Interview: Scott Mandell - CEO of Enjoy Life Foods

I recently had the pleasure of talking with the CEO and Founder of a wonderful company who caters to Gluten Free consumers, Scott Mandell of Enjoy Life Foods. Enjoy Life Foods was founded in 1999 after Scott developed a business plan as part of an MBA course at Northwestern. The original intent was to develop allergy-free baking mixes but after some research was changed to ready-to-eat products. The idea came from a classmate and future business partner whose mother had food allergies. This idea was really before it's time back in the late 90s. Only a few companies were out there making Gluten Free food and none that were completely free of all the top allergens. Enjoy Life was and continues to be a pioneer in this industry.

The Chicago-based company was officially launched in 2001 and since that time has grown to offer nearly 30 products. They opened a brand new dedicated facility in 2006 that is 40,000 square feet (roughly 5 times as big as Whole Foods Gluten Free Bakehouse). If they wanted to they could make about 100,000 snicker doodle cookies in a 24 hour shift. At this facility, they test all their products down to 5 PPM Gluten (the proposed FDA ruling is 20 PPM). In 2007 and again in 2008, Enjoy Life was named to Inc. 500 fastest growing companies in the USA. Revenue growth over the previous 3 years is in the 800% area. The company scored in the top 400 (out of 500) on those lists but were in the top 10 for food companies. Quite impressive indeed.
Enjoy Life offers the following great products which are not only Gluten Free but also free from the top 8 food allergens (as defined by the FDA); wheat, dairy, peanuts, tree nuts, egg, soy, fish or shellfish. Their products are also soy free, dairy free, nut free and casein free. Dang, what is left? They key ingredient in most of their products is sorghum. Early recipes contained rice as the main ingredient but the company quickly discovered that grainy rice texture often associated with Gluten Free baked goods. Sorghum quickly replaced rice and the rest is history.

I spoke briefly with Scott about the possibility of Enjoy Life making cookies for the Girl Scouts. This was actually the initial suggestion I sent to Enjoy Life which eventually got me to Scott himself. It sounds as if the company has considered this option but things can get complicated when contract manufacturing. Who knows what will happen in the future but I know for sure that I would order them from a Girl Scout if they were available. The bottom line about this company is that they do listen to customer feedback and input and are extremely engaged with their customer base. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, feel free to email Enjoy Life.

My personal favorite Enjoy Life stuff is the granola (recently reformulated and improved), chocolate chips and of course the cookies. It's great to just open the package and pop in one of those bite-sized soft baked yummies - no mixes, no baking. Stay tuned for more exciting products coming very soon from Enjoy Life (I promised Scott I would not write specifics about them). You can find most Enjoy Life products in the Raleigh area at Kroger, Whole Foods, Harmony Farms, Earth Fare and Lowes Foods.

Scott was extremely pleasant, took a lot of time to answer my questions and even signed my food allergy poster petition to the Raleigh City Council. He is heavily involved in the company operations and serves as a visionary leader to the Gluten Free consumer products market. He is also heavily involved in the Celiac Disease and Gluten Free community by serving on the board's of the GIG's Gluten Free Certification Organization and the American Celiac Disease Alliance (I wrote about the good things going on at ACDA here). Enjoy Life was the first company to go through the GFCO certification process.

Check out Enjoy Life's Web site, you'll find all kinds of good information about their product lines, coupons, recipes and much more. Enjoy Life also is releasing a recipe/cook book called Enjoy Life's Cookies for Everyone!: 150 Delicious Gluten-Free Treats that are Safe for Most Anyone with Food Allergies, Intolerances, and Sensitivities in June which will be available at all major bookstores. The book will feature 150 recipes over 240 pages, is authored by culinary expert Leslie Hammond and all recipes have been reviewed by Enjoy Life Director of Research & Development Betsy Laakso. They have also just finished up the 2nd book in the series which should be out in early 2010.

Upcoming Interview with Enjoy Life CEO Scott Mandell

I have the opportunity to interview CEO Scott Mandell of Enjoy Life Foods this Friday Next Tuesday 4/28.

Please leave a comment with any questions you would like me to ask him.

In the meantime, it looks like the folks at Enjoy Life have contacted Starbucks to attempt to get them to carry their products as allergen-free choices. See the following Web site to vote in support of this idea and let Starbucks know this is an option you'd love to see.
Note - when you click on the Thumbs Up icon, it will ask you to sign in or create a new account to vote (this process takes about 10 seconds).

Interview: Alice Bast - NFCA Director & Founder

Since I began blogging last August, I have met so many great people who are working hard to make the lives of those with Celiac Disease better. When I get the chance to meet important folks in the Celiac/Gluten Free community, I like to share with you what we discuss. So I've published a few interviews in the past few weeks and had the opportunity to have another one today. I look forward to talking with more folks out there, especially leaders of the national support organizations and companies that make Gluten Free products.

Today, I had the pleasure of speaking with Alice Bast, the Executive Director and Founder of the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness (NFCA). Alice founded the NFCA in 2003 after suffering for many years with undiagnosed Celiac Disease. She went through 22 doctors, the trauma of delivering a stillbirth, multiple miscarriages and a baby born at only 3 pounds. These years were also marked by debilitating physical symptoms and almost unbearable mental and emotional strain. See more about her personal story here. After her CD diagnosis, Alice became co-chair of the Greater Philadelphia Area Celiac Support Group which now serves over 750 members. She became involved in the community and in supporting others with Celiac but eventually wanted to do more.

With existing Celiac or Gluten Intolerance groups focused more on support, Alice launched the NFCA with the idea of focusing on raising awareness, improving diagnosis and becoming a change agent for CD sufferers. With her business background, she had hopes of working with corporations (non-profit and for-profit) in the hopes of increasing the products available to those on a Gluten Free Diet. An example of this is her collaboration with Anheuser-Busch on the creation of their Gluten Free Beer Redbridge - the first and only with distribution to all 50 states. Alice and the NFCA were instrumental in getting this product to market.

Alice is passionate about the fact that better awareness will feed better research... better research will in turn increase the number of companies who cater to Celiacs... the more companies that cater to us, the more competition... all of which leads to lower prices, more choices and an easier Gluten Free life. This pretty much sums up the mission of the NFCA.

Here are some interesting items mentioned during my time talking with Alice.

• Alice's wish is that scientific researchers do Celiac research because CD is an interesting/intriguing genetic disease to study.
• The NFCA has distributed over 800,000 Celiac brochures to date with the assistance of their grocery and diagnostic partners.
• Alice and the NFCA are currently working with Wal-mart on their Gluten Free product selection. Introducing Wal-mart into the fold will certainly help bring down prices. Judging by my last poll question in which the majority of respondents said they spend $200 or more per month just on GF grocery items, this is great news.
  
• Alice will be presenting at the 13th Annual International Celiac Disease Symposium on April 6th in Amsterdam. The presentation will include the NFCA's approach to physician training and changing physician behavior around Celiac Disease diagnosis.
• Alice envisions a country where there are Celiac research centers in every major city around the US, not just at Columbia, Maryland and U. Chicago. With Duke, UNC and NCSU so close, there is definitely no reason why Raleigh-Durham can't have one!
  

A special thanks to Alice Bast for taking the time to talk with me today and to Whitney Ehret, the NFCA's Director of Communications, for coordinating the interview. See my previous posts about the NFCA here.

Interview: Lee Tobin & The Whole Foods Gluten Free Bakehouse

I recently had the privilege of meeting and interviewing a Gluten Free Pioneer - Lee Tobin from the Whole Foods Gluten Free Bakehouse.

Lee's Story
Lee Tobin was diagnosed with Celiac Disease in 1996 while he was working as a baker (of all things) for Whole Foods (formerly Wellspring) in Chapel Hill. Fortunately for all of us, his employer decided to let Lee tinker with creating and baking some Gluten Free baked goods. This process began in the Chapel Hill store as a Tuesday 4 hour baking shift with just Lee, his separate Gluten Free equipment and ingredients. The first product was cream biscuits and eventually Lee developed recipes for scones, muffins and sandwich bread. The products became very popular in the Chapel Hill store - Wednesday mornings were flooded with GF shoppers looking for Lee's creations. Eventually, the shifts and products expanded as well as the distribution to Whole Foods Raleigh, Cary and Durham stores.

As the word around North Carolina spread, other Gluten Free consumers began to wonder why they couldn't have Gluten Free items in their stores like those of us in the Triangle were lucky enough to have. The Winston-Salem GIG support group worked with the national GIG organization to bring the annual conference to Winston-Salem, NC in 2002. Lee Tobin was featured at that conference for what he was doing with Whole Foods and as they say "The rest is history".

Whole Foods Gluten Free Bakehouse
Before long, Lee Tobin was granted his dream - a completely Gluten Free dedicated facility to make his Gluten Free baked items full time. Whole Foods opened the Gluten Free Bakehouse in 2004 in Morrisville, NC - just a short drive from Raleigh. The facility is an 8,000 square foot Gluten Free baked-good-making-machine which now employs nearly 30 people and makes 30 different products including pizza crust, bread, muffins, cookies, cupcakes, pies, scones, biscuits, brownies, and much more.

-Click here for the WF GF Bakehouse Web site.

-Click here for a list of products made at the WF GF Bakehouse.

-Click here for the ingredient listing for each product.

I had the opportunity to tour the WF GF Bakehouse with Lee Tobin. I was amazed at the operation underway at the Bakehouse - the day I visited they were making about 3,200 loaves of bread along with numerous other items. Lee also walked me through the Gluten testing done at the facility which has an on site testing lab which is staffed with a full-time Lab Technician and several Lab Assistants. The thorough process included not only testing the finished product using ELISA (5 Parts per Million) but also testing of the ingredients brought into the facility by outside suppliers. Every ingredient is sampled and tested for Gluten (5 PPM) before it is ever considered for use in a product at the facility. You should feel very safe consuming these products.

The Whole Foods Bakehouse is currently supplying the entire Whole Foods chain (about 280 stores) with their Gluten Free products. Amazing to think about if you consider the roots of the operation. Products are shipped to the stores daily and can be found in the store's frozen foods section. I have tried several of their items over the past few months including the bread, pie crusts, pizza crust, scones, muffins, cookies and cupcakes and have never been disappointed.

As a Gluten Free consumer, I give a ton of credit to Lee Tobin and to Whole Foods for branching out into the market and really giving Gluten Free products some serious momentum. We should all thank both Lee and WF for legitimizing the Gluten Free industry and successfully creating excellent tasting safe products for all of us.

A special thanks to Lee Tobin and the staff at the facility for taking the time to meet with me and show me around. I look forward to working with Lee in the future!

Interview: Bard's Tale Gluten Free Beer Company

I recently had the opportunity to speak with the fine folks at Bard's Tale Beer Company. I am very interested in Gluten Free products, especially beer and pizza (if you have not noticed). Since no local brewers in North Carolina have yet to take on the Gluten Free Beer challenge (I've asked - believe me), I thought I would reach out to those brewers who were already out there making great GF Beer and talk with them about their company and products.

Over the past few weeks, I have been conversing with Tasha Kardaris who is the VP of Marketing for Bard's. I was surprised to find out she had been looking at my blog before I contacted her. Gluten Free consumers find themselves in a unique situation - the majority of companies catering to us are VERY interested in our feedback and are willing to make changes to their products based on that feedback. Tasha has been very gracious in taking the time to talk with me and answer some of the questions I posed about their business. Below is a question and answer session I had with Tasha over the last few weeks.

Bard's Beer Company Interview
How did Bard's Beer get it's start?

Bard's was founded by Celiacs, Kevin Seplowitz and Craig Belser. They were diagnosed with Celiac disease in their late 20s and had known what “real” craft brewed beer tasted like. They were quite “bummed out” to discover that traditional barley and wheat-based beers were not on their list of items that they could enjoy on a gluten-free diet. The GF “beer” options they tried were in their opinions, undrinkable. And sipping wine during a football game didn’t quite cut it. They missed a full bodied, craft brewed beer. Since both were home brewers before being diagnosed, they started experimenting with various GF grains until they came up with the formula for Bard’s which tastes like a traditional craft-brewed beer. In this case, necessity WAS the mother of invention. We officially started selling the beer in 2004 in 8 states. Both are still involved in the company and still are part-owners of Bard’s Tale Beer.

Tell me a little bit about your CEO?

Our current CEO is Brian Kovalchuk, who used to be the CEO of Pabst Brewing Company, among other companies. He was at the helm at Pabst and turned it around into the cool-hip brand it’s now become. We are thrilled to have him run the day-to-day operations at Bard’s because he is helping us navigate the “beer world” and expand our distribution in leaps and bounds. It’s helped us reach more of our celiac and GF friends who previously haven’t been able to get Bard’s Beer. Brian also oversaw our package redesign and our re-vamped, more customer-friendly website.

Tell me a little bit about the products at Bard's Beer.

It’s really the best tasting GF beer out there and not just because we think so. We have lots of fans who write into our website, who’ve tried the other GF beers and tell us that our beer tastes more like the beer they remember before being diagnosed and before going gluten-free. Bard’s Beer has a traditional craft-brewed taste because we malt our sorghum. No other GF beer (that we are aware of) uses this process which we hold proprietary. And in NC, last year we participated in Raleigh’s World Beer Festival, put on by All About Beer Magazine. Even though we are gluten-free and 99% of the beers there are not, we think our beer is good enough to measure up to other craft brews. We had a lot of exposure to non-celiacs at this event which hosts over 7,000 people.

Do you have any involvement with Celiac associations?

Craig often represents Bard’s at various Celiac-sponsored meetings throughout the US. Most recently, he attended the Celiac Sprue Association’s annual meeting, host the Bard’s Beer table where participants got to sample our beer. We’ve been involved with and participated in all of the national Celiac organization’s events for CDF, GIG and CSA in addition to becoming involved with local organizations like in GA with the Atlanta Metro-Celiac organization and with the Gluten-free Culinary Summit out of Denver. We’ve even been invited to speak and sample to future chefs at the nation’s top culinary school, the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) during their gluten-free baking day.

Where is Bard's brewed and what processes are in place to ensure Gluten Free status?

Bard’s is contract-brewed in Utica, New York. We only use 4 ingredients in making Bard’s Beer: water, yeast, hops and malted sorghum. All of those ingredients are naturally gluten-free. We test every batch of Bard’s during the process and before it goes out to the public to ensure that there is NO gluten in the beer. Since we’ve been brewing Bard’s, we’ve never tested positive for gluten. Our founders are celiacs too so we don’t want to put anything out there that we wouldn’t drink ourselves. It’s also important to note we don’t use soy, corn or rice in our beer ingredients. A lot of Celiacs have cross-allergies and those who are allergic to rice or corn can’t drink some of the other GF beers out there because they contain these ingredients.

How much Bard's is sold in North Carolina? How about Raleigh?

Because we are privately held, we don’t release sales figures to the public. I do know NC was one of the first states we came to when we first started the business.

Any future plans on other GF beer varieties?

We are looking into other varieties of Bard’s but currently our focus is on broadening our distribution with our main brand.

How about kegging or canning the beer? Plastic bottles? Anything other than 6 packs?

We get asked the keg question a lot. We don’t keg our beer. Specifically because we don’t want to risk the possibility of cross-contamination. We can’t be 100% sure that a tap line has been cleaned properly if previously connected to a barley or wheat beer. With bottles, we don’t have that risk. We always are open to the possibility of coming up with alternative packaging like cans and 12 packs but I don’t have any information that I can release to the public at this time. We sell our product to the distributors by the case. If you would like a case of Bard’s, most of the time, your local beer store/package store can accommodate your request if you ask in advance.

Where is Bard's currently available in the US and what are your plans for expansion?

We are currently available in 32 states. Our plans for the future include expanding our distribution within the US and also expanding our reach in Canada (we are currently available in British Columbia) and if it makes sense to other countries if feasible. Because we don’t have the established distribution network that Redbridge (which as you know is an AB product), it is harder to find our beer. We have to secure licenses and distributors in every state individually. But we are working very hard to become available in all 50 states.

Where can one find Bard's Beer in Raleigh?

Bard's can be found at Whole Foods and Earth Fare locations throughout the Triangle.

How do I go about getting Bard's into my favorite establishment?

The best way to get Bard’s Beer into your local pub/restaurant/retailer is to ask the store buyer to order it for you. In the state of NC, our distributor is Millennium Beverage our of Charlotte. Their phone number is 704-342-1494. If you give this info to the owner of the liquor/beer store, they should be able to order it for you. On our website, we have a section which lists our distributors and also has letters that customers can download and give to their local store to ask to carry Bard’s.

Have you ever had any negative feedback about your products? How do you handle that?

For consumer feedback (negative or positive), we get emails from our customers every day. Our policy is to answer these within 24 hours.

A special thanks to Tasha and Bard's Beer Company for taking the time to answer my questions. Feel free to try out their products if you have not already and check out their Web site here.