We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Susanna Herlitz-Ferguson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Susanna below.

Alright, Susanna thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about your team building process? How did you recruit and train your team and knowing what you know now would you have done anything differently?

MV Salads is a seasonal business on Martha’s Vineyard, happily catering to the onslaught of summer vacationers and relying mostly on temporary help. Despite team members changing yearly, I see each person as family. So, when hiring at the beginning of every season, I look for specific qualities, first and foremost, kindness. The other necessary attributes are patience, team spirit, honesty, and a disposition toward solutions, not problems.
Hiring on Martha’s Vineyard has its challenges. Because our island has limited year-round residents, businesses find qualified, seasonal applicants through a compilation of the following:
- Locals, mainly high school and college students
- Americans coming to the island, looking for summer jobs
- J-1 visa students from other countries

The first two sources are self-explanatory, but for those unfamiliar with the J-1 visa, this is a government sponsor program known as
“Summer Work & Travel.” The J-1 visa benefits college or university students seeking to come to the United States to learn about life in America. These individuals must know the language to facilitate their integration during their seasonal stay. But as much as they experience and absorb by being here, we also receive the same from them. It’s an immeasurable exchange of cultural experiences. Many of my MV Salads team members even end up living with me throughout the season due to limited housing on the island. We truly become family while working and living together..

Susanna, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I proudly wear many hats: Amazon bestselling author, innovator, entrepreneur, designer, kindness-ambassador, foodie, and most importantly mother of four grown children.

I had long been known for my very popular and delicious salad dressing, a personal recipe that I concocted over two decades ago.
Once my four kids were grown, I made the unusual choice to become a
“second-wind-entrepreneur” in a field I knew virtually nothing about. Although the dressing was the extent of my culinary abilities and I had no experience running a restaurant – my background is in graphic design – I decided that my dressing would become the cornerstone of my new business. Also recognizing that Martha’s Vineyard was in dire need of more nutritious, locally-sourced food options, I took on the challenge of bringing the island its first and only salad shop that would serve only the freshest, tastiest ingredients from local farms, focus on sustainability, and spread kindness. In 2019 I opened MV Salads, the shop that serves a fun and healthy experience with every meal, and in April 2024 I published my first book, Made with Kindness, that became an Amazon bestseller within the first week of its launch.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

Over two decades ago, when my sister-in-law, Eva, asked me to “whip up a vinaigrette”for dinner, and I explored my cabinets and whisked together olive oil, balsamic vinegar and an assortment of fresh herbs and spices, the result drew raves from my extended network. But little did I know that it was the birth of MV The Dressing®️.
In the following years, I was urged countless times to bottle and sell the dressing, but I always shrugged it off since, at that time in my life, I could not envision myself running a food-related business.
Once my kids were grown, though, I remembered my friends’ praise for my creation.
Initially, I considered manufacturing my salad dressing myself, but I quickly realized that wasn’t feasible. I then discovered copackers—companies that manufacture food products for small and midsize businesses. After extensive research to find the right copacker in terms of capabilities, location, and minimum production sizes, we produced our first batch at a facility in upstate New York. However, we soon outgrew them and are now producing all our batches with Onofrio in New Haven, Connecticut, who have been able to meet our demands.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

Staying in touch with my customers and building brand loyalty is a super important part of my business. Given that we’re a brick-and-mortar store, personal interactions with my customers are vital, especially since many are regular return-visitors I deeply care about.
On social media, I often feature my customers in posts, and, as the face of the brand, I also appear frequently myself. I regularly send out email newsletters to keep customers updated on our business. Recently, I published a book about our brand, which includes many stories about customer interactions and our core message, “Made with Kindness – Tales & Tastes from MV Salads on Martha’s Vineyard,” available on Amazon.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mvsalads.com
• Instagram: @mvsalads
• Linkedin: Susanna Herlitz-Ferguson

Image Credits

Paul Morejan, Heidi Wild