Specialty Food Magazine is the leading publication for retailers, manufacturers and foodservice professionals in the specialty food trade. It provides news, trends and business-building insights that help readers keep their businesses competitive.
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producer profile KITTY KELLER Age: A "woman of a certain age!" Years in specialty food: 21 Favorite food: M. Gilles Hervy's Fleur de Sel: it makes everything come alive. Least favorite food: I've had bad experiences with tripe. Last thing I ate and loved: A simple, fresh Catalan dinner at Casa Anita in Cadeques, Spain. If I weren't in the food business I'd be in: Hotel business or property management! One piece of advice I'd give to a new food business: The internet is a handy research and organizational tool, but it is not on-the-ground experience. So get out there and try everything. Talk to people who are actually making or cultivating food and develop your own perspective and food philosophy: in this business there is no substitute for sincerity. Julie Besonen is food editor for Paper magazine and a restaurant columnist for nycgo.com. trust in me. I didn't sell for the money, but because we had these obligations." Market Hall Foods, based in Oakland, Calif., bought Keller out and kept her on as a founder, continuing to give her the leeway to do what she thought was important. "I have nothing but gratitude for Market Hall Foods," she says. "They're a much more sophis- ticated organization and I haven't had to compromise. I was able to reassure our customers that we'd have a great, ongoing force no matter what happened to me." Focusing on High-Quality Products After Keller responded positively to the bone marrow transplant, she went back to work, establishing within the company her own house brand, K.L. Keller, in 2006. Envisioning products like black truffle salt and mustard made with Vinegar of Banyuls, she developed partnerships to help bring them to life. She has since originated 17 products, including sofi Finalist Dijon Black Truffle Mustard, and California Honey with Basque Pepper. Soon she expects to release two hot chocolates, one with fleur de sel and the other with spicy Piment d'Espelette. "If I were to sum up my products, they are all things I'd want in my kitchen," Keller says. If she doesn't know how to incorporate an ingredient into her own cooking repertoire, she doesn't import it. "My job is to explain it to Americans," she continues. "I'm not interested in intellectual, deconstructed food. I like simple grandma cooking—the sincerity of it." Keller's own grandmother, a farmer in Kentucky, had a big inf luence on her. She came to live with Keller's family in Danville, Calif., later in life and passed on her philosophy of seeking out sea- sonal, local whole foods at a time when processed food was becom- ing more popular in America. Another legacy she gave Keller was a great respect for family farms. "If we're not buying crops from small farmers, they'll go away and we'll be stuck with monotonous, industrial food with no charac- ter," Keller warns. "We want to pay the farmers a fair price for their olives, for instance, so they can continue their high-quality tradi- tions. We want them to be able to stay on their land. I always travel with tissues because I cry when I hear their stories." Finding Inspiration, Building Relationships Keller recently returned from the Alimentaria 2014 exhibition, where she was inspired by new, handmade products and ideas she's eager to flesh out. From Barcelona she hopped on a train to France and visited Banyuls, then Espelette to meet with pepper producers and Aquitaine to check out the treasured AOC prunes of Agen. "From there I went up to Brittany, which was no small feat, to see a caramel vendor," she recalls. "The joke with our company is that if it's not geographically undesirable, it would not interest us." Visiting her producers in Spain and France is a yearly pilgrim- age, building relationships that have paid off. "Email is inefficient because I want details," she says, "the nuance of the situation, the who, what, where, when, how. Emails and phone calls don't have that color." Addressing the ongoing scandal about adulterated olive oil from Europe and California, Keller reiterates how important it is for her to know the producers and to visit the olive orchards and manu- facturers in person. "Our products have a guaranteed provenance," she says. "I taste the olive oil and pass it on to two certified olive oil tasters. Our vendors send us a certificate from the laboratory." Products from KL Keller Foodways—renamed as such in 2012—are currently sold in more than 500 retail outlets through- out the U.S., including Dean & Deluca, The Fresh Market, and Zingerman's of Ann Arbor, Mich. Keller delights in the friendli- ness of the specialty food business. "There is nothing more fun that getting on the phone with someone at Zingerman's," she says. "And I always love getting on the phone with the people at Cowgirl Creamery in Point Reyes. We don't talk business. It's just us chick- ens chatting, asking, Did you taste this? Have you had that yet?" Now in her 60s, Keller is in no mood to retire. As her mother wished, she has been able to see the world and lead an exotic life— without getting a job on a cruise ship. "I want to do this as long as I remain relevant," she says. Ten years out from her leukemia diagnosis, she's feeling just fine. 94 ❘ SPECIALTY FOOD MAGAZINE specialtyfood.com ProducerProfiile_Keller.indd 94 6/6/14 8:13 AM