What is your name & how many children do you have?
Heather Schoenrock – 3 children: daughters, Lucy (9) and Sadie (5) and son, Jack (3) the company’s namesake.
Connie Pope – 2 children: daughter, Kathryn (6) and son, Avery (3)
What’s the name of your company and the inspiration behind it?
Jack’s Harvest, frozen organic baby food.
Heather: We were preparing for a presentation the other day and Connie said, “We didn’t just wake up one day and decide to start our own organic baby food company” and I looked at her and started laughing and said, “Didn’t we??” And in retrospect we sort of did. We’ve decided to take it one step at a time and set goals for success. As long as we continued to meet those goals, we were in business. Today, Jack’s Harvest is in Whole Foods Markets throughout the southeast and available nationwide on Amazon.
Connie: In late 2007, we founded Jack’s Harvest – frozen organic baby food. You could say our company started from a kind gesture between two friends because our inspiration was born over a playdate with our sons. Heather loves to cook and made fresh organic baby food for all of her children. I don’t even like to make dinner so I certainly wasn’t going to make my own baby food. Heather would bring over the organic baby food she had made for Jack for me to give to Avery and it was amazing. Her purees were colorful, tasted fresh and even smelled good. (She would add a little cinnamon for flavor and health benefits, something we continue to do today.) And Avery loved it. I offered to pay her to make it for me on a regular basis. Soon we had friends asking her to make her organic baby food for them. When friends of friends started calling, we knew we were on to something special.
Interesting Fact: We were originally going to call the company Heather’s Harvest, but the URL was unavailable. We played around with a few other names and Jack’s Harvest stuck.
What is your current business struggle?
Heather: We can’t compete on price with the big baby food companies that deal in large volume and use co-packers. We are a small company and we prepare all our food by hand in small batches in our own Jack’s Harvest kitchen in Atlanta. We do special things like reserve the cooking water and reintroduce it when we puree the food so the nutrients are maintained. We also add a dash of herbs and spices for extra flavor and health benefits, like cooking our carrots with ginger, an herb proven to soothe tiny tummies. All of these unique touches are reflected in the quality of Jack’s Harvest organic baby food. It’s also reflected in the price.
Connie: Because the frozen organic baby food market is still emerging, one challenge is educating parents there is an alternative to “the jarred stuff.” Parents are used to looking for their baby food in the baby aisle (next to the diapers) not the freezer.
What is your current business goal?
Heather: To continue to make the healthiest, most nutritious and delicious baby food possible. I also am looking to focus on efficiencies, procurement and organization. We have learned so much from our first high volume order and I can’t wait to put those lessons into practice.
Connie: We are also looking to expand our distribution and retail presence to make Jack’s Harvest conveniently available to as many parents as we can.
What one quality do you think is a “must-have” for a mom entrepreneur?
Heather: Passion – It’s what gets you through the hard days, like last week when I was making organic baby food at 3 AM to meet a deadline for a big Whole Foods order.
Connie: Confidence – If you believe you have the best product/service out there it will come through when you are talking to prospective customers, retailers and the press.
What 1 thing or person has been very instrumental in your success?
Heather: Without the support of our husbands and our children, it wouldn’t be possible – and it wouldn’t be worth it. And without our dedicated Jack’s Harvest team, it would be impossible.
Connie: Our customers have been amazing. They are the ones that continue to buy our product and tell their friends to buy it. There is a Seth Godin blog entry that is very applicable to our company’s success called “First, ten”. You can read it here. If we didn’t have the kind of customers we do, this approach wouldn’t work.
What is your favorite quote?
Heather: “Can’t Never Did” – actually by my dad. He was a firm believer that failure to try something was so much worse than trying and failing. Also, “Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity.” – Oprah Winfrey
Connie: “It’s hard. If it was easy, everyone would do it.”
What are your 3 favorite blogs?
Heather: Cool Mom Picks is one of my favorites.
Connie:
Peter Shankman’s Help a Reporter Out (HARO):
His queries are a must for any company doing their own PR. He also sets a great example for leveraging social media to create a buzz and build a bond with customers. Plus, he makes me laugh.
Seth Godin’s Blog
His book, Purple Cow, has been recommended to me numerous times. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s on my to-do list.
Daily Candy & Daily Candy Kids (Atlanta version):
Keeps me in touch with what’s hot in town. Note, we were featured in March.
What advice would you give to a new mom entrepreneur?
Heather: Make sure that you are doing something that you love to do. If it is not a passion – it will fail, there is no way you will be willing to make the sacrifices necessary to succeed if you don’t believe in what you are doing 100%.
Connie: Listen to your customers. We answer every phone call and email personally and attend tastings when we can. We want to hear what our customers have to say (both positive and negative). It was one of our customers that suggested we change our potato/broccoli flavor to sweet potato/broccoli. We did and now it’s one of our best selling flavors.
How can we connect with you?
Website: www.jacksharvest.com
Email Jack’s Harvest: info@jacksharvest.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jacks-Harvest-Frozen-Organic-Baby-Food/41164966265?ref=s
Twitter http://twitter.com/jacksharvest
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/JacksHarvest
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