Business owners…

Last week, I wrote about all the characteristics that made up me. As a new blogger, I often forget that many of you only know me through the blog, not how I got to be Julz. I also forget that you don’t know how I have accomplished some of the things I did.

Before we started The Vermont Spätzle Company, I reinvented myself many times. I was a cashier, store clerk, administrative assistant, store manager, and stay-at-home mom for 11 years.

I worked for a caterer and did some catering with Marty; I was a lunch lady and a food service director. I was a hotdog lady and a convenience store supervisor. In every one of those positions, I worked my ass off. Marty and I have very strong work ethics, and in any job we have, we work as if we were the owners.

Over the years, I worked for many assholes who didn’t appreciate my hard work and dedication. When I drove home from those jobs, I prayed out loud in my vehicle this prayer “God, please let me have my own business someday. A business that no one else has.” I did this for years.

I was in a reiki master class and meditation group on Sunday nights during this time. This is where I heard about the book and movie the secret. My friend Everley, my reiki master, told us about it, and we watched the movie.

The Secret is about positive manifestation. The movie taught you step-by-step how to achieve anything you wanted in your life by positive manifestation. The movie changed my life.

I didn’t make a tangible manifestation board with photos, dreams, and aspirations; I made mine in my head. I knew exactly what I wanted my life to look like in ten years.

One day, back in 2005, Everley and I went to visit a friend of hers who was a psychic and had just lost her husband. She did a reading on both of us. I was nervous because this wasn’t something I had planned.

In my reading, Loretta told time that she saw me teaching. I told her I was a belly dance teacher; she said that wasn’t it. Less than two years later, I was hired as the food service director at the Arlington School District, and students would be my employees. I was going to teach them the hands-on side of culinary arts while they had a teacher to follow up with classroom work. She was right! I taught and worked at school for 7-years.

Loretta also told me in more than ten years; she saw me making large sums of money doing what I love. Everything I would learn up to that point would be considered my “college” education. She also told me it would all start with writing, not a book or CD, something she didn’t know what it was. I was aching to know what that something was! After 8-years or so, I forgot all about it.

Jump to 2017 when I finally figured out how to make our gluten-free spätzle after seven years of experimenting with all kinds of ingredients. Finally, I figured it out! I was so excited and said aloud, “This is the birth of The Vermont Spätzle Company!” I even did a Facebook post saying so since I was so damn proud of myself.

When I served the spätzle for dinner that night, Marty said, “We have to share this with the world!” Later that night, I realized it was like God slapped me on top of the head and said, “This is it, dummy! This is the business no one else has!”

Excited, I told Marty, “This is it! This is what Loretta was talking about! We can’t fail! This is what I asked God for!” At that point and still today, our spätzle is the only gluten-free spätzle in the world. Even after five years, we are still the only commercial spätzle manufacturer in the states. There is no other product like it.

We decided that night we would start this business and go into it 150%. Over the next three months, I had to figure out how to make it again; then, I had to figure out how to make bigger batches. Doing big batch cooking in the schools made this easy for me.

We had to design a logo and search for packaging. Marty worked tirelessly getting our licenses, both state and federal. He also designed our label and learned how to do our nutrition information. He also figured out how to make a UPC for our product if we wanted it to be in stores.

Marty was working full-time, so all this was done after work in the evenings. On June 3, 2017, we sold our first package at a small farmers market right across the street from our house. We gave out samples, and people flipped over them. We went with 32 packages and sold every one of them.

I immediately gave my notice at the two jobs I had at the time because I was going to become a full-time spätzle maker! We built our production kitchen and bought used work tables, refrigerators and freezers. We found everything at the right time for the right price. We met all the right people at the right time, so everything fell into place quickly.

On Wednesdays, Marty’s day off, he would drive through the state to every co-op and specialty store, dropping off samples while I stayed home and made spätzle. He got us demos in the stores we would be in. After we were in stores throughout Vermont, he made a 500-mile delivery loop every other week while still working full-time and volunteering on the rescue squad at night. I honestly didn’t know how he did it.

I was our social media person, which was the thing that identified us as the “spätzle people.” Whatever store we went in, people would say, “Oh look, it’s the späzle people!” Okay, so we wore our “Keep calm and eat spätzle” shirts, but they still knew us from Facebook and Instagram.

We did many events for the first couple of years, including Oktoberfest in Burlington, VT, and Glenville, NY. We also did a tasting event at Stratton Mountain and won a trophy for best presentation. We did another tasting at the Vermont Cheesemakers Festival, one of the top ten food events in the country, and won for best artisan food. We didn’t even know people were voting!

Knowing we couldn’t fail through positive manifestation and Loretta’s prediction, we made the scary decision for Marty to quit his full-time job and become the other spätzle maker. My body took a beating making so much product myself that I ended up with carpal tunnel syndrome in my right arm.

Now we use a local business, Wilcox Ice Cream, for distribution throughout the state of Vermont; we no longer could lose a production day with Marty on the road. We did as many as five farmers markets a week, but after doing that and working seven days a week, we started to burn out. We decided we needed to take one day off a week and scale back on farmers markets.

We do the deliveries in New York state, trying to hit as many stores as possible when we head out. We have a distributor, The Alpine, who delivers our product to Weis Supermarkets and Key Foods in Pennsylvania.

During the pandemic, it was a scary time for us. We were constantly worried about being able to get the ingredients and supplies for our product. I held my breath every day, hoping we didn’t come down with covid and have to stop production when so many people wanted our product due to the ease of preparation. You don’t boil our egg noodles; they get a quick sauté and are ready in less than 5-minutes. Again, no other product like it anywhere.

Now, we do only the Troy Farmers and are concentrating on our wholesale business. We did come down with covid in April, two years after it reared its ugly head and had to shut down for 10-days. It wasn’t the end of the world, but we hated that people had to wait for more spätzle. Even though people don’t have to cook so much anymore, they still purchase our product because they love it and how easy it is to cook.

After reading my Jewelry blog post, my writing mentor, Jon Katz, called me, reminding me that my readers don’t know how I got to be a successful business owner, belly dance teacher, wife and mother, a good cook, and a confident, strong-willed woman.

I have much more writing to do, sharing with my readers how I overcame negative obstacles and became who I am. When life hands you lemons, you have two things you can do; crumble and be weak or become a strong, confident person persevering and succeeding.

Loretta’s prediction of “making large sums of money” definitely hasn’t happened yet, especially now with the doubling of ingredients and supplies and tripling in price.

Loretta said I would be doing something I loved, and she was right! I still love making spätzle, and we are as passionate about it as we were the first day.

She said it all starts with writing, which may be the social media that gave our business an immediate boost, or maybe this blog? Only time will tell.