Mary Lou Surgi of Blue Ridge Food Ventures.by Martha Vining
photos by Rimas Zailskas

If you’ve ever perfected a batch of homemade salsa and thought, “Hey—I could start a business selling this stuff!” you might be right. But first, you’d better run the idea past Mary Lou Surgi. She’s the executive director of Blue Ridge Food Ventures, an incubator kitchen on Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College’s Enka campus. Equipped with slicers, steam kettles, ovens, sinks, coolers, freezers, labelers and more, BRFV is essentially a commercial kitchen available to people who dream of turning raw ingredients into products for sale. And since the kitchen opened five years ago, hundreds of people have. Surgi reports that the majority of her clients are women, and they have come to Blue Ridge Food Ventures with every kind of food product imaginable—from jams and sauces to hemp seed chocolate and bamboo pickles. But the kitchen is much more than a kitchen, offering help with marketing, packaging and other entrepreneur essentials. “We try to be a one-stop shop for a food business,” says Surgi, herself an A-B Tech alum. “If we don’t know the answer, we know who you should call.”

What’s the most common problem among people trying to start food businesses?
It’s probably the same as anybody trying to start their own business. It’s capital and it’s know-how. Particularly in the food business, someone might say they have the world’s best oatmeal cookie or whatever, but that’s not enough to start a business on. You have to have business skills, or you have to have a business partner who understands cash flow. Actually, I’ve seen more businesses die because they didn’t have sufficient cash flow.
Then, you have to offer something other than what we call a “me too” product. Does the world really need one more apple sauce? Or one more barbecue sauce? Ask yourself: how are people eating?  Where are people eating? Are they eating larger portions, smaller portions? At home? Out? Do they want their food prepped for them? Look at the way people are eating and try to come up with a product that meets those criteria with good taste, locally grown products, etc.

How did you end up running Blue Ridge Food Ventures?
I started out in public health and nutrition, but the more I worked overseas, I tended to end up on agricultural projects working with women farmers. I was in the Peace Corps in Malaysia, and that introduced me to a whole new range of foods and food ideas. Then I decided to go to culinary school here at A-B Tech, so I added that set of skills. When I graduated from A-B Tech and BRFV was taking shape, we were sort of born together.

What is the most difficult challenge they face selling food products in the Asheville market?
The actual market here is not huge. Seventy thousand people in Asheville and 200,000 in the surrounding area. What percent of that market are you going to tap? One percent? How often are they going to buy your product?

Even though a lot of people want to make their product and sell it to a local market and use “local” as a catchphrase, at some point you’ve got to grow beyond that—especially if you’re trying to make this your full-time job. It’s not easy to sell enough jars of jam, or jelly or hot sauce to make a living on if you’re just looking in this area.

What do you find most gratifying about your job?
The food clients leave on my doorstep! No really, I help give people a chance at their dream. They might not be successful but they’ve always wanted to see if grandma’s pickle relish would sell. They can come to Blue Ridge Food Ventures without investing $100,000 in a kitchen or equipment, and they can try it out. Maybe it works and maybe it doesn’t, but it gives them the opportunity to try.  

On September 23, Blue Ridge Food Ventures will host its third annual BRFV marketplace, an open house and tradeshow for buyers and the public. BRFV is also launching Winter Sun Farms, a winter CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program. For more details, go to www.blueridgefoodventures.org or www.wintersunfarmsnc.com.