Grandma’s Recipe Goes Global

Kim Samuelson, owner and operator of RBJ Family Restaurant in Crookston, Minnesota, has worked in the restaurant industry since she was 9 years old. Kim has run the restaurant, named after her father, Roger Bernard Johnson, since 1987. In the early 1990’s, Kim created a single batch of her grandmother’s recipe for rhubarb-strawberry jam from abundant rhubarb in her garden to serve restaurant customers. The spread was so popular, customers asked for batches to bring home.

“With all the positive response, I thought it would be fun to have jars to purchase for people to bring home,” recalls Kim. She began selling RBJ Rhubarb-Strawberry Spreadable Fruit at the restaurant, and then branched out to grocery stores and mail order. Soon it was sold on Quality, Value, and Convenience (QVC) home shopping network and through the combination of QVC, phone selling, and word of mouth, RBJ Spreadable Fruit landed in store shelves and homes all over the country. “We couldn’t have asked for a better response,” reflects Kim on RBJ Spreadable Fruit’s success. Today, RBJ Spreadable Fruit has five exciting flavors sold all over the country.

Marketing Strategies

Kim started marketing RBJ Spreadable Fruit (it does not contain enough sugar to be called “jam”) locally on grocery store shelves and other local stores in the Red River Valley. She then secured a Hillsboro firm to produce the spread and reached a development agreement with the Agricultural Utilization Research Institute (AURI) in Crookston, Minnesota, which sampled four of the five flavors currently sold. Further marketing strategies included finding retailers to sell RBJ Spreadable from the phone book and landing a spot on QVC’s “50 in 50” tour.

The “50 in 50” tour is a 50 week U.S. tour aimed at featuring unique products in all 50 states. Kim applied RBJ Spreadable Fruit as a unique product, was interviewed by the Minnesota Inventors Congress, and beat approximately 200 entrants vying for a handful of coveted slots, including only four food slots. As a participant in QVC, Kim broadcast live for six minutes from the Taste of Minnesota and millions of people watching QVC nationwide became interested in RBJ Spreadable Fruit.

QVC originally purchased 2800 2-packs of RBJ Spreadable Fruit from Kim. However, after her 6-minute broadcast, all 2800 two-packs were sold-out and another 134 two-packs were back-ordered. While Kim finished sending out all the back-orders, she continues to receive daily phone calls from QVC customers wanting more RBJ Spreadable Fruit.

Low Calorie and Luscious

RBJ Spreadable Fruit is now offered in Rhubarb – Strawberry, Strawberry – Almond, Rhubarb – Pineapple, Strawberry – Peach and Rhubarb Sauce flavors. A single jar sells for around $3.50 in most local stores, $5.00 in gift stores. Kim is currently developing gift packs and other ways to market RBJ Spreadable Fruit. The fruit spreads have 35 calories per serving, only 8 grams of added sugar, less than jam or jelly, and shelf life of one year, 6-month refrigerated after opening. Like jam or jelly, they have several uses such as:

• pancake and waffle toppings
• mixing with cream cheese for bagel topping or fruit dips
• ice cream toppings
• cheesecake toppings
• being baked into cakes

The rhubarb for the spreadable fruit is bought from a grower. However, Kim and her husband Eric, a farmer, are considering incorporating a “sizable plot” of rhubarb into their farm. RBJ Spreadable Fruit has two Midwest distributors: it is packaged in Hillsboro, North Dakota and made in Crookston, Minnesota. This allows the product to carry both the “Pride of Dakota” and “Minnesota Grown” labels, both promoting the “home-grown” distinction of the product and enhancing the company’s presence at trade-shows. RBJ Spreadable Fruits mostly sells through direct shipping and having a nationwide market helps create nationwide funding. “[The business] becomes increasingly more important as time goes by. It’s nice to have revenue in the wintertime- we can sell to people in Arizona who aren’t having a snowstorm. It helps to round out the inconsistencies,” Kim says.

The Crookston Area Chamber of Commerce declared Kim Samuelson Entrepreneur of the Year in 1995. 1995 also marked the year that RBJ Spreadable Fruit moved to a new location and increased space and staff. Currently, RBJ Spreadable Fruit employs two people other than Kim. “We’re really starting to grow,” remarks Samuelson. “Last year, we averaged 120 cases a month of the 14-ounce size, and now we are up from that. A gift box, a book of rhubarb recipes, and a package 5-ounce sampler jars have been added to the product line. Our goal is 300 cases a month average. That would be a real nice point for us to see a return.”

Kim is pleased at the success of RBJ Spreadable Fruit and believes, with a little imagination and hard work, anything is possible.