What can you do with a mushy blueberry? You can't ship it. You can't really store it. Therefore, you can't usually sell it. Often farmers suffer considerable losses when they can't sell excess or very ripe fruit. Sometimes it's more cost effective to let it rot in the field than to harvest it if you know there's no one to buy it.
Enter Jackie Anderson. To her, an very ripe super-sweet (and yes, mushy) blueberry is a perfect ingredient for either Blueberry Chambord or BRB (Blackberry-Raspberry-Blueberry) jam! By selling to her at the end of the season, San Diego's farmers can recoup some of their losses, and Jackie gets the sweetest fruit available at a sweet price.
Jackie's Jams illustrates how a local entrepreneur who is in touch with the community can find an incredibly profitable economic niche and help farmers, businesses, non-profits, the environment, and individuals too!
Jackie was a burnt out social worker when she got her start in the jam business. She brought the jam-making know how into her partnership with Robert Shay, and he brought the business acumen. (Jackie's a savvy businesswoman now but she says she knew nothing about business back in the beginning. "I would give away my jams for free if it were up to me," she says. "'Here, you like them? Take this box!.' That's the kind of person I am.")
They started out with a modest goal of selling jams at farmers' markets. When word of their jams' explosive flavor got out, business took off in directions Jackie never dreamed! Bread & Cie, a local bakery cafe, discovered her when their booth was next to hers at a market, and now they serve her jams exclusively. Jackie says that Bread & Cie adds credibility and prestige to her business, helping her land other accounts.
Now Jackie's Jams can be found in restaurants, hotels, weddings, the internet, and even San Diego's Whole Foods Markets. Lately, she's begun working with farmers to help them turn what would otherwise be lost profits into private label jams. In return for overproduction and/or extremely ripe fruit a farmer cannot sell, Jackie will make a batch of jams, giving the farmer jams labeled with the name of the farm in return.
As an aspiring "locavore" (one who eats exclusively local foods), I'm inspired by Jackie's ability to provide a market for farmers and local, high quality jam for stores and restaurants, while running a successful business herself. The impact of her business on our local economy is not lost on Jackie (as a former social worker), but I highly doubt that most of her customers keep coming back just because they want to support a local business. They come back because the jam tastes great!
When you see Jackie and Robert at the market, they have a number of squeeze bottles of jam in front of them and a mountain of tiny plastic spoons. It's hard to walk past without accepting a taste of jam - especially when there are flavors like Mango Raspberry to sample. For each jam, Jackie or Robert will give you the details of the flavor as you try it. For instance, Jackie told me she used the entire plum (the peels as well as the flesh) to make her plum jam last year. As a result, the normally sweet jam has a nice little tart 'kick' to it.
After years of collecting customers' stories of unique uses for her jams (everything from salmon to wedding cakes), Jackie published a cookbook called Just Add Jam!. The marketing major in me was very proud of her for doing this, because giving customers new uses for your product is an excellent way to increase your sales to your existing customers. Of course, that wasn't why she published the book. Jackie gets excited hearing all of the different ways people use her jam and she uses their feedback to create new flavors or modify old ones.
I find Jackie's story significant because it shows how anyone with enough motivation can enrich their local food community and thrive as an entrepreneur at the same time.