This story originally appeared on News OK. View the original story here.
Somewhere in the middle of the tailgate or potluck, someone scoops a chip into a bowl of homemade salsa, takes a bite and proclaims, "That's the best salsa I've ever tasted. It ought to be on grocery store shelves!"
Whether it's salsa, barbecue sauce or homemade jelly, everyone knows someone with dreams of going from homemade to market-ready.
What may be news to many is that there is a program funded by their tax dollars at Oklahoma State University tasked with making those dreams come true.
Two decades ago, the Robert S. Kerr Food and Agricultural Product Center (FAPC) opened in Stillwater where it has helped thousands of Oklahomans determine the viability of their ideas through workshops, testing venues, scientific research and a team of food-industry professionals to help determine whether to move forward or go back to the drawing board.
For the past two years, The Oklahoman has documented the progress of four products and the people behind them, struggling to make it to market and stay there.
Diane's Signature Dressings for Salad
After Jim Mashore's wife Diane and daughter Brooke Franklin completed their first trade show five years ago selling Diane's Legendary Italian Dressing, spirits were high in their Edmond home.
But Jim wanted to make sure they didn't take the moment for granted.
“You two, you have got to promise me forever you will celebrate these small things,” Franklin remembered her father saying in a July interview. “That's something we haven't done a great job of, but we're gonna do better.”
Jim Mashore was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2000, providing tragic inspiration for his wife and daughter's entrepreneurship. With the cancer in and out of remission, it took another six years before the Mashores began in earnest building a business.
It was Brooke who suggested they might find a market for the Italian salad dressing Diane was famous for among family and friends. Jim would act as sales manager as long as his health would allow.
Today, Diane's Signature Foods includes Signature Dressing for Salad in Legendary Italian and Hatch Chile Valley labels. The gourmet products are available from Oklahoma City to Dallas.
In July, Brooke said, "I guess it was a few months ago, I was looking back over the books and making projections and I realized, 'This is really working, we might just be OK.'"
That unassailable occasion for celebration, according to her dad's earlier dictum on top of the 10-year anniversary of their business, came in November and went to measured celebration for good reason.
Jim Mashore died September 9. He was 76.
As the new year arrived, Mashore's wife and daughter returned to the duties they swore they would carry on after he was gone. And the time for Diane's dressings to deliver on the promise his family believed in is nigh.
Ice T Kings
After Michael Clark graduated from the University of Missouri, he took a good job with JPMorgan Chase, bound for a lucrative career in the world of high finance. Then he met Karlin Williamson.
The two volunteered at MetroTech together, intending to inspire ambition in groups of kids coming out of juvenile detention. Their infectious enthusiasm helped double interest before funding ran dry.
Unable to find financial support to sustain the program, Clark and Williamson devised a two-pronged plan to make their own.
Karlin has a background in music production and Michael is a dynamic singer, but to record takes money they didn't have. So they turned to the kitchen.
"My wife is from the South, and people from the South are serious about their tea," Williamson explained.
So he worked on a recipe under her tutelage, and the result inspired them to build a business around it.
"We prayed on it before, and the Lord delivered this iced tea," Williamson said. "We're going to use the money we make from the tea to help with the music part, then we'll be making money two ways to support the mentoring."
Clark said, "Faith is really important to what we do. I came from the financial world, I lived that life. What we're doing is more like a mission."
Clark explained their business model isn't based on creating wealth that will some day grow large enough so they can chip off a little for charity.
"We're creating businesses to support our mission, 100 percent," he said.
The Ice T Kings first attended Basic Training in October of 2014. Since then, the FAPC has connected them with potential co-packers from in and out of Oklahoma to no avail.
So Ice T Kings recently leased space to do their own production. But first, they need equipment.
Ace in the Bowl
Susan Witt has never claimed to be a gourmet cook, but for most of her adult life her salsa recipe was the toast of potlucks and watch-parties.
She and her husband, Bruce, are second-generation owners of Del City's Rosebud Cleaners, which along with raising children, taking care of grandchildren and volunteering has kept Susan plenty busy.
About 20 years ago, she prepared her salsa for a watch party attended by Jim Brooks, who had recently sold his shares in a local food-packing company to go to work at the new FAPC at OSU.
"The first time I tried Susan's salsa was at a Super Bowl party," he said. "I didn't know who'd made it, but it was so good when I went back to get more, it was the only salsa that had run out."
Brooks was adamant Witt come to Basic Training, which she did — 16 years later.
"Believe it or not, I didn't forget about it over all that time," she laughed. "My husband owns a dry cleaner and we had children and grandchildren to take care of, so I spent my time thinking about a name and a slogan and fantasized about seeing it on shelves.
It finally happened in 2012, and now Witt is concentrating on new markets.
Last August, she met with the high school pom squad at Choctaw High School, pitching her product to them to raise money to no avail, but she did find partners at her alma mater, Del City High School, where the Special Eagles were in crisis seeking funds to attend the Special Olympics.
"Since school activity funding was impacted this year with the budget crunch, the need for fundraising was more important than ever," she said.
Ace in the Bowl helped raise $700 in two weeks.
Suan's Foods
If there is a shepherd among the group, it is Suan Grant.
Like Diane Mashore, Grant's entrepreneurship came out of necessity. Her husband Jackie's battle with Alzheimer's disease ended in 2006, leaving a heavy burden.
"Alzheimer's disease depleted our assets just as it had depleted his memories," she said. "I needed a job and no one would hire a woman my age who had not worked in the past 30 years and had no advanced computer skills nor any interest in gaining any. Years of volunteer work does not necessarily transfer into wanted/needed job skills."
So the former hospital records professional, turned to the place she'd lived and found love from 1974 to 1978.
"I had two choices: Barbados or Jamaica. I chose Jamaica," she said.
It was there she met and married Jackie and picked up on the local flavor that would inspire Suan's Jelly.
"It's a Scotch Bonnet Pepper Jelly — it's a Jamaican pepper in the family of the habanero," Grant said. "They flavor almost everything they eat with Scotch bonnet peppers, which is unique. It's a very hot pepper — one of the hottest peppers there are. I tame the heat and yet keep the wonderful flavors of the Scotch bonnet pepper. It has a kick to it, but it doesn't burn."
Reaching for wisdom life's travels had tucked in a safe place until she needed it, Grant began whipping up batches of Scotch Bonnet jelly. Today, she offers a line of seven products that are sold worldwide.
"I went to Germany last year (as part of a program organized by the Made in Oklahoma Coalition), and met some people from Czechoslovakia who said they just loved the jelly," Grant said. "To connect with people from another continent because of my jelly was just so special."
But don't be fooled, Grant isn't seeing Smucker's money. At 73 going on 17, she hustles around the state to promote her products at grocery stores, trade shows and special events, but she's rarely too busy to help colleagues.
“We always run everything past Suan," Diane Mashore said. ”She's always been so honest with us."
Opportunity knocks
Grant is chair of the Emerging Businesses committee, which convened at the Department of Agriculture in August to hear a presentation by a contingent from Valliance Bank extolling the virtues of community banking. She beamed through the presentation led by her granddaughter Lexi.
But the subject the dozen or so members on hand were most eager to discuss was a new opportunity with Associated Wholesale Grocers, one of the largest food distributors in the region. AWG offered to allow Made in Oklahoma Coalition members an exclusive display from which to market their products. Suan's Foods, Diane's Signature Foods and Ace in the Bowl are all members.
"AWG is bending over backwards to help on this project," Brooks said.
"It's such an incredible opportunity," Grant said last summer. "Having all our products grouped together under the banner of Made in Oklahoma, it's just got to work."
As she walked out the door, she muttered, "it better" through her ever-present smile, a hint of anxiety in her tone.