Camanche salsa business heats up
CAMANCHE, Iowa— Linda Kramer could measure the success of her salsa business by the fact her sales have been growing 25 percent to 30 percent a year.
She could measure it by the warehouse it now takes to store Kramer’s Salsa products or by the hundreds and hundreds of Midwest grocery stores — big and small — that stock it on their shelves. Or, there are the nearly dozen jobs the operation has created in her small hometown.
But Kramer measures it by the size of the cooking pot.
“When we first started we used just one small pot,” she said proudly showing a photograph of the original six-quart pot.
That was back in 2000 when she made salsa two cases at a time on the weekend and sold it by word-of-mouth.
Today, Kramer’s Salsa is still homemade in the basement of her home. But it takes a crew of employees, three apartment-sized stoves and three gigantic metal stock pots that each hold 34 gallons at a time.
“That’s as large as we can buy them,” she said, explaining how the pots cover all four burners on the stovetop. “We don’t cook in vats, so it doesn’t overcook the product. That’s the secret,” said Kramer, who owns the business with her husband, Tom.
“We do everything by hand. The only thing here that is automated is a can opener,” she said. Although she now buys processed and diced tomatoes, all the onions and peppers are cut by hand, each jar is hand-washed and the salsa is dipped into jars one at a time. After each jar cools, sealing the lid, a label is put on by hand.
Even the jalapeno and habanero peppers are grown by hand by Tom Kramer, who planted 2,600 pepper plants this year, up from 2,100 plants a year ago. “We started growing our own to control the quality,” his wife said, adding that last season’s crop lasted them through January. Her business was unfazed by this summer’s tomato scare.
Kramer admits their methods may seem a little unorthodox. But at full production, they can produce up to 1,800 jars of salsa a week. “What can I say — it just works,” she said. “It’s a small facility but it’s very adequate.”
The proof is in the company’s sales and distribution. Kramer said their salsas – and now a line of pepper jams – are in 1,000 major grocery stores, ranging from Fareway — Kramer’s first major grocer — to Hy-Vee, Wal-Mart, SuperTarget and Schnuck’s. It also is sold through many independent grocery stores across the Midwest.
Kramer’s Salsa was in 11 states with Wal-Mart, but “logistics” forced the company to pull back distribution to Iowa, Missouri and some of Illinois. “Fuel prices are killing small businesses,” she said. The family-run company recently has enlisted three major food distributors, Kehe Foods, Gino’s and Sweets and Treats, to help expand its reach.
“I hold the reins pretty tight,” Kramer said. “If it doesn’t feel right to me, it doesn’t happen. Other people in the family like growing faster, not me.”
The company now employs 12 people full-time at the Kramers’ Camanche home as well as 20 people part-time who do in-store demonstrations in the Des Moines area. Among the employees are the Kramers’ son, Shane, who is in charge of sales, and daughter, Jennifer, who is in charge of the office side of the business.
Robyn Butz, who supervises the salsa production, has worked with Kramer since the days when Linda did in-home childcare — before the salsa business took over the basement and their one-car garage. “When we did daycare, everyone loved it,” she said. In those days, Tom Kramer took salsa to work with him at Union Pacific Railroad and sales really began to grow.
“The growth has been amazing, it’s gone a long way,” Butz said, crediting the success to the company’s family atmosphere and Linda Kramer’s drive. “She’s usually got two phones to her ears,” Butz said.
Their original salsa, a mild variety nicknamed “Grandma’s Sauce,” is now one of five levels of heat. For the truly daring, there also is Inferno and Habanero XXXtreme. The company also has expanded products to include a variety of pepper jams and soup mixes. Five new salsa flavors — garlic onion, cranberry, raspberry, cherry and mango peach pineapple — are due out next month just in time for the Iowa State Fair.
Kramer, who admits she gets her entrepreneurial spirit from her father, Bill Logan, says the idea for turning her passion for cooking into a business was born in 2000 after a trip to Ohio to celebrate her father’s 75th birthday. Her father was the owner of Daisy Donut Shops in Clinton and Camanche — named for Kramer’s mother, Daisy.
“Here we were going to this party and we knew we didn’t want to take potato salad …,” she said. Instead, she took two cases of her homemade salsa. After the incredible response from the party-goers, “something just told me this could work (as a business).”
In fact, after returning home she called Bob Haxton, the head of inspections for the state of Iowa. “He said if we were serious, to do it the right way the first time,” she recalled. Taking that cue, she has every new recipe tested at the University of Nebraska before it is put in production.
The Kramers created a strong following by taking products to craft shows across the Midwest as well as to the Iowa State Fair. Kramer said her family and friends still attend 30-plus shows a year, sometimes splitting up to cover multiple shows in a single weekend. They travel across Iowa to Des Moines, Sioux City, Council Bluffs and others as well as to Chicago and the Quad-Cities.
“People love to meet us,” she said. “People say we’re crazy to do all these shows. But we have met so many great people.”
By appearing with the Iowa products at the fair, she said “we can expose the product to a million people at a time.”
Business really began to take off about five years ago after Kramer’s Salsa gradually broke into the grocery sector. Of course, it all began at home when Steve Nauman, the owner of Camanche Food Pride, let Kramer put a display of her salsas in his store. Before that deal was made, he said “She had people knocking at her door wanting to buy it. I wish I was the only one carrying it.”
Nauman even buys Kramer salsa by the gallon to put on pizzas he serves at his Camanche restaurant, The Food Court. Kramer’s Salsa also has begun supplying salsa for several Quad-City Mexican restaurants.
“She’s No. 1 around here anyway,” Nauman said. “She’s a real go-getter.”
Kramer, who will turn 60 this summer, admits she’s a workaholic and probably never will retire. In her space time, she is a Camanche city council member and a grandmother to eight of her own and 200 former daycare kids.
“It’s fulfillment, something of the heart, to see your product on the shelf,” she said. “It’s definitely not been easy, but the rewards have been unbelievable — mainly the people we meet.”
Kramer’s hot internationally
Kramer’s Salsa landed a top international food award with its Inferno Salsa.
The salsa, one of five levels of heat the company makes, won first place in the 2008 Scovie Award’s hot salsa category. A total of 783 products competed for top honors in the contest.
The coveted Scovie Awards were created by Dave DeWitt, editor of Fiery-Foods & BBQ Magazine and founder of the National Fiery Foods & Barbeque Show. The awards are named for Wilbur Scoville, who pioneered a rating scale for spicy foods that has become the industry standard for excellence in more than 60 categories of fiery foods. The entries represented companies from 32 states and four countries.
On the menu
Salsa: Kramer’s Salsa comes in five levels of heat from mild, which is known as “Grandma’s Sauce,” to Inferno and Habanero XXXtreme for those who want more than blazing hot. The company also offers a Green Olive Salsa — an idea that came to founder Linda Kramer at 3 a.m. after eating out one night and being served salad with green olives.
Pepper Jams: Kramer’s Salsa went sweet in 2001 when it introduced its line of pepper jams. Flavors include raspberry jalapeno, jalapeno pepper, cranberry jalapeno, cherry jalapeno, peach mango habanero and habanero pepper.
Soup mixes: The company also sells a line of soup mixes, including tortilla soup, cheesy enchilada soup and chili soup.
Coming soon: The company plans to introduce five new salsa flavors in August. They are garlic onion, cranberry, raspberry and cherry and mango peach pineapple.
For more information: Call (888) 551-5990 or visit kramerspecialtyfoods.com.
Jennifer DeWitt can be contacted at (563) 383-2318 or jdewitt@qctimes.com.