Since I started this blog journey I’ve mentioned my work and our business The Vermont Spätzle Company, but I never really talked about it. I know that many of you have been on this journey with us since the beginning, but for those who aren’t familiar with our product…here we go.
Marty and I own and operate the Vermont Spatzle Company. We are the whole kit and kaboodle. We make the product, package it, box it up, deliver it, market it and sell it ourselves. It took me over seven years to develop our recipe. We have the world’s only gluten-free, no-boil, ready in less than five minutes pasta. I was trying to develop a gluten-free spätzle because there was not one on the market. There still is not another gluten-free spätzle available commercially besides ours.
When we had to go gluten-free in 2010 due to medical reasons. Marty really started missing spätzle. He’s from Germany and grew up eating it, I used to make it a few times a year. While we could get terrible gluten-free bread, pizza, bagels, and pasta you could not get spätzle. It seems the more you can’t have something, the more you want it.
So what the heck is spätzle anyway? Well, spätzle is a German egg noodle that is like a little dumpling. In Germany, it is served with sauerbraten, different types of wursts and other things with gravy. One of the most popular ways to have it is fried up in a little butter, then topped with caramelized onions and cheese.
On March 11, 2017, I finally nailed down the recipe and we decided we were going to go into business with 150% effort. We had to find the right packaging, design a logo & label, obtain licenses, nutritional labels, and UPC codes for stores. We learned a lot the first year!
We were quite surprised how fast people found out about our spätzle, and how much they loved it. Social media was the driving force behind getting our product in so many stores. People knew who we were whenever we went into a store. They would say, “Oh look, it’s the spätzle people.”
We also started doing farmer’s markets right away, sautéing our spatzle at our tables, giving people samples, and educating them about what spätzle is. Our product is not geared only towards gluten-free customers, 75% of our customers are not gluten-free. Once they try it ,they are hooked. People ask us if we put crack in our spätzle, that’s how addicted to it they are.
Our customers use our spätzle sautéed with butter, pesto, with different types of sauces and stir-fried dishes. Italian dishes, soups, casseroles, and macaroni & cheese. Someone actually replaced a flour tortilla with our spätzle and they called it the spätzle enchilada. It can even be eaten as a sweet dish. It is truly a blank canvas and the possibilities are endless.
Our product is available through the entire state of Vermont, a few locations in New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. It is also available through a few online farmers’ markets that offer home delivery, or at pick-up locations near their customers.
Our spätzle has been featured in newspaper and magazine articles. We were featured on a television news show in a segment called “Made in Vermont.” After the show aired everyone in Vermont knew who we were. The more people read about it or heard about it they wanted to try it.
When say that our spätzle is made with love, we mean that 100%. At our super busy times, Marty and I can produce around 1500 pounds a week, but we put love in every batch. By the way, 1500 pounds is a lot of spätzle!
I was able to quit my job within two months to be a full-time spatzle maker. Marty worked another full-time job and full-time at The Vermont Spätzle Company for the first year. He was our marketing person who went from store to store, did demos, and was our delivery person. While Marty was working at his “real” job, I made all of the product and packaged it. We both worked farmer’s markets every weekend and sometimes mid-week.
When I say that working for yourself, having so much passion and love for what you do and the product that you make, is the best feeling in the world! Having our customers share with us their spätzle memories telling us of their grandmothers making spätzle or that they included our product in their holiday meals. Wow-what an honor!
When everything shut down with Covid last March, I had a mini conniption and worried about what would happen to our business since our farmer’s markets were nearly extinct. We are a food manufacturer and essential business so we continued working, business as usual.
We have been extremely lucky and blessed the people still have to eat, cook at home, and have supported our business. Our customer wholesale business is thriving, even though our once busy farmer’s markets are not.
Conventional spätzle is a batter made of wheat flour and eggs. Sometimes it is cut with a knife into little strips on a cutting board or pushed through a press with holes in it into boiling water. It forms little dumplings that are drained. In our country you usually find spätzle in the dry pasta section, you have to cook in boiling water, drain it then sauté with a little butter. While we do make a batter and push our spätzle through a press into boiling water that’s where the similarities end. We have developed a special mixing process when making our batter.
We decided in the very beginning that if we were gonna do this, we were going to do it right. We wanted to use local milk and eggs which are the first and second ingredients. When we were sourcing our special flours it was important for us to find non-GMO products. We finish our spätzle off with a small amount of nutmeg. The nutmeg gives the spätzle a homey familiar flavor that people just can’t put their finger on. It reminds them of their omas or grandmothers in Germany.
Our product has won numerous awards including Best Artisan Food at the Vermont Cheesemakers Festival, one of the top ten festivals in the country. That was a very big deal for us.
We also did some festivals in which we sold our spätzle as a hot food item we called Spätzle Bowls. It was always a huge hit at different Oktoberfest celebrations and was a crowd favorite. It was so exciting to hear how many people loved our product. We could see it on their faces when they dug into their Spätzle Bowls, instant gratification for us.
Our spätzle is sold in retail stores in 12-ounce packages. We started to offer our 2-pound family packs at our farmer’s markets. Families would come every week and would have to buy several packages. We thought that it was a waste of packaging and came up with the idea of a bigger serving size bag. Most stores still only carry the retail size, however, The online farmer’s markets and a few local stores carry both sizes.
Not many people have seen the inside of our production facility in person. We built the facility ourselves behind our house. We have a 38 step commute to work and I thought that I would share a typical production day with you.
While I was working my ass off for other people, I would pray every single night, “Please God, I would like to have a business that no one else has.” When we were starting the business it was like someone slapped me on top of the head saying, “Wake up stupid! This is it!” Right then and there we knew we would be a success, we had the Big Guy helping us out. 😉
We met Marty at the Troy farmers
Market a few years back . My wife is Gluten free. I am not however also have an intolerance to gluten. We picked up some spatzle after walking by there booth for weeks. And I will tell you that this product is off the charts. If you are Gluten free or not this product is amazing. I’m not a fan of a lot of Gluten free products but this is something really special. I dare everyone to try it and I promise you will be so impressed. I can’t say enough about the Vermont Spatzle company. Great people and a great product. There is nothing like it out there I guarantee
I love this, your story. Next time I am back East I will find it!!!!!