 years handling moderate to severe children. At the time myself, I had a mid-life crisis after a failed tech start-up and decided to go work in the oilfields of South Texas and Louisiana. So really our story began with the search of a comparable tomato jam to my grandmother, named Madge. I was never able to find one even close to her recipe. Well, we decided to try making it ourselves for our enjoyment, and of course we would modernize it, and translate it from grandmother’s, “tad of this and a handful of that’ into actual quantitative hard numbers. Plus, make it healthier by using 1/3 less sugar. Even though I absolutely screwed up the first batch Jody came to the rescue and created a new version of Grandma Madge’s infamous tomato jam. First bite of that sweet tomato and ginger lemonish taste instantly transported me back to when I was 6 sitting at her kitchen table eating my bowl of Wheaties and eating toast with her tomato jam.
Wait a minute so how does tomato jam and kimchi even relate? Good question: they don’t except it did set us on a mission to fundamentally change the way food is manufactured. We were going to be rebels, like many other food entrepreneurs and change the world of food. No matter how much we loved grandma’s recipes we initially launched with we knew that was not the category that was going to make a big enough impact.
At about this time in 2014 I came across this thing called fermentation and fell in love with it, literally caught the bug-pun intended. I started to ferment anything I could get my hands on and was convinced we were on to something here. Then I went down the rabbit hole of gut biome and the mapping of the newest frontier in biomedical science. Oh, was I ever all aboard the fermented food train. Jody was all excited because she had studied how important nutrition was to special needs children in their learning, so it was a win-win-win. That is how Madge’s started and quickly pivoted 100% into fermented foods and never using sugar again in our products.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
Starting a food manufacturing company was going to be easy or so I thought. Sure, we’ll just rent kitchen space at a shared kitchen until we figure this out. Well, that was right up until the day we just got our state licenses and insurance issued to be told that this shared kitchen was closing. SO that is one of our first major hurdles we had to overcome. We decided that we were serious about this, and we should push onwards. We decided sure let’s build our own commercial kitchen it will be easy.
We bootstrapped our start-up in a way that I’m sure every financial guru will tell you is the stupidest way to fund a start-up, I tapped my 401K from the oil field company. Yes, I carved out a good chunk of my 401K and went about putting together a bare bones manufacturing kitchen in an soulless cement warehouse room. It still wasn’t enough but, hey we were legal. Then about a year later when we ran out of money and the lease ended, we decided to move into a better location to be a part of a community of food makers, manufactures, and creatives. Well this space was going to be larger and more customized to what I wanted but needed more money. Luckily around that same time oil dropped, and they laid me off for four months. So, I tapped another big portion of my 401k to build out our second commercial kitchen This time we built our space from the ground up, like literally every screw and nail to every coat of paint.
That’s how went funded our startup. Definitely not the best choice unless your insane and willing to stomach the risk. However those times where I feel I want to quit comes in to my mind is about the same time I remember I don’t really have a 401k anymore and that I need to suck it up and drive on.
How’d you meet your business partner?
Our love story since we are a family founded business began years ago. I was just getting out of the Army. I was young and crazy after just spent the almost 3 years in the army jumping out of planes and helicopters with 3/75th Ranger battalion. However unfortunately I was injured on a fast rope and fell about 30 feet on my back. So my days of hard living and finding myself were done as my body couldn’t handle the vigorous training anymore. I t was my time to go back home and go to college and be the next Hugh Hefner and just have fun.
I never told anyone my exact day I was getting out I wanted to surprise everyone. I drove across the country from Georgia to Los Angeles area. On a side note, I remember being in Phoenix watching the television and watching the Rodney King riots happening. I was like, “welcome home”, I laughed. Regardless, I first visited my best friend and just showed up at his house/ At the time he was on the phone he saw me he was totally excited, and he got off the telephone with whoever he was on the phone with. However, before he hung up, he said ” my buddy Mike just got back in town from the Army. I’ll have to introduce you two. You’ll probably fall in love with him and get married.” Wow, what prophetic words did he utter there. That’s how I met my cofounder or wife of 30 years.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://madgesfood.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/madgesfood
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/madgesfood
- Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/madgesfood
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/madgesfood
Image Credits
Gina Davison (food shots)