Hi, this is Meg from Niblack Foods. Thanks for joining us today. We have a
special guest and this is Barry from RC Fine Foods. Barry is going to help us
learn about his wonderful company, his wonderful soup bases, and what we're
going to be able to use them in. Well first of all thank you for having me
here. I appreciate your business and I appreciate your interest in our products.
RC Fine Foods was founded in 1972 by Ruben Cullen and his wife Elaine. Ruben
was working for a company that was purchased and Ruben's customer base
were chefs. Ruben was not satisfied with the way the new company started
changing some of the soup bases. They took the ingredients that they were
using and they cheapened them really and Ruben had complaints from the chefs. He
is loyal to his chefs and he promised them that he would do something about
it. That's how RC Fine Foods got started. RC started out of a garage in back
of Ruben's home. His three children Susan, Barbara, and Gary were involved in the
business to the point where they were packing the cases and taping them and
Gary's first job was to roast the garlic for our roasted garlic and he still
has those clothes. He still has those clothes up in the attic. He pulls them
out every once in a while when the kids start talking about things that they
are not appreciating about life and he lets them see you just what it was
like growing up into this business. Now the family owns the business still.
Susan is the president, Barbara the vice president, Gary the other vice president.
So we are a minority-owned business in that it's a women business enterprise.
Now part of the reason that we got started was what I was saying about the
chefs. The chefs wanted the products to stay the same. That's the focus in our
company is to keep the products for the customer's needs the way they would like
to have it. So here we are today in a modern facility no longer in the garage
and it's state-of-the-art out of New Jersey. We are a global company. We
sell our products all over the place. And I could recommend for people to go
to your website because you have a wonderful video just showing you the
the facility that they did build and it will give you a really confident feeling
of the product that you're getting the quality and I just have to say the
cleanliness it's beautiful. So another thing that we were you know going to
discuss today is what do you think that your product is doing out there that's
making a difference. Well one of the things that I alluded to in the
beginning is the reason the company was created was because of chef's needs and
them asking us to do certain things for them. So we have our ear to the grindstone
we have people like me all over the country and we are in touch with our
customer base daily and we're always asking the question what are you looking
for? What do you need? What's important to you? What are your challenges? So for
example one of the more recent challenges that we were asked about were to
reduce sodium not just low sodium which is an FDA regulated issue at 140
milligrams per ounce but they were saying to us well the low sodium doesn't
have enough flavor you know it's too light so you know what can you do about
that. So one of the chefs gave us an idea and we ended up developing a reduced
sodium soup base it's called smart sodium nobody else in the country has this
product. Right and it's about 400 milligrams instead of thousands. So we
go from thousands to 140 and it's a big adjustment for people and now we've
given them a midway point and it's very helpful as far as the chefs being able
to take that and add their spices their various needs that they have to develop
a flavor profile and it's not as far away from where they need to go. You
know to get to the final solution on what the product should be. So that's
just one area. Another area that we're distinctly different is that these
formulas that we are using once we've developed it and we've put it out there
with our customers the same supplier that gives us the chicken that's the same
guy we've been using for years. Right. We're not jumping around to find the
cheapest chicken the cheapest beef cheapest vegetable stock we have
consistent suppliers one case in point you know our seafoods they're from New
England. Right. So we've been using the same guys for years same boats so what it
gives us is an advantage in that we can claim that there's consistency for these
people that are loyal to our products to begin with and when they put out a
product they know what to expect. Right. So if they make a soup or a sauce using
these products they know that they can count on it being the same and not
getting a surprise complaint from one of their customers. Exactly great well we
hope our customers will have the same result and we know they will. Just
another question because we were actually out working with a bunch of chefs
locally today and what do you in your you know you're around the what the upstate
New York area and Pennsylvania and New Jersey and traveling around the country
what do you feel your the chefs are really looking for these days. That's a
great question and you know that's the first question I asked them you know
what are your challenges and one of the things that we're hearing you know
gluten-free has become a big topic you know years back it was unheard of what
is gluten-free what does that mean and there's still an awful lot of people
that are discovering what that means so we're dealing with gluten-free meaning
it's a person who is intolerant to wheat to wheat products and if you look
around and on the ingredients in a lot of the products that you consume there's
wheat in them. Beef base for example is always developed with wheat doesn't have
to be so what we did is we developed a gluten-free product we were talking
about that with a lot of chefs today and it was something that's on there
especially on their catering menu where they need to point that out to their
customer prospect that wants to get a catering job done and the customers
looking for special diet needs. Recently in Massachusetts there was a
college in Massachusetts that was sued by nine other students because they
didn't offer gluten-free diet choices for for all meals of the day and if they
can't eat they can't study and if they can't study they're paying money for
what so it's been you know very popular with colleges lately to go to gluten-free
another area is vegan it's been very important to especially in younger
people dining to look at vegan products and we have a vegan flavor product that
is a beef flavor and a chicken flavor nobody else has that right it's very
unusual so what would that be for let's say you wanted to make a chili okay a
vegan chili well most vegan chili most chilies you would think of have a beef
flavor to it plus the tomato aspect right so if you were making it with our
vegan beef flavor products it would be almost like it had hamburger in it right
okay another place you can go is you know let's say we were making French onion
soup most of the time they'll use beef base in that so here we have another
option for that and you can go on expand on that in many different ways and we
also went with the we went with the low sodium with that as well so that because
French onion soup can be so salty just to go back to the gluten-free yes really
quick we were discussing earlier your facility and why you are gluten free
yeah well when we started out into the gluten-free business one of our owners
one of the principles has a gluten-free issue okay and so he studied up on it
and he went to the National Celiac Awareness Foundation which is the
umbrella organization that helps establish standards for how to produce a
celiac-free product gluten-free product and they gave us their guidelines and we
follow those guidelines whenever we do a batch it's the first run of the day
before anything else has taken place in the plant it's in the segregated areas
so there's no inner co-mingling of other wheat products that may have entered
that room and that batch is prepared and finished and held in a private secluded
area so to speak yeah so that isn't close to any other gluten products because
you don't want gluten wheat product landing on the cases and then being
shipped out and somehow making it into a gluten-free restaurant where their
kitchen is totally gluten-free and now you put wheat in their kitchen anyway we
have all these standards in place yes and before we release the product even
though we have our own laboratory that tests the product that's right we send
it to a third party to a laboratory a certified laboratory outside of our
business and we get a certification on the batch the whole idea there being we
know for certain that when it leaves our facility it truly is gluten-free
fantastic so when that chef that's important tells that mother right your
son or daughter is going to have gluten-free soup or sauce or whatever
here it truly is yeah great okay yeah one of the things that we should mention
is that this is what we're currently carrying what we're starting out with
RC fine foods has 270 products we would have to have an RC fine food store so
what we're bringing in and today once again we were out in the local area and
the premier beef base the premier chicken base and this oven roasted chicken
base was a huge success then we were able to go with the low sodium as well as
the gluten-free vegetarian we brought in the seafood base because it is low
sodium and seafood bases are very high in sodium so that's a nice alternative but
there's many other bases that we can bring in lobster crab all other kinds of
different places we can go with that I was excited about a low sodium hand base
once again very hard to find make your wonderful split pea soup with something
really good and then chicken as well as the low sodium beef base very what
differentiates the premier base lines so we brought in the roasted the oven
roasted the chicken and the beef from the rest of the line all right what's a
good question it's first of all it's a taste preference all right you know you
like vanilla like chocolate all right so it's a little bit of that I just like
to tell when you look at premier you're going to see some ingredients in here
that are not in the oven roasted chicken okay so it's an ingredients change and
of course you know ingredients affects what it's going to taste like so this
has to American okay it also has garlic powder this one over here does not have
turmeric in it it has a little bit more chicken fat in it what we try to do with
this particular one this is the oven roasted chicken we wanted to get the
taste of the rotisserie chicken into the jar yeah you know give it a real nice
flavor profile but I'll tell you what there's a lot of people don't want to go
to that when they're making their gravies or they're making their sauces or
they're making their soups and they want to go with something like this that has
this particular flavor profile that's why we make six different types of
chicken bases six different six different ones exactly this product and the low
sodium advantage chicken are going to taste different not only because of the
salt issue the salt difference but also because the ingredients in this are not
quite the same as what are in here so we're giving you lots of choices so when
your chefs say to you I don't like the taste of that one what else you got I
have options another option yeah great options thanks you're welcome one of the
ways that we can help you and we can also help your customers your chefs or
possibly a consumer that would come in here and looking for specifics yeah
every day we have a food so we have two food scientists and employed at our
company so if there's an ingredient question I can always get the answer
there and if there's an issue about recipes or uses how to make something how
to best use a product I can call our corporate chef anytime of the day any
day of the week and he's going to give me a response immediately he's very good
at this and he's going to the point where he's written recipes and he sent them
by email out to my customers to help them along if you go to our website
there's almost a thousand recipes if you look at all of them that are on there and
there's also some videos I was talking about gluten-free he'll show you how to
make a chef a chicken francaise sauce for example right using gluten-free
products based from RC so we give you that kind of support and then there's
me so if you need information as far as how to use these products and we don't
have to go through the the home office people I'm also available to you so
we're here for you okay well thank you so much for coming to Rochester thank you
and thank you have a great day
