Today we’d like to introduce you to Katie Aiken.
Hi Katie, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for sharing your story with us – to start, maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers.
My love for Strawberry Rhubarb Jam started in 2007. I had just graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering and had taken a job on the Northshore of Minnesota working for a taconite plant. The town I moved to was called Silver Bay, Minnesota. It was a town of 2,000 people and was a culture shock to my outgoing and friendly spirit. I grew up in St Louis, Missouri, which has a population of 2,000,000, and attended an engineering school in rural Missouri with a population of 20,000 while school was in session. I was not prepared to move to a town where everyone knew each other and had known each other their whole lives. I was an outsider with a lot of curious energy and not much to do, so I started wandering around to check out the local sights. The North Shore is a beautiful part of the country. The road up the Northshore of Minnesota is a windy two-lane road up the coast of Lake Superior. The two-lane highway meandered back and forth through heavily wooded areas, scenic views of Lake Superior, and a picturesque little town called Two Harbors, MN. Two Harbors had an adorable downtown area with local shops and souvenirs. I stopped by one of these little shops on my way through town. It was no bigger than a garden shed, brimming with jams and jellies, dry soup mixes, and the like. Here is where Strawberry Rhubarb Jam caught my eye for the 1st time. The color was a beautiful pinkish-red color I had never seen before. I don’t even hear of rhubarb before. I loved strawberries and strawberry jam. How bad could it be, I thought to myself. I bought the jam, and away I went. The following day I had a piece of toast with my new jam, and my eyes were opened. It was sweet without being too sugary. It was tangy, like the kind that tickles the back of your jaw, and the texture was more of a runny preserve than any jelly or jam I had ever had. Whenever I ran out of jam, I would stop by that little store and restock. I was hooked.
After a year or so, my boyfriend and I decided it was time to move back to civilization. We ended up in Chicagoland and eventually moved back to St Louis. One thing that always stuck with me was that strawberry rhubarb jam. I had long since devoured all the strawberry rhubarb jam I had acquired in Minnesota. After moving away from the Northshore, I always looked for strawberry rhubarb jam. Whenever I came across a jar, I would buy it and anxiously run home to try it and see if it was as good as the one I loved. No luck. All the jams seemed more like jelly; they appeared more jello and less preserve. They were all loaded with sugar and overloaded my pallet with sweet stickiness. My parents went to the Northshore several times on vacation and stopped in Two Harbors to pick up some more jam, but the little shop had closed and was no longer there.
Ten years passed, my then-boyfriend became my husband, and we had two beautiful boys and a little girl on the way. One day we walked through Costco, picking up the regular items: milk, diapers, coffee, peanut butter, and jelly, etc. I went to pick up our typical jar of grape jelly, and my eyes fell upon the words “Rhubarb Jam” on the pallet next to the grape jelly. I was giddy with pleasure. Could it be? Rhubarb Jam in the biggest jam jar I had ever seen. Would it be good? It was a Rhubarb Cherry Jam, but I had to try it. The second we got home from the store, I popped that jar open and tried a small spoonful! The flavor was there! It was tart without being too sweet! It was more ‘jello’ consistency than I liked, but I was thrilled to have my rhubarb jam back! The next time we went to Costco, I bought 4 jars. When my husband looked at me, mouth ajar, I blamed the baby in my belly. I knew that items at Costco came and went with the seasons, and I wasn’t taking any chances. I started putting it on Greek Yogurt rather than toast, which was even better than toast and bread. There was sourness from the Greek yogurt, tartness from the rhubarb, and slight sweetness from the strawberries. I was thrilled! Until the seasons changed. The Rhubarb jam was gone, and no one knew if it was coming back.
It was time to take matters into our own hands. My husband suggested well, why don’t we make our jam? How hard can it be? We are both engineers and can follow simple directions and recipes, so we found some strawberry rhubarb recipes and compared and contrasted the differences. We attempted to gather all the ingredients and found out that rhubarb is a spring vegetable and is hard to grow in St Louis, Missouri. However, the local Fruit Stand said they would return in April and have rhubarb in stock. So we did! We went to the fruit stand the following spring, bought our first rhubarb stalks and some strawberries, and left. We tried several variations on the strawberry-to-rhubarb ratio, varied the sugar, tried natural sugar, then tried fake sugar, and tried with pectin and without pectin.
We took copious notes on what we liked and didn’t like about the different jams we had made and came up with a recipe we were excited about. We gave samples to our friends and neighbors to see what they thought. Would anyone besides us like Strawberry Rhubarb Jam? Every single person that tried it loved it. They were amazed by the texture, flavor, tartness and sweetness, and perfect balance of flavors. We decided to sell it at a local farmer’s market. We only made 24 jars because rhubarb was so hard to find and had such a short growing season; it was also quite expensive because it was so hard to come by. So we took our jars of jam to our 1st farmers market; it was pouring down rain and cold, and the crowd was sparse. Customers would come into our booth to get out of the rain, and we would ask if they had ever tried strawberry rhubarb jam. We were giving out free samples and would like to know their thoughts. We ended up selling 22 jars of jam in a 3-hour timeframe. The following week we had people coming back asking for it, and we sold our last 2 jars in the 1st 10 minutes of the market.
Then we were stuck. Now what? Should we wait a whole year to buy more rhubarb? How much should we buy? We had to do the math to see how much rhubarb and strawberries we used to make 24 jars of the batch we liked. So we took to the Internet. Believe it or not, the Internet of Things had frozen rhubarb, which was reasonable for 30 lbs of frozen rhubarb + shipping. So we crossed our fingers and purchased our 1st 30lb box of frozen rhubarb. We then bought our proper amounts of strawberries and sugar. It was quickly determined we didn’t have a pot big enough to cook this quantity of rhubarb and strawberries. So we went to a local restaurant store and bought the biggest cooking pot. Then we needed more jars to hold all the jam! 45lbs of Strawberry Rhubarb jam translates to 7 doz jars of jam. We loaded all of them up and took them to the next farmers market, and we sold 4 dozen jars. The following week we sold the next 3 doz. By this time, I already had an order for 60 lbs of rhubarb on the way.
At this point, we may be on to something. Almost every person we got to try the jam bought a jar of it. Every time they put that little spoon in their mouth, it would be the same response. Surprised eyes would open, and they would say, “Oh my god. That is good! I’ve never had anything like that before.” That’s when I would tell them it’s delicious on Greek Yogurt, ice cream, toast, or eat it out of the jar.” And that was it; they were sold.
The following 60 lbs were delivered with 16 dozen jam jars. The first 30 lbs of rhubarb went to the rhubarb strawberry jam. Then we decided to expand to other fruits. We tried a rhubarb, strawberry, peach, pineapple, and mango mixture, and it was good. We tried rhubarb and just peach, and it was terrific. We then tried rhubarb and dark cherries, which were even better than the peach. We were having our parents taste our latest jams and drinking margaritas, and I said what if we put a spoonful in our margaritas? We threw them back in the blender and tossed in a couple of spoonfuls of jam, which was amazing. My husband tried a spoonful of the Rhubarb cherry in his whiskey, and he said it was a twist on an Old-Fashioned.
Please talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned. Looking back, has it been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The struggles along the way came in narrowing down our focus and determining what our customers wanted. We originally named our business Engineered Elegance, we had simplistic screen-printed hand towels, seed balls, and natural fertilizer, and we also had jam and cakes. People would stop by looking at our hand towels, and we would say, “We have free samples,” and they would forget all about the hand towels and walk out with bags of our lemon loaves and jams. They would ask us what “Engineered Elegance” meant, and after explaining over and over that we were both engineers, but we looked to bake and cook together, we just named it “Engineered Elegance” We decided to rename ourselves something that made more sense, that is where “Rhu-Berry” came from. After lugging our hand towels around for 8 months, we gave them away for free with a purchase and focused on expanding what sold, i.e., jams and cakes.
Thanks for sharing that. So, you could tell us a bit more about your work.
Our most popular jam is our Drunken Cherry Rhubarb Jam. Our jams use about 1/5th of the sugar in regular jellies and jams. We love that the fruit flavor comes in our jams more than the sugar and gelatin. We love to recommend putting our jam in Greek yogurt, Greek yogurt isn’t a typical food, but it’s a lower-carb option than bread. Our jam is a great complement to the sourness of the Greek yogurt, and our rhubarb jams are slightly tart and sweet, and it’s a great combo. Our Strawerry-Rhubarb Jam brought home the second-place ribbon at the 2022 MO State Fair! We will be at the Best of Missouri Festival October 6-8 at MO Botanical Gardens.
We all have different ways of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
I was making a difference for the better, leaving the world a better place than you found it.
Pricing:
- Jams are $8 each or 4 for $30.
- Cakes and bread range from $12-$15.
- With every cake purchase, we offer a bonus cake for half price, with the promise that you will surprise an unsuspecting someone with a cake, a play on a “Random Act of Kindness” we call a “Cake of Kindness.”
Contact Info:
- Website: https://rhu-berry.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rhu_berry/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RhuBerryMarket
Image Credits
Natasha McGuire, Natasha McGuire Photography call or text: 707-892-3565, www.natashamcguire.com
