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WHAT FOODS SELL^*
by Esther Foley
Formerly, Food and Nutrition Editor, The American Home

If you want to market a homemade food product, decide on your goal at the start. Do you want to go into a full-time business, or is your aim to get Johnny through school or to pay for a winter coat and a washing machine? The approach is different for the small money-makers and the large money-makers.

Small money-makers call for skill in cooking but almost no cash layout, no investment in equipment, no change in the house setup—and the cash return is immediate. These products are usually perishable, must always be made with great skill, and delivered promptly. Soft candies, cakes with special frostings, pies, bread and rolls, most cookies, and delicatessen perishables fall into this classification.

Marketing small money-makers is frequently a matter of personal contacts. A friendly grocer at the corner will often sell homemade cookies, candy, or bread. A delicatessen store may handle cabbage slaw, potato salad, baked beans. Your fruit and vegetable vendor may welcome a good French dressing, especially in salad season. Bridal showers, birthday parties, anniversaries may prove a good market for special cakes. Mothers with part-time jobs are excellent prospective cooky customers, and also frequently welcome prepared dishes, such as baked beans, chicken pie, or macaroni and cheese. Possible outlets for your homemade pies are the neighborhood diner or a downtown lunch wagon. Frequently small hotels and high-grade inns welcome the opportunity to sell unusual jams, jellies, or relishes made for them under their own trade-mark. In country areas a popular roadside stand may be willing to try out such products. Women's clubs, particularly business women's organizations, may be circularized with notices of cakes, pies, or sandwiches on order. Cost may be kept to a minimum if cooking is done only on order.

Large money-makers demand far more of a woman's time and strength. Foods that fit into this class usually are so packaged, bottled, or preserved that they can wait from a week to a year for a customer without being regarded as a loss. Pickles, relishes, jellies, dry types of cookies, and canned sauces fit into this classification.

As a general rule, avoid duplicating the kind of product a woman can make easily herself. Concentrate on products that take long, slow cooking, such as spaghetti sauces, or those that need a special knack not given to every amateur.

This type of food venture requires an investment in equipment and a good deal of bookkeeping. There must be plans for a consistent, large output and the problems of storage room, distribution, supplies, and labor must be thought through.

It is true that a small money-maker can grow into a larger one, but foresight is required. I know of a man who wanted to put his own favorite type of canned beans on the market. He canned three hundred jars, found a good store to carry them. Publicity in a New York newspaper sold his whole supply out in one morning. The store wanted more. He had to abandon his life work as a musician to sit up night and day while his beans baked.

Study the market first. In large metropolitan areas a great variety of food products have a chance because many women and families lack time, cooking skill, and storage space. They are willing to pay well for food service rendered. The more "homey" the product, the more popular it can be. For example, one New York store carries a pint jar of raspberries that sells for double the ordinary price. Each berry is perfect, the juice is clear and a wonderful red. Women generally can't make anything so superlative and are willing, on occasion, to pay a high price for a seemingly everyday product.

These conditions do not hold true to the same extent in smaller towns. There is more storage space, and the ingredients to make most food products are in every pantry. Buying homemade food products is considered extravagant. But for a product good enough to fulfill a dream—a zesty sauce, a pickle crisp enough to snap—there will always be buyers.

The pricing of any home item is a matter for argument. To obtain a decent return, here is one method that often works out well. Add together the cost of ingredients and the cost of fuel. For a cake this might be fifty cents. To this add fifty cents for overhead, which includes equipment, transportation, failures, and so on. Add another fifty cents for profit. The cake then sells for $1.50. This is merely a general rule of thumb. You must judge whether you and your friends would pay that price for that particular cake, whether it is in line with other prices in the same market. In short, figure the price for a homemade food product at three times the cost of the essential ingredients. As your business progresses, you may be able to lower the unit cost.

This method of pricing, rather than figuring on an hourly basis, seems more appropriate for the small money-maker who spends what time she can from the baby and the house and her husband and cannot count her time at any established rate.

If you are getting into the large-money-maker class, approximating factory methods, performing tasks in regular hours without interruption, maintaining even and continuous output, the hourly return in money can be calculated in terms of today's established wage rates.

She begins making candy casts each morning as soon as she finishes her routine housework.

"If I can't make enough casts to fill my orders before it's time to prepare dinner," she relates, "my husband will help me catch up after dinner dishes are washed. But, as a rule, that isn't necessary more than once or twice a week."

Her husband is a plastics engineer, and he developed the formula for the mold materials. The formula differs from most of the other thermoplastic mold formulas in that the material will not contaminate food products. It consists of the following ingredients:

Polyvinyl chloride . . . . . . . . 25 parts
Paraffin . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 parts
Lard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5 parts
Basic lead carbonate . . . . . . .  5 parts
Diallyl phthalate . . . . . . . .  50 parts

All of these ingredients are available through local grocery stores and chemical-supply houses. The number of parts of each ingredient should be determined by weight. For example, twenty-five ounces of polyvinyl chloride should be mixed with twenty-five ounces of paraffin, five ounces of lard, five ounces of basic lead carbonate, and fifty ounces of diallyl phthalate.

Mix the ingredients in the upper container of a double boiler; the lower part should have an extra-heavy mineral oil bath to prevent damage due to overheating. Use an ordinary candy thermometer for stirring. Turn the heat off when 350°F. is reached, and allow the mold material to simmer and cool for five to ten minutes while you prepare the patterns on which the molds are to be cast.

You can use metal, ceramic, and plaster novelties of the types that can be purchased at most ten-cent stores; or, if you have an artistic friend who works with clay ask him to make you some to be exclusively your own.

If you make your pattern from a porous material, such as plaster, dip it in peanut oil and polish it with a clean, dry cloth, as this Hollywood housewife does. "If it is made from a nonporous material, such as a metal, I simply polish it with a clean dry rag."

After the polishing operation, the pattern or mold is placed on a clean, flat surface and surrounded by a clean open-ended tin can or similar device that will serve as a retaining wall or pouring form for the molten material. Pour the inner side of the pouring form, so that the molten substance will slowly rise from the bottom of the form and submerge the pattern. Stop pouring as soon as the pattern is completely covered and allow to cool for at least two or three hours. Then remove the retaining wall simply by stretching the flexible mold.

If there are any defects, the mold can be reheated and remolded after cutting it into fairly small pieces. If it is clean and free from defects it is ready for the making of the candy casts. But if it appears very dry, coat the cavity surface with a thin layer of oleomargarine before filling it with candy. A good flexible mold will produce more than a thousand casts, and of course before you start you will make many casts so that you may pour many candies at one time.

Following are some of the candies that the Hollywood housewife now casts in the flexible molds:

(1) Chocolate fudge

3 cups granulated sugar
4 tablespoons cocoa or 3 chocolate squares
1½ cups milk
1 pinch of salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

The sugar is dissolved in the milk by heating to produce a syrup, after which a small portion of the syrup is poured over the cocoa or chocolate in a cup. When the chocolate has been dissolved by the syrup in the cup, by mixing with a spoon, the chocolate syrup is added to the milk syrup in the original container and the entire mixture is heated until the candy thermometer indicates 240°F. Then, without heat, the mixture is stirred until it cools to 160°F. Salt and vanilla are added to the mixture (along with the chopped nuts, if desired) just before the candy is poured into a mold

(2) Molasses brittle

2 cups molasses
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons vinegar
2 cups brown sugar
½ cup water
1 teaspoon soda

All of these ingredients, except for the teaspoon of soda, are heated at the same time and mixed until the candy thermometer indicates a temperature of 260°F. Mixing should then be continued until the candy cools to less than 200°F. Then add the soda and pour into the molds.

(3) Caramels

2 cups sugar
1 cup light corn syrup
½ cup cream
1 cup condensed milk
¼ cup butter
2 teaspoons vanilla

Except for the vanilla, heat all together to 245°F.; add the vanilla and cast in the molds, which are then placed in the refrigerator for speedy cooling.

Casts representing animals, cars, dolls, and miniature plaques all appeal to children, but animals sell best. Casts may be sold "as is" or wrapped in clear cellophane and sold in drug, candy, and grocery stores. The best way to market them, if there is any hesitation on the dealer's part to stock these molds, is to leave a box. They will sell themselves, and the Hollywood woman realizes about a hundred dollars a week from her candy novelties. You will set your price according to the cost of supplies at the time you are making the candies; the woman who makes the candies should realize a profit of about five cents an ounce. Don't forget to include all packaging costs, sales commissions, and a reasonable profit before you set any price to retailers on your candy molds.

Barley sugar
2 cups sugar
1 cup water
few drops of peppermint
¼ teaspoon cream of tartar

Cook the sugar and water together until nearly brittle when tested in water. Add flavoring and cream of tartar and boil until brittle. Use a pastry brush to keep the sides of the pan clear. Just before removing from the stove, add vegetable colorings as desired.

At Christmas time you can, after greasing the forms, place a folded string at the middle top, and when you pour in the mixture be sure to cover the ends of the string. These string-looped candies are purchased by parents to tie onto the Christmas tree.

Experimental Casting Plastics, by Thomas A. Dickinson (published by the Plastics Research Company, Alhambra, Calif.), tells all about the plastics you can "cook" in your kitchen. If you intend to make any molds I'd recommend that you read the book first.

Many a city could support such a complete meal service, but the chances are that the small town could not. At the same time, it is likely that any town of over 5,000 inhabitants could use a one-hot-dish kitchen where the customer could pick up, for lunch or dinner, a casserole ready to serve. This rather special home delivery service (better start with a pick-it-up-yourself service) would be welcomed in commuting towns near large cities. Busy housewives who have been playing bridge all afternoon, attending women's clubs, P.T.A. meetings, housecleaning, or just taking care of the children, are your potential customers. So are stenographers, secretaries, and clerks who have tiny, inadequate facilities, but who want to entertain at home. Also, every summer colony needs a hot-dish service.

Homes everywhere are full of women married to men who just don't like to go out to dinner. But the woman who does the cooking all the time often reaches the if-I-don't-taste-someone-else's-cooking-I'll-simply-die stage. That's where your casseroles come in.

Here is a recipe for a casserole. If this doesn't bring you repeat business you had better look to some other trade than cooking.

Ingredients:

1 pound green peppers
1 stalk celery
1 pound onions sliced—not too small. You want to be able to identify each ingredient
1 bottle stuffed olives (about twenty-cent size)
1 pound fresh mushrooms or one can mushrooms
1 can Arturo sauce or one can Chef Boy-ar-dee sauce (either of these is tomatoes with mushrooms)
1 can tomato soup undiluted
1 small clove garlic
½ pound American cheese
1 pound ground steak

There are two secrets to this recipe. The first is that you will fry each of the above ingredients separately in the order given in one-half pound of butter. You may use half margarine but you must use some butter. After you have fried each item separately and not too long, add them all to one package of coarse noodles that you have cooked. Stirring these all together, cook for three minutes, then place in a large casserole and cover with grated cheese.

The second secret of this recipe, which came north from the Canal Zone, is that it is best when made two or three days ahead. This makes it a perfect casserole for the mainstay of your one-hot-dish service, as there will be no waste. If you don't sell it one day it can be held over until the next; it improves with each reheating. You can freeze it if you have the facilities. Thus you would not have to cook each day but would probably find that you could make up an adequate supply by cooking the casseroles only twice a week.

You will have to charge a deposit on your casseroles, which should be in sizes to serve two, four, and eight. Establish your price at so much per portion, depending upon the cost of supplies at the time. Try to buy all supplies at wholesale.

Except for the price of a few newspaper advertisements, plus the price of your food and four dozen casseroles, your expenses will be small. But don't forget to include your time under expenses.

Never be afraid to say you are sold out. Better to do this than to sell a casserole that has not "ripened" at least three days.

It may be that the idea of cooking just one dish appeals to you but at the same time you don't think you'd like people coming to your home all the time. The neighbors might object, or your zoning laws may prohibit this. In as much as this dish is practically nonperishable, you might let your grocer sell the casseroles for you. He could keep them in his deep freezer and if his space is limited you could deliver to him once a day.

I don't mean to infer that your one-hot-dish service would sell only casseroles, but this might be the one dish you could start with, since it keeps well and can be made up in advance. Illness and other emergencies won't keep you from filling your orders, and you can take a day off whenever you choose; this lack of time off is often the headache of the home bakeshop.

If you decide to sell wholesale through grocers, bakeshops, and women's exchanges, try to find some sort of inexpensive nonreturnable container.

If you sell direct from your home you will probably find yourself eventually buying a quick-freeze unit or another refrigerator.

The minute you increase your menu by many dishes you will need extra help. Better to turn down orders than to split your profits too many ways. Once you hire a helper you run into worker's compensation, insurance, and so on.

Perhaps you have a recipe for a superb fish casserole to sell on Fridays? Baked beans and brown bread for Saturdays? Chicken pies for Sundays?

The first sales were in a nearby industrial plant where a friend, employed in a managerial capacity, agreed to put 50 bags of the one-and-two-thirds-ounce size on sale in the cafeteria. That day they were gone, and a phone call requested 350 more bags right away and the promise of a steady order for 750 bags each week. Mrs. Cressman rushed to her supply houses, bought glassine bags, a quantity of green peanuts, and some vegetable oil.

Gradually the markets expanded. Other cafeterias were added and her latest market is a busy diner in a college town thirty miles away, to which the peanuts are sent parcel post at least twice a week to insure freshness. Confectionery and grocery stores prefer the four-ounce size.

As orders mounted, the home utensils proved too small, so one Cressman son fashioned, in a welding shop, a large rectangular frying pan that covers two gas burners and assures uniform heat. A basket fitting into this pan has a heavy wire mesh bottom. A hoist to raise the basket is permanently fastened to the side of the range. Two large cooling racks are elevated to permit free circulation of air. Tedious hand weighing was eliminated by using a vegetable-oil tin. Across the bottom was fastened a slide centered with a cup, which holds the exact weight for one bag. As the slide is pulled, a tongue on the opposite end seals the main supply into the large tin; the measured peanuts tumble down the spout into the waiting bag. About 250 bags are filled per hour, and two of these packers are used, one for each size of bag. Their cost, plus that of the pan for frying, was about fifty dollars.

Only the best quality peanuts are bought, wholesale, in thirty-pound cartons. A professional touch is added to each package by a smart gold label with black lettering of the trade-mark "Black Cat Brand."

All work is done in the home kitchen with one part-time worker, and Mrs. Cressman estimates her monthly gas bill at two dollars. She allows 25 per cent profit to local outlets and 20 per cent to distant markets. About twenty hours work per week is required to produce 1,500 bags of peanuts. Retail prices are ten cents for the one-and-two-thirds-ounce bags and twenty cents for the four-ounce bags.

A woman of many talents, Mrs. Cressman likes to make cakes that are really works of art, since she paints designs and scenes on the boiled frosting. The success of the painting, she says, lies in using the very finest badger-hair brushes bought from an art-supply house.

Mrs. Pickett started in a small apartment on a capital of fifteen dollars, and did all the cooking and packing. On the first day, two boys distributed 1,000 menus in nearby office buildings. At once Mrs. Pickett's telephone began to jingle, and her enterprise had been launched successfully. Receipts from the first day's collections provided capital for the next day. Within a year she moved to larger quarters and was employing two cooks, a man to pack boxes, and a general utility boy.

Sales ranged from fifty boxes on Saturdays to three hundred on rainy days, all ordered by subscription or by phone before 11 A.M. Attractive leaflets with menus for the next day were enclosed with each lunch. Picnic and auto-trip lunches were features, as well as homemade fudge and cookies. Gross annual business topped $20,000, with a net return of sixty to seventy dollars per week.

Such an enterprise should be confined to a few city blocks for speedy and economical delivery. Success depends on quality foods, appetizingly prepared and packed, and interestingly varied from day to day, and on certain specialties that are always available.

Weather predictions have to be carefully studied as a guide in ordering food supplies to avoid spoilage losses.

She designed individual cooky cutters suitable to every holiday in the year. The Fourth of July called for a firecracker; there was a paddy pig for St. Patrick's Day; a turkey for Thanksgiving; and a Christmas tree, a snow man, stars, and Santa Claus for Christmas.

This mother liked to mix all her dough by hand in preference to using an electric mixer. She had no special recipe to start with, but took one from a magazine and worked on it until it was just tangy enough—but not too spicy—for children's tastes. She cooked on three days a week and iced on the other three working days. During the summers she prepared her Christmas cookies; she found that they would stay fresh as long as a year when sealed in cellophane bags and stored in tin containers until the right season was at hand.

Clever, intricately designed cooky cutters, which cost her practically nothing, sold at five dollars each to mothers who wished to make their own cookies.

Naturally, the cookies that took the least amount of time and effort brought her in the greatest profit. She could, in one day, turn out two hundred and fifty Christmas stars with an iced border, or one hundred baby-with-candles. These latter sold for thirty-five cents and were very profitable, but there was also a drum major, very gay with his red and blue icing, which sold at thirty-five cents; the profit wasn't so great on this, but she enjoyed the aesthetic pleasure that it gave her.

Some months she grossed four hundred dollars. Many a child could be sent to college on the proceeds of cooky making, for the demand has never been met. It never will be, so long as there are children.

This lass decided to start in a small way, and in cahoots with the janitor tacked up a small sign near the elevator saying that hot biscuits would be on sale in Apartment 4C at six that evening. Such commercializing in an apartment house was unheard of, but the line formed and has been forming ever since.

The agents of the apartment house owners came to look over this slip of a girl who had dared to sell her cooking. They came to give her notice, but stayed to eat of the rich icebox nut cake she specialized in on Fridays. Indeed, they were so understanding that they moved the girl down to the first apartment vacant on the ground floor. This saved traffic through the building as workers coming in at night stopped to make their purchases.

It wasn't long before this successful cook was being asked to cater for small dinner parties. She decided against this, but did open a small store, putting another former office worker in charge. She herself stayed home to do the cooking, wisely reasoning that it was her cooking alone that had brought in the first customer.

Your grocer will be able to tell you where you can buy your supplies wholesale, but don't invest in any large quantities until you are certain that you can maintain your product always at top quality and that you have the energy to keep ahead of your orders.

Pies, uncooked and frozen, will last indefinitely. Don't forget the grocer's commission of 20 per cent when prorating the cost of your pies. Most grocers will buy the pies outright and not on a commission basis. They work on a small percentage of profit because of the comparatively quick turnover of their goods.

But it takes capital to launch a new food product, and to finance it, Mrs. Perrins cannily decided first to sell her own homemade jellies, fruit cakes, plum puddings, and strawberry preserves, all made from recipes of long ago. They were all sold locally without any advertising, and after a year with the money thus earned, Mrs. Perrins started in earnest to brew mulled cider.

Since she lived in the Nashoba Apple Belt, apples were plentiful; it wasn't long before this Massachusetts kitchen, steaming with the odor of spices, tea, lemon, sugar, and salt, was turning out cider from juice stock of the highest-grade apples. (The mulling occurs as all ingredients blend while simmering on the kitchen range.) Later as business increased, another kitchen was added to the Perrins' rambling house.

The cider, which is served either hot or cold, first went out in glass bottles, but this presentation didn't suit Mrs. Perrins, who loves old things, and since spiced mulled cider was an old-fashioned drink, she wanted a suitable container. A cracked brown jug picked up in an antique shop was copied by the Dorchester Pottery (Massachusetts) and now the cider goes out not only in glass but in the brown stoneware jugs, hand-fashioned on the wheel as was done years ago, and in kegs, "brown as the side of a sun-warmed barn." The kegs are reused as fireside buckets or as toy containers. Frances Hall Perrins uses her imagination (how that word does crop up in successful home careers!) in her business, and it pays off.

Mrs. Perrins read The Day Must Dawn, by Agnes Sligh Turnbull, which mentioned drinking mulled cider out of wooden noggins, and she had some tiny pottery noggins made up. The cider is so rich and sweet it is consumed only in small quantities; the cups hold only four ounces and are sold in sets with the brown jugs.

In glass jugs the cider sells at one dollar and fifty cents a half gallon; it was first marketed at the Perrins's roadside stand and at local stores, but now is found at such stores as Altman's and S. S. Pierce. Through advertising in Yankee, House and Garden, and The Christian Science Monitor, a mail-order business has been built up, and many a bottle has gone across the continent. Ironically enough, the larger proportion of Mrs. Perrins's business is done west of the Mississippi.

Mrs. Perrins believes that most women fail at a home career because they don't follow their ideas through. Although the war came along just as she started merchandising an entirely new product, she decided not to stop. Tenacity paid off, for the business showed a steady growth all through the war years, and this year's gross sales are double last year's. Mrs. Perrins is convinced that it takes ten years to establish a luxury food product. She also warns that it is unwise to start off with a mail-order business, as this is costly and should be worked into gradually.

Mrs. Perrins helped run her husband's insurance business when he went overseas during World War I; she loathed the selling end of it, but now, years later, she enters with zest into selling mulled cider. Here is a product she believes in, and to which she has given all the creative drive she possesses.

The strawberry preserve is still sold, but now in the gray-cream Dorchester Pottery pots with a strawberry plant hand-painted in a soft blue color on each. The Dorchester Pottery has taken many of Mrs. Perrins's ideas and designed dishes, toddy mugs, breakfast and children sets, and casseroles in New England stoneware. These pieces and designs, suggested by Mrs. Perrins, are exclusively hers, and she carries on, in addition to the sale of mulled cider and jams, a wholesale business in pottery with gift shops throughout the country. This is a profitable thing in itself, but her first love is the selling of mulled cider.

What Mrs. Perrins is doing with mulled cider could as well be done with many another good old-fashioned recipe.

This girl, just out of college, succeeded from the start with a family recipe. But many a recipe heirloom came out of a modern cookbook and never knew an ancestor. Study such cookbooks as Secrets of New England Cooking, by Ella Shannon Bowles and Dorothy S. Towle (published by M. Barrows & Company, Inc.), for "heirloom recipes." You will find flavorsome ones such as Hickory Nut Cookies, Mincemeat Hermits, Shaker Raised Doughnuts, Old-fashioned Sugar Cookies—any of which might be a start to culinary financial returns.

It takes one man to run the apple-peeling machine, which skins and cores the apples at the rate of fifteen bushels an hour. These whole apples, when dropped into brine, keep their fresh color. Next, they are checked by two workers whose job it is to cut away any discolorations or bruised spots. Then the apples go through the slicing machine, after which they pass over a sieve, through which drop the seed sacs. Next, the fruit is packed in waxed paper-protected boxes, and quickly placed in the commodious refrigerator room.

This refrigerator was not yet built in 1945 when Mr. Gledhill started to slice apples for sale. The first year he sliced all his apples on a hand machine, but in the few years the business has been growing, the plant has grown with it. Now the two-car garage has been expanded to include a jelly-making machine to use up the peelings of the apples. The apple jelly is sold to the same bakeries that buy the sliced apples, and is used in apple turnovers and jelly doughnuts.

Mr. Gledhill does not have his own orchard, but buys his apples from nearby apple farms. As winter grows nearer, the apples change. First the Gledhill crew slices Red Astrakan apples, then Duchess, and later the Gravenstein and Wealthys. Midwinter finds them marketing the hardy McIntosh and Baldwin apples. Many restaurants and hotel dining rooms are able to feature Mr. Gledhill's "fresh apple pie" every day, something they would be unable to do without his service.

Mrs. Gledhill, a trained dietician, helps too. It is her knowledge that restaurants use to turn out the perfect apple pie. She experimented with each type of apple in her own kitchen until now she can come up with the right recipe and treatment to bring out the best in flavor from each variety.

The honey, which Mr. Henry buys and bottles himself, is sold in dainty gift crocks in a choice of three colors—blue, rose, or brown. Tied in colorful ribbon and wrapped in gay paper, they are, says Mr. Henry, the ideal, all-time gift.

Many a man or woman has built up a successful business selling the product for which his locality is noted. Too often we forget how large this country is, and how many potential customers we have. What may seem to us commonplace food may be, to inhabitants of other regions, a refreshing novelty.

Back in 1925, Mrs. Hamrick opened a tea room in her colonial home at Jacksonville. The dining room would seat a hundred, and in catering to parties she says, "I had to have something to garnish the plates, so I started making spiced apples. I added red vegetable coloring to them, and of course it was several years before I got them just right to put up in pint and quart jars for sale.

"I discovered that men were shy of the tea room, so I changed the name to Autauga (Indian name meaning land of plenty) Grill and featured fried chicken and steaks, and always I added the spiced red apples for color. Every single meal someone asked for the recipe, but at that time I made them up in small quantities and without a recipe. I had a large evening and luncheon trade and I catered to special luncheons, banquets, private parties, business and professional ladies.

"I guess it was my guests that named my apples the Autauga, for they would repeatedly ask for Autauga apples. In 1940 I sold out and came to Clearwater to take care of my sister, and I decided to put all my time on the apples.

"I sell Bloomingdale's, Macy's, Sherry's, and lots of smaller places in New York as well as Hopper McGaw in Baltimore, H. & S. Pogue in Cincinnati, Marshall Field's in Chicago, and stores in many other cities. I also have a nice gift trade as many people buy the spiced apples for presents to give to friends at Christmas."

Mrs. Hamrick houses her business in a converted garage at her Clearwater home. During the canning season (October through April) seven stoves are kept going in the garage, and two helpers are Mrs. Hamrick's only assistants as she prepares and packs the apples in pint glass jars—twelve pints to the case—for wholesale; the gift packages contain any number from two to twelve jars.

Only the finest apples from Virginia orchards are used, and as far as Mrs. Hamrick knows, she is the only manufacturer of this type of spiced apple. The apples are bright, bright red and I noticed that a clove was imbedded in each one; their flavor is sweet, tangy, and spicy. Since they serve both as a garnish and as a touch of color with nutritional value, it is easy to understand why Mrs. Hamrick has been so successful with her food specialty.

But the best products in the world won't be any good unless one of you is capable of handling the business end. This woman should be chosen by vote and given full confidence in marketing, advertising, and so on. Two or more of the contributors, again taking a page from the experiences of the Folly Cove Designers, should act as a jury; and no products that do not come up to the standards set should be accepted for the "pool."

An attractive name should be chosen for the products, all of which would be of a nonperishable nature. All should be packaged in the same type and color container. A salesman who perhaps already carries food products should be contacted and given this specialized line.

Or a mail-order business offering perhaps ten products of excellence (this is a must) could be worked out. The possibilities of combining talents in cooking as well as in any other line are unlimited. But there must be at least one member of the project with business ability.