Jessica and Josh Wiggins and their Delicious Dipping Sauce
Family recipes often make the best value-added food products. However, the process of turning recipes into marketable food products is often grueling, fraught with seemingly insurmountable rules and regulations as well as market development issues like product packaging and pricing strategies.
For Jessica and Chef Josh Wiggins of Blue Water Grill of Millsboro, Del., the journey from ingredients to Delicious Dipping Sauce, was made a little easier thanks to Shore Gourmet of Easton, Md., a service-oriented non-profit organization, formed to help food product entrepreneurs. Kevin Deighan, general manager at Shore Gourmet, helped the Wiggins with product and market development issues such as packaging, label design, nutrient labeling, UPC bar coding, and even figuring out what type of jar to use.
“For years restaurant patrons have often asked if they could buy Josh’s salad dressings, soups and sauces. We chose the dipping sauce for our sweet potato fries because that’s the one that was requested the most,” says Jessica Wiggins, who handles the “front of the house” of their restaurant business, which they opened in 2007.
“I wanted a sweet, delicious but simple sauce that was versatile enough to pair with everything from seafood to veggies. That’s why I created DDS,” says Josh. “With its increasing popularity in the restaurant and several requests from the customers that it should be bottled, it was an easy decision to make when offered the opportunity from Shore Gourmet,” he adds.
Jessica found out about Shore Gourmet from her father who works with USDA Rural Development. “Finding the time simply to run our business was challenging enough. Shore Gourmet took all the business development and product issues off our hands. In addition, Kevin came up with the idea to display the product in a refrigerator out in the open so our restaurant patrons could easily see that it was available for sale,” she adds.
“There are many food entrepreneurs like the Wiggins who have great ideas for new value-added food products. They just don’t have the time or the expertise in product and market development to make it happen. That’s why Shore Gourmet was established,” says Kevin Deighan.
Josh and Jessica are partners in life and the hospitality business. They managed to meld the notoriously long hours of restaurant business with a successful family life as parents of two children Madison, 12, and Ashton, 8. Josh has more than 20 years experience in the hospitality industry and has worked in a variety of restaurants ranging from delis to fine dining from Delaware to Utah. Jessica worked in several of the same restaurants as Josh, but focuses on serving, bartending or hosting. The two successful business people can now add product merchandising to their very full resumes.
The Blue Water Grill (BWG) is located at 226 Main Street in historic, downtown Millsboro. BWG specializes in fresh seafood, creative specials, and gourmet entrees at an affordable fare, and offers personalized service for special events including birthday parties, retirement celebrations, engagement parties, bridal showers, rehearsal dinners, and intimate receptions.
Incorporated in 2009, Shore Gourmet is a non-profit organization whose purpose is to promote and sustain food and agricultural value-added businesses by providing free support to local entrepreneurs to start, grow and diversify value-added food products such as local cheeses, sauces and rubs, meats, soups, seafood products and desserts. Since its inception, Shore Gourmet has been funded mostly by USDA Rural Development and state grants. Shore Gourmet serves Maryland’s Eastern Shore and Delaware. For more information, contact Kevin Deighan, general manager at (410) 770-4454 or [email protected] or visit shoregourmet.com.
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