Thanks to a $35,000 loan from Whole Foods Market and a commitment from the grocery chain for improved shelf space, the lesbian-owned Hip Chick Farms brand is rolling out a redesigned and expanded product line this month.
Since its debut in stores in January 2013, the Sebastopol-based company's frozen chicken fingers, chicken meatballs, and chicken wings have come packaged in a tub, similar to those used to sell ice cream. But their sizing and shape made it difficult for grocers to display in the same freezers with other frozen entrees, which are mainly sold in square or rectangular boxes.
For instance, at the upper Market Street Whole Foods location in San Francisco's Castro district, the Hip Chick Farms products were often difficult to locate. In August the store had them haphazardly placed on the top shelf of a freezer with different options mixed together in the same space.
Due to their being selected in June for the Whole Foods Local Producer Loan Program, the company's co-founders, Serafina Palandech and Jennifer Johnson , hired McDill Associates of Soquel, California to redesign its packaging. Out was the oddly shaped tub and in was the more common rectangular box.
Also nixed was the family photo of Palandech and Johnson, who married in 2009, with their now 4-year-old daughter, Ruby Rose , mainly due to privacy concerns. Given more prominence is a cartoon rendition of the family as chickens, with Johnson depicted as a rooster; Palandech, the more femme of the two, shown as a babushka-wearing chicken; and Ruby Rose seen as a chick in an eggshell held by her parents.
The avian family portrait �" the parents' red boots are modeled after those worn by Palandech �" is taken from a design by a Hungarian artist who granted the couple permission to use it as part of their company logo. It also pays homage to the rooster sculpture Johnson saw that inspired the name Hip Chick Farms.
"Our new packaging makes Hip Chick Farms products easier for retailers to display, and easier for consumers to find," said Palandech, who serves as the company's president. "The colorful graphics and product images let consumers know exactly what they are getting, while the conventional shape helps retailers stack and display the products more efficiently in their freezer cases."
Whole Foods has committed to allocating two freezer shelves, displaying five different Hip Chick Farms products, in its stores throughout California and the Pacific Northwest. It is also adding the various chicken offerings to its prepared food sections.
"Hip Chick Farms makes delicious and easy meal solutions for time-crunched families �" by moms for moms," stated Erin Harper, senior program manager for Whole Foods' Local Producer Loan Program. "They are passionate about using only the best ingredients and transparent sourcing to make convenient artisan frozen products in hip, fun packaging, [that] meet the quality standards of today's educated and busy consumers."
Hip Chick Farms products are available at more than 250 natural and specialty grocery stores on the West Coast. In addition to the original baked meatballs, chicken fingers, and wing and drummettes selections, there is now a gluten free version of the chicken fingers. (All priced at $7.49.)
To coincide with its new packaging roll-out, Hip Chick Farms also introduced a new line of certified organic chicken fingers ($8.99) made from birds raised in organic fields and given organic bedding.
"Nobody is doing chicken. It is the final frontier of the natural food industry," said Palandech.
Rooted in country life
The company's founding is rooted in the couple's wanting to raise their daughter in a more rural environment. They moved out of San Francisco's Excelsior district three years ago for a house in Sebastopol in Sonoma County.
The women christened their property The Rambling Rose. It is also home to two Percheron horses, Duke and Pepper; a pair of Miniature Sicilian donkeys, Lola and Franny; several turkeys destined for this year's Thanksgiving feast; a brood of 25 heritage breed chickens; and the family's two dogs, Winnie and Sebastian.
"It was a real process. We are city girls who knew nothing about farming and had to learn how to raise animals and care for them," said Palandech, 40, who in 2009 left her job as event director for MZA Events Inc. where she oversaw planning for AIDS Walk San Francisco.
Johnson, 46, commutes weekdays to the city for her job as the executive chef for Ann and Gordon Getty. In addition to cooking for the family, she oversees the food served at more than 50 events annually held at the Getty's Pacific Heights mansion, as well as the weekday lunches for the private Montessori school operating on the property.
She joked it is "100 percent" like Downton Abbey when asked if her kitchen resembles the one depicted in the popular PBS series.
While she enjoys her current job, Johnson said, "I don't want to work for the rest of my life," so the couple turned their attention to starting a family business.
Combining Johnson's culinary skills and Palandech's marketing abilities, in 2011 they landed on creating their own line of locally-sourced, sustainably-produced frozen chicken products.
"I wanted to create something really meaningful to me. Our brand and products really represent our beliefs around sustainable food systems," explained Palandech, while seated at her dining room table wearing her signature red boots, to the Bay Area Reporter in August during her first extensive interview about the company.
After researching suppliers of humanely raised animals, the women opted to source their chicken from Mary's Free Range Chicken from the Pitman Family Farms in the San Joaquin Valley.
"The chickens really have only one bad day," said Palandech, who had been a vegetarian for 21 years but now eats meat. "It is a really humane way they raise and kill the chickens."
They have a non-compete agreement with Mary's, which is the only brand of chicken Whole Foods sells in its meat cases.
"Mary's doesn't have a value-added line," said Palandech, meaning it does not make its own packaged food items.
Mary's connection with Whole Foods helped the women pitch their frozen line to the company. On the same day both the buyers for Whole Foods' Northern California and Southern Pacific regions approved stocking the company's offerings.
"It took eight months to move through the approval process before we launched on shelves," said Palandech.
They also presented at the Expo West convention in Anaheim and lined up more small grocery chains.
"It went like wildfire from there. Everybody wanted it," said Palandech, who routinely visits stores to offer tastings to shoppers. "I think the taste is better than any comparable product."
There have been problems along the way, from manufacturing mix-ups �" a burnt batch of 2,000 pounds of meatballs was shipped by mistake �" to stamping the wrong expiration date on packages.
One natural foods distributor in Oregon declined to carry them, largely due to their being a lesbian-owned company, said Palandech. But the majority of people like the company's story.
"Consumers and stores are craving a connection to the companies they support," she said. "Jen's a chef and I am a stay-at-home mom. We are a proud family and happy to be known for what we are doing."
They have raised $750,000 from investors, family, and friends for promotion and marketing efforts, borrowed $150,000 from the Small Business Administration and $50,000 from TMC Working Solutions, as well as took out a second mortgage on their house to launch the business.
They plan to take the brand national next year, the farthest east its products can be found now is Texas, and are working on reaching sales of $20 to $25 million over the next decade. Eventually, they would like to sell the company, thereby allowing Johnson to achieve her goal of early retirement.
"Our intention is to be acquired," said Palandech.
To learn more about the company, visit http://hipchickfarms.com/.
Lesbian nails Handyman franchise in Oakland
With the Bay Area's economy improving, particularly the housing sector, Theresa Mitchell's Handyman Matters franchise is once again booming. Due to prices skyrocketing around the region, more homeowners are opting to upgrade their properties rather than move to new digs.
"When the economy went south, things were so tight and so difficult, so many of my competitors went out of business," said Mitchell, 54, who lives in Oakland with her wife, Ginger Daughtry . "We were able to cut costs and work as a lean business. Now we are really busy."
Many people prefer to hire someone else to do the dirty work than take on a do-it-yourself project these days.
"They work all day and don't have time, and if they do have time, this is not what they want to do," said Mitchell. "This is where we are a great fit."
One of her biggest growth areas, roughly 20 percent, in recent years has come from seniors who want to age in their homes and need to make improvements to do so. The projects can range from replacing bathtubs with shower stalls big enough to accommodate a wheelchair to modifying the toilet and sink areas in bathrooms.
"These are areas where when they fall it is not good," said Mitchell.
In San Francisco, many of her senior clients are looking for help navigating their homes.
"I know in San Francisco one of the things we have done there is installed motorized stairs with the chairs inside and going up the front steps because everything is stairs there," she said.
Five years ago the franchise's sales amounted to close to $250,000; this year Mitchell expects to gross $500,000. To meet the growing demand, she would like to hire five more craftsmen to bring her team up to 12.
But finding employees with the right skill set has proven difficult, she said.
"If you are ready to learn, I have got craftsmen who can teach," she said. "It is more just finding someone ready to go."
Handyman Matters began in the Denver area in 1998 and now has 122 franchisees in 33 states and three countries, according to the company's website.
The only franchisee in northern California, Mitchell's territory is officially the East Bay, largely Alameda County, but she also works in San Francisco. She launched the business 10 years ago with sister and brother business partners Penny Clark, 57, and Gregory Clark, 56. Mitchell had first met Penny Clark, who is also an out lesbian, 30 years ago when she moved from Orange County to play basketball at San Francisco State University.
For 15 years Mitchell had worked for UPS managing a team of drivers, but when the company went public, she decided to look for a new job.
"I thought it was a good time to take my skills and run a company and be my own boss," she recalled.
Since Gregory Clark had a contractor's license, and Mitchell had managerial experience, the trio opted to get into the handyman business, with Penny serving as a silent investor. Five years ago Gregory took a job with the city of Berkeley, leaving Mitchell to oversee the business herself with both siblings serving as officers of the company.
"Handyman work is considered a transient industry. The handymen come and they go," said Mitchell, whose seven-member crew currently is all male. "We are trying to maintain some stability in the market."
Handyman Matters touts the fact that its craftspeople work with homeowners to "develop a work order with set hourly rates." Customers pay an hourly rate of $75 an hour, while handymen earn anywhere from $20 to $30 an hour depending on the job.
"I estimate the cost of the projects and serve as project manager," Mitchell said. "I run the business and let the craftsmen do the work."
While her sexual orientation hasn't been an issue, her gender has raised eyebrows but also brought dividends.
"I don't mind it �" most people get a kick out of the fact it is a woman," said Mitchell when she first meets with clients. "It puts a lot of the females at ease, because in a lot of households it is the wives who are at home."
To contact Handyman Matters for a free estimate, visit http://www.handymanmatters.com/oakland/about-us/.
Honor Roll
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Cruisin' the Castro Walking Tours. Current owner Kathy Amendola has led the popular history tours in the city's gayborhood since 2005, when she bought the business from its founder, Trevor Hailey, upon her retirement that year. Hailey died in 2007 at the age of 66.
Over the last nine years Amendola estimates she has conducted thousands of tours and educated "tens of thousands of locals and worldwide visitors." And she has incorporated more recent history into her talks, such as the fight over California's same-sex marriage ban known as Proposition 8.
Nowadays, 50 percent of her clientele is heterosexual, said Amendola, who is a lesbian. She credits the increased interest in the city's LGBT history to both the marriage equality movement and the 2008 Oscar-winning movie Milk about San Francisco's first out supervisor, Harvey Milk, which was filmed on location in the Castro.
"The most amazing thing I've noticed is that tour members (especially heterosexuals), are now openly talking about it as before people were afraid and/or embarrassed to do so," said Amendola. "This alone is very powerful as people recognize and seek the need for change as no human should be 'invisible' and denied equal rights."
In October Amendola is launching a brand new tour based on the newly installed Rainbow Honor Walk, a series of 20 plaques embedded in the Castro sidewalks that honor a diverse group of LGBT individuals.
"This unique tour will focus solely on these incredible, sexually diverse men and women whom have made a huge impact in human history," said Amendola, who serves on the project's board.
To book a tour, visit http://www.cruisinthecastro.com.
Got a tip on LGBT business news? Call Matthew S. Bajko at (415) 861-5019 or e-mail mailto:.