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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Organic Treats Just as Sweet

Business is sweet at Valencia-based Maria Elena’s and Bernod Group, a pair of niche food companies that released certified organic products this past February. That sweetness comes from the content and success of their organic horchata (a cinnamon and rice drink) mix and an organic cotton candy, dubbed Spun City. Both are, the creators said, the first-to-market for products of their kind. The two companies are run by principals and co-founders, Jerry Gonzalez, John Mularky, and Gonzalez’ brother Victor. The partners have been making theme park concession food packaged caramel corn and cotton candy under the Bernod line for a few years already and the development of the new products was a natural outgrowth, they said. “There are two different companies because it’s two different target markets,” John Gonzalez said. The newcomer, Maria Elena’s Authentic Latino Inc., is a certified Minority Business Enterprise. “We decided to open up a Hispanic company, and it just evolved that way and works out fine for us.” That evolution has been long in coming. Mularky worked in the restaurant business and was selling ice cream at Magic Mountain before he teamed up with Gonzalez, who had a similar narrative. “I was working at Whole Foods, and Mrs. Gooch’s before the buyout, and left to open my own company selling shaved ice at Universal Studios,” Gonzalez said. He soon expanded his Tropical Ice services to Magic Mountain. “John was selling ice cream at Magic Mountain and when our contracts came up, we said ‘let’s try this together’,” Gonzalez said. Bernod Group was formed for their amusement park concessions and is an outside food contractor with “a small distribution network,” Gonzalez said. It took about three years, the business partners said, to create and develop the products, and navigate the paperwork for the Certified Organic endorsement. To get the certification, organic content must be documented. “There’s a huge paper trail to make sure we’re doing what we say we’re doing,” Gonzalez said. “It protects the consumer; it protects us by keeping some guy from saying he’s organic when he’s not.” Mularky said it’s a different level of standards and documenting where ingredients come from. “We hired a person to help us [with that],” Mularky said. There were some obstacles amid development: “A coloring agent fell off” of the approved list of ingredients, Gonzalez said. It was a sudden double clutch for them as Gonzalez said: “We thought we had this and now we don’t.” They also tried a sugar-free cotton candy, which in a world of sugar substitutes may not sound like an unreasonable idea. But cotton candy is made by melting sugar at high heat and then exposing it to air where it re-crystallizes in wispy threads. They tried various “alternative sweetener products,” hunting for the ideal concoction. “We filled many rooms with smoke,” Gonzalez said. “We’re not chemists, and we had to start somewhere,” he admitted. Gonzalez also admitted that selling sugar-based products is somewhat counter-intuitive to the upscale, organic, health-conscious niche they are aiming at. “We call the cotton candy ‘a practically guilt-free indulgence’,” he said. “We’re not saying sugar’s good; we’re saying there’s an option for moms who somehow limit what’s going into their kids bodies.” And that option is quite popular so far, they said. Both products are just a few months old and can be found in 40 Whole Foods stores around the region; the horchata is available through web retailer MexGrocer.com. At a recent natural food expo in Anaheim Natural Products Expo West said more than 50,000 people attended this March the organic products were met with a “tremendous response,” Victor Gonzalez said. They spun cotton candy onsite. “There were a lot of skeptics, but they’d take some,” he said. It’s a gathering filled with “nutritionists and doctors who were skeptical; all of that melted away. They loved it,” he said. Jerry Gonzalez said the reaction is usually one of nostalgia. “That it is a kind of comfort food is kind of surprising to us,” he said. The horchata has a different appeal, Gonzalez said “The target demo[graphic] is not first-generation Hispanics. It’s more an acculturated second- and third-generation Latino, one who has more education and income and is going to a Whole Foods market,” he said. In addition to feeding the over-the-counter/consumer market, they have the horchata mix in a 1.5-pound institutional size while the cotton candy ingredients are available “ready to spin.” The horchata retails in “the neighborhood of $4.50” and the cotton candy is priced at $3.99. The team has ideas for more products to come out of their 2,300-square-foot business park facility. “A lot of the fun is coming up with other things to do,” Gonzalez said. “We are three guys who get along very well. We’ve got really cool jobs to be able to do stuff we really like and make cool stuff, instead of sitting at a popcorn wagon at Magic Mountain,” he said. “We’re interested in doing something unique and different,” Gonzalez said. “We’re not interested in doing another salad dressing.” SPOTLIGHT Maria Elena’s Authentic Latino, Inc./Bernod Group Location: Valencia Established: MEAL, 2005 / BG, 2002 Revenue in 2007: MEAL, $15,000 / BG, $1.4 million Revenue in 2008: (est.) MEAL, $500,000 / BG, $2 million

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