How To Invest | Oh, Yeah, Gourmet Applesauce.

Rudy's Fruity Applesauce, an endeavor that caters to gift basket stores and gourmet niche foods, almost never happened. In an odd way, we had to thank a tanking stock market for our success.

Several years ago I had been working at mutual fund investment firm and the stock market was doing its typical volatility thing (anyone remember Y2K?) and things were looking fairly bleak for the investment industry. The dot com boom had just busted and many investors were literally frozen with fear about trying to make any more decisions as to where or how to invest their funds. Many had great losses (albeit on paper) and were sitting deathly still.

Now, an applesauce business was nowhere on my radar, but, I had managed to save a little bit of cash and discussed with my wife the idea of doing some type of business for ourselves. With a high probability of a layoff looming in the not too distant future we decided to start looking around as well as brainstorm for ideas. It was the fall season and here in New Hampshire that means many things, but, one especially: apple picking.

Making Applesauce

One day I had gone to a local orchard and bought some apples, took them home, found my favorite applesauce recipe and started churning out my favorite food. I had cooked enough of it that I was giving some of it away to relatives and my sister-in-law, who LOVES our homemade applesauce, joking said that we ought to consider selling our applesauce to local gourmet stores.

It was one of those "Sweet Baby Jesus!" moments. Thank goodness we had never owned a business before that time!! We began a very arduous, but, ultimately, rewarding process of trying to establish a home based business. It took us to places and people we never thought we'd ever go or meet. The research alone was brutal. Government licenses, cooking processes, jars, recipe trials and errors, creating a logo, marketing, safety procedures, sales, internet presence, etc. The list now seems HUGE looking back.

The Applesauce Name

But, we were successful! The name for our gourmet applesauce business, Rudy's Fruity Applesauce, is a homage to my father-in-law who passed away while we were in the early stages of establishing the business. The flavors came about through extensive family food tastings to see which combinations of fruit worked with our apples.

Some of our greatest times have come from the many trade shows and product samplings at stores that we've been able to do around New England. We've been honored with doing a tasting/presentation at an inauguration for one of New Hampshires governors, at the State House! That was a hoot AND we were named as "The Best of New Hampshire" by New Hampshire magazine a few years ago.

We've seen folks use our gourmet applesauces in cookies, oatmeal, bread, with granola and warmed up served on ice cream! Applesauce is loaded with fiber and nutrition so ranks as a top health food.

We're still a small business. We've had a few set-backs. But, we've revamped our website, taken a few more deep breaths and continue to march forward. Ya gotta love this country!!

Tomorrow I'll write about trying different fruit combinations. Kiwi/Pear? Coconut? Who knows!

Have an applesauce day!