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."