Candymaking gels for Alaska Wild Berry.

Alaskan retailer strikes chocolate gold in expansion from jam and jelly beginnings

Fifty-one years ago, in the kitchen of a log cabin, the pungent odor of batches of wild berry jelly wafted its way to the nostrils of waiting customers. This first retail manufacturing effort by Alaska Wild

Expanding its market with the addition of confectionery, the Anchorage-based Alaska Wild Berry continues to turn out the wild berry jams and jellies that built its reputation. The company's birthplace is the small fishing village of Homer, on the Kenai Peninsula, where in 1946 Hazel and Kenneth Heath began marketing their jams and jellies made from local berries.

Twenty years ago, in sunny southern California, entrepreneur Peter Eden was running a carpet cleaning business during the week and playing beach volleyball on weekends; a world away from cold, snowy Alaska. One day a friend from university days, Richard Countryman, who was off to Alaska to seek his fortune, invited Eden to drive up the Alcan Highway with him that winter. It sounded like a great adventure.

Drive to Alaska in the winter? "We saw lots of moose," recalls Eden of his first taste of the Alaskan wilderness. By a twist of fate, the two ended up in Homer where they stopped at Alaska Wild Berry Products. The business was up for sale. They discussed buying it, but decided against the idea and returned to California.

Months later, the call of the wild still beckoned and they returned to Homer, accompanied by a relative of Countryman's, to buy Alaska Wild Berry in 1975. They formed a partnership, but by 1987 Eden's partners decided to get out of the business, leaving him the sole owner.

A streamlined bundle of energy, Eden set to work redesigning packaging, expanding the Homer store, and adding a viewing window so customers could watch the jams and jellies being made. His creative genius didn't stop there. The jams and jellies had become so popular, why not incorporate some of those wild berry flavors with chocolate?

After a year of experimentation, the unique chocolate-covered wild berry jelly center confections were perfected. "Instead of the standard pectin used for jelly, we found that a quick-set pectin and other slight adjustments in mixing the jelly produced a more firm gelatin-like mixture that could be used as a center in a chocolate," Eden explains. "We had a couple hand-dippers dipping the jelly center for customers to watch."

Anchorage beckons

In a strategic move designed to grow the business, visionary Eden set his sights on Anchorage, a port city of 250,000, as the location for a new facility. Tourism was bringing big bucks into the economy of Alaska with many of those tourists passing through Anchorage. Eden designed a 22,000-square-foot building to resemble a cannery with high ceilings and cedar used for walls and beams inside the log cabin exterior. In 1994, Alaska Wild Berry moved into its new home.

Recent growth of the business has been assisted by Eden's long-time friend and rugby buddy, Cameron Vivian, serving as general manager, production/sales, since 1995.

Eight thousand square feet of production space is divided into three kitchens. One kitchen is devoted to juicing berries and the production of jams and jellies. Shiny copper kettles, a Hobart mixer, a Hobart ball beater and two stainless cooling tables fill the next kitchen where cooking jelly centers used for confections takes place.

A third kitchen houses one 50-pound, five 250-pound chocolate melters from Savage Brothers and two 12-inch Hilliard enrobers.

Jelly centers for candy are made of fresh berry juice, sugar, corn syrup and pectin. No preservatives are used. Ingredients for each of over a dozen flavors are cooked in copper kettles to a temperature of 200 degrees before the 50-pound batch is quickly poured onto a stainless steel cooling table. The mixture sets up in 15 minutes. Each batch of jelly produces 1,100 pieces of 3/4-inch square jelly centers.

Fifteen batches are made each day totaling 16,500 pieces per day. This rate of production continues five days a week from April to December.

A specially-built cutter made with blades normally used to cut linoleum handily slices through the slabs of jelly. After being cut and loaded onto trays, the jelly centers are allowed to set overnight. Racks full of trays of jelly centers are transported to the enrobing room where the jelly centers are dusted with corn starch as they begin their journey along the conveyor of the Hilliard enrober.

First the jelly centers glide through a pool of chocolate on the pre-bottomer, continuing along the conveyor through a shower of milk or dark chocolate. Handstringing gives the final touch to each piece. Salmonberry is the most popular flavor, followed by raspberry and blueberry, though each flavor has its loyal fans.

Next to the enrobing kitchen is a small room where a Hilliard system fills Alaska wildlife moulds of salmon, bear, moose, wolf, seal or eagle with white, milk or dark chocolate. Annual orders for chocolate totals 25,000 pounds from Guittard, Peters and Schokinag.

Tangy, tantalizing berries

Wild Berry's reputation is built on the tangy taste of fresh, wild berries. In the long daylight hours of June, July and August flower gardens burst into bloom in town while the slopes outside of town are covered with magenta fireweed and bushes loaded with ripening berries.

"Over the years we've developed relationships with a reliable group of pickers," says Eden. Berry pickers in the last frontier are a hearty lot, diligently combing the hillsides for hours on end, ever attuned to the feeding habits of another, more aggressive consumer than the average tourist. Hulking brown, or grizzly bears and their smaller black cousins gorge themselves on berries throughout the season. Blueberries are one of their favorite foods. Streams where salmon are running are a magnet for these carnivores, providing an opportunity for berry pickers to quickly fill their buckets elsewhere.

General Manager Vivian purchases buckets of berries at the pickers' plant in Anchorage during the berry season. Pickers closer to Homer may deliver their berries to that facility where they are placed in the freezer, then later trucked to Anchorage.

Buying from local berry pickers as well as those farther afield enables them to take advantage of the harvest of such wild delicacies as salmon berries from Kodiak, low bush cranberries (lingenberries) from the Kenai Peninsula and moss berries from Nome. Commercial growers in the Anchorage area provide most of the strawberries and raspberries. The supply of berries is totally dependent on the weather, so if the season is unusually wet or dry, certain varieties of berries may not ripen.

An ideal growing season allows them to produce rows of gleaming jars of 15 to 20 varieties of jams and jellies including strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, rose hip, highbush cranberry, lingenberry, rhubarb, salmonberry, moss berry, elderberry, red and black currant, watermelon berry and gooseberry plus cranberry apple butter line the shelves of the retail shop.

To add zest to meat or fish dishes, customers stock up on Alaska Wild Betty's popular Sourdough Sauce, made from cranberries, applesauce, sugar, vinegar, onions and spices.

In 1996, the company produced 150,000 jars of jelly. After arriving at the plant, fresh berries are put in freezers. "It's not feasible for us to use berry concentrates, so there is more work involved in making our jellies from scratch," Eden explains. "We discovered years ago that berries that had been frozen, then thawed and juiced had better flavor, color and more juice than fresh ones." He speaks from experience as a hands-on business owner who has stirred a few kettles of jelly himself.

When needed, the berries are thawed, cleaned and juiced. Each batch of berries is tested on a pH meter for acid content. "It's really important to get the right soluble solids ratio so all batches of berries are also given an RF factor test," explains Eden. "It's an FDA regulation that you must have at least 3.0 percent soluble solids. If you don't get the good juice then you have to make it up with sugar and we would rather not do that."

Mouthwatering confections

Alaska Wild Berry produces more than 120 confections including creams, truffles, brittle, barks, fudges, clusters, chocolate-caramel-pecan clusters, chocolate-covered caramels, chocolate-covered fudge squares and chocolate-dipped dried fruits.

Creams created on a Friend depositor come in traditional flavors such as coconut, mocha and orange. Chocolate connoisseurs come back for melt-in-your mouth truffles in amaretto, grand marnier, Irish cream and other flavors, which first appeared on the shelves in June of last year. Sugar-free confections include fudge and nut clusters.

"One of our new confections this year is similar to a s'more that we all ate around the campfire when we were kids," explains Eden. "Ours will have a layer of peanut butter and one of wild berry jelly sandwiched in between two graham crackers with the whole thing coated in chocolate."

Alaskan ambiance

Sweet treats aren't the only chocolate customers see and smell, when they walk through the front door of the store in Anchorage. A specially-designed 20 foot "chocolatefall" containing 3,400 pounds of melted chocolate cascades from kettle to kettle down a wall opposite the main entrance. Free samples passed out at the door as a load of visitors from a tour bus file in encourage them to stop by the candy counter before they leave.

Artifacts lend a uniquely Alaskan ambiance to the inside of the building. Customers stop to stroke the fur of a life-size stuffed bear and small children cuddle up to another stuffed bear on a bench, then gaze up high on the walls at the moose antlers and mounted moose, bear and caribou heads.

Dividing the retail shop into sections works well as an effective way to organize a wide variety of offerings from confections, jams and jellies to smoked salmon, stuffed toy moose and bears plus Alaska sweatshirts, mugs and cards ("We're committed to developing products that promote Alaska," says Peter Eden.).

There are all sorts of nooks and crannies for customers to explore. In one section, customers can peer through the viewing window to watch candy being made, then choose from a selection of confections in two glass cases, and assorted prepacked candies and gift packs on free-standing displays.

In another area, customers can peruse shelves stocked with Alaska Wild Berry jams, jellies individually or in gift boxes, and canned or prepacked smoked salmon along a wall, while a video telling the Alaska Wild Berry Products story plays above another viewing window.

"We wanted a lot of ambiance greeting customers when they enter the store," explains Eden. "We pay attention to the smallest details of what the customer sees, hears, and smells."

Heady days of summer

Taking advantage of its location in the land of the midnight sun, Alaska Wild Berry, and many other retailers, opens at 10:00 a.m. and closes at 11:00 p.m. seven days a week during June, July and August. Eden loves the scenic beauty of Alaska, the friendliness of the people and the 18 hours of daylight in the summer. "Summers are beautiful. I just wish they were longer!" he exclaims.

During those long days of summer, most of the sales are to visitors. The rest of the year mail order, wholesale and purchases by local folks keep the cash register ringing.

Cost of production is high due to the fact that supplies have to be imported and labor costs are higher than they are in many other states. "Fortunately we have been able to make some good deals with shipping companies for freight coming in and products going out of Alaska," explains Vivian.

"We have this great arrangement with UPS and its international air cargo planes returning to Anchorage from overseas," he says. "Many aircraft would continue on south to the lower 48 states empty. UPS has offered us some aggressive incentives to use their services, so I can compete fairly well with many mail order companies outside of Alaska."

Retail sales of confectionery account for 14 percent of revenue with jelly bringing in another four percent. Wholesale jelly and candy accounts boost income figures by 12 percent. Mail orders add up to 20 percent while retail sales of other food items such as smoked salmon, reindeer/Polish sausage, Alaska curios and clothing ring up the remaining 50 percent.

Seventy percent of business is done during the tourist season with Christmas sales accounting for 30 percent. During the Christmas season, 500 to 1,000 gift orders are shipped out a day. "Currently our mail order list is on computer, but we would like to get our inventory on computer also," says Vivian. A slick new eight-page mail order catalog will be ready to send out to potential clients nationwide in 1998.

The bulk of the sales occur at the main facility in the southeastern section of Anchorage. The shop in Homer still does a lively business and the small retail outlet in Anchorage's Fifth Avenue Mall attracts shoppers and business people. Alaska Wild Berry's products are sold in gift shops around the state including ones at Anchorage's international and domestic airports.

A new outlet in Ketchikan, opening in May, will be ideally situated to attract customers from the many cruise ships that stop in Ketchikan. Though the Ketchican store will be mainly a retail outlet, customers will be able to watch butter fudges and clusters being made through a viewing window.

A dedicated workforce numbering 20 in production during the summer with 12-30 in retail makes it possible to fill mail orders while still filling Wild Berry's shelves with product.

Thriving on challenges

The duo of Eden and Vivian thrives on change and challenge, but they both recognize the value of contented and committed employees. Behind General Manager Vivian's solid stature and gravelly voice is a confident man with a talent for handling people in a warm, caring way while encouraging them to develop their full potential.

Eighteen years of experience managing large fish processing plants in Alaska fine tuned his skills for dealing effectively with people of many economic and cultural backgrounds.

"The first things I did when I came on this job were to smooth out some rough edges in employee morale, and raise some salaries," explains Vivian. Empowering employees to make decisions is paying off with happier employees and increased production.

The workforce at Alaska Wild Berry includes some employees from special populations. Vivian is proud of the company's participation in ASETS, a program that is designed to encourage Anchorage businesses to hire individuals with developmental disabilities to perform specific tasks.

Sharing ideas

"The candy business is a lot more fun than the fish business!" exclaims Vivian. "Attending a national RCI (Retail Confectioners International) meeting shortly after I came on board here was a real eye opener for me," he explains. "Things can get pretty cut throat in the fish processing industry. I was amazed at candymakers' willingness to share ideas and information."

In 1989, Eden traveled to Washington, D.C. where he received an award as Alaska Small Business Person of the Year. Involvement in local community events has resulted in increased publicity for the company with several fundraisers being held at its Anchorage facility.

With much respect for each other's experience and opinions, the two have blended their special skills and talents into a powerful partnership that seems certain to carry Alaska Wild Berry Products steadily forward in the years to come.