Most people have considered starting their own business. As an educator who helps people develop and launch food and agricultural businesses, I meet budding entrepreneurs daily. Food businesses often emerge from playful experimentation in home kitchens. Barbeque sauces, salsas, and fruit preserves are fun to make. If, after making a batch and sharing with friends, a hobbyist receives encouragement to try turning their curiosity into a business, they call someone like me to guide them through the process of discovering whether their great product can lead to a profitable and satisfying new venture.

Two years ago, I met Erik Olauson from Hillsdale, Michigan at a food entrepreneurship conference. We sat next to each other during one of the conference presentations. During one of the breaks, he introduced himself to me and mentioned that he and his wife, Sheila, had developed a flourless gourmet cookie and that they were committed to making a career from baking, marketing, and distributing their goods.

Liking cookies as I do, a couple of thoughts came to mind immediately: “What is a flourless gourmet cookie?” and “I wonder how they taste.” I didn’t have to wait long to satisfy my curiosity. Erik pulled out a sample from his briefcase and offered me a taste. Erik then explained that the recipe substitutes oatmeal, peanut butter, and other ingredients like flax seed for flour to create a high fiber, moist, rich cookie.

He also explained the reasons for choosing to go flourless came after lengthy research into the effects of white flour on our overall health. They decided it was worth the effort to eliminate the product from their cookies for the health of us all. However, they did not stop there. They add goodies like oversized dark chocolate chips and Michigan cherries to bump their products comfortably into the healthy dessert category.

Bizzy Lizzy Cookies really are satisfying. Color, texture, and taste rise to the expectations of cookie connoisseurs. Add to the good product the fact that Erik has worked as a professional chef and Sheila is a professional speaker, author, and media personality who focuses on healthy eating and etiquette, and their dream of becoming successful food entrepreneurs sounds believable.

Still, there was hard work ahead of them in their quest to enter the marketplace. For starters, Erik and Sheila were so fixed on the cookie itself that they spent little time thinking through issues related to packaging and presentation. If you order a gourmet cookie from a coffee shop, it is displayed on a nice platter under carefully designed lighting to highlight the cookie’s best traits. To sell in a grocery, however, packaging was key in distinguishing it from ordinary flour-filled cookies that line store shelves. The color scheme and graphics on the box needed to clearly communicate that the ingredients inside are exceptional.

In their earliest stages of development, Bizzy Lizzy Cookies were packaged in clear plastic envelopes. Plastic wrapping was functional in that it kept the cookies fresh and allowed consumers to see the product. But generic plastic sleeves did little to introduce these baked goods inside with the prestige and panache that an exceptional cookie like this deserved.

With a little persuasion, Erik and Sheila convinced a family friend with a background in graphic arts to help them complete a packaging makeover. Bizzy Lizzy Cookies are now in stunning attire. The six-sided box fits nicely into retail displays. The color scheme screams, “Delicious Dark Chocolate Chip Cookie Inside!” Text on the box tells the story behind the product. Using a clever name like “Bizzy Lizzy” makes Google searches easy. The information on their website is interesting and well presented. 

With a great product in hand, Erik and Sheila have been traveling the roads of southeast Michigan, meeting with grocers and giving out free samples at farm markets and food shows. Their products have been featured in several publications, including The Ann Arbor News and Edible Wow. The Produce Station in Ann Arbor was the first retail outlet to stock the cookies. This month, Calder Dairy will add Bizzy Lizzy products to their home delivery menu, providing more than 1,700 regional consumers and several retail outlets a convenient method for placing orders.

The last step of successfully launching this business depends on actions of regional consumers. Bumping sales up to a level that will sustain a vibrant food business will require that consumers walk into their favorite retail outlet, ask for the product by name, buy the cookies when they show up on the shelf, and continue to buy them occasionally or frequently based on their preferences and variable levels of self control. Bizzy Lizzy is looking for retail outlets and distributors that will help their business respond to growing consumer demand for their premium flourless cookies. Erik and Sheila just rented a kiosk near Sears in Briarwood Mall. They are hoping to capture holiday sales and to increase consumer awareness of their products.

Mike Score, an Ann Arbor resident and agricultural innovation counselor with the Michigan State University Product Center, can be reached at score@msu.edu.

Here at The Chronicle, we enjoy any opportunity for a road trip, and we’ve spotted one in the form of a fundraiser that combines dining and donations.

The fundraising effort for SOS Community Services is called Dine Out to Help the Homeless. It’s a two-day affair, ending on this Saturday, Nov. 22. According to Kate Zellers, development associate for SOS, the nonprofit has teamed up with seven area purveyors of food and beverage to solicit contributions from diners this weekend. Customers can make their contribution to SOS in the form of an extra “menu item” for the donation – a special dish that will make you feel warm and fuzzy inside even if you only enjoy a small portion.

Reflecting on how well-received our Election Day coverage was, The Ann Arbor Chronicle has decided to do our part by including in our Saturday itinerary all of the participating restaurants (even if we’re not planning to file detailed updates from the field):

Saturday, Nov. 22 Chronicle Itinerary
Side Track Bar and Grill
Corner Brewery
The Arena
Arbor Brewing Company
Blue Tractor and Cafe Habana
Grizzly Peak
Old Town Tavern

Our first thought was to make this progressive dinner a perfect parallel to our Election Day coverage by bumming another ride off city attorney Stephen Postema (or more accurately, his son and daughter). But his park-anywhere pass was only good for Election Day, so we figured we’d opt for the ride that requires no parking: AATA buses. Whether they’re bio-diesel hybrids or cute purple Link buses, they require no driving or pedaling and barely any walking, so we’ll be able to sample the full range of food and beverages at these various establishments. Yes, we do understand that the promotion is not called Getting Hammered for the Homeless.

Based on our conversation with Zellers, here’s what we’re expecting at these establishments. Our server will be wearing a button or some other type of “flair” to alert customers to the SOS promotion. At some places, there’ll be a menu item labeled as the SOS donation. We figure our servers will probably “upsell” the donation in very much the same way fries get up-sold from chips at The Old Town: “Now, your hand-pulled pork barbecue sandwich comes with chips, but would you like fries?” So we imagine it could go something like this, “Now, we’re going to pour your beer into a glass, but would you like us to pour some of your cash into the donation pitcher as well?” And in fact, at some of these bars, the SOS donation will be handled less like menu items and more like a pitcher that’s passed for musicians.

In any case, our plan is to make it easy for wait staff. When they show up at the table, our first question will be, “Can we start off with the SOS donation appetizer?” And we’ll be hoping for a response along the lines of, “Sure, I’ll put that in for you right away!” Mmm, fresh-baked dough-nation right out of the oven.

Schedule-wise we’re not committing to anything but the order of establishments listed out above. But depending on WiFi connectivity at different places, we might file simple updates on our location. Hello in advance to Chronicle readers we might meet along the way!

Editor’s note: The links to the restaurants above lead to the ArborWiki entry for each establishment. If one of those places is missing some useful information that you can supply, use that “Edit” button and add it.

Brandon Johns, left, buys produce from Mark Wilson of Wilson's Farms at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market earlier this summer. The chef and partner at Vinology is committed to buying local ingredients for the restaurant.

This morning you might spot Brandon Johns at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market around 7 a.m., in Saline’s market a bit later, and up at Brighton by 10 (actually, if you spot him at all three places, let’s hope you’ve got a good reason to be following him around). Since becoming partner and chef for Vinology restaurant in May, Johns has pushed to use as many locally produced ingredients as possible, from radishes and rabbits to peaches and pigs.

On Wednesday, Sept. 24, he’ll put an even brighter spotlight on locavores with a 100-mile dinner – no food allowed from farther than 100 miles away. Most of the food actually comes from within a 25-mile radius of Ann Arbor, Johns says. The only totally non-local ingredients are olive oil, pepper and salt, though “I could probably get Michigan road salt and purify it,” he quips. Uh…no, thanks.

Johns reflects a broader movement to grow or buy food as close to your home as possible. It’s been popularized by the books “The 100-Mile Diet” and “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” and driven in part by rising food prices, concerns about health and the environmental impact of factory farms.

Johns uses about a dozen local sources for his restaurant, including Tantre Farm, Back Forty Acres, Prochaska Farms, Ernst Farm, Four Corners Creamery and Wasem Fruit Farm, among others. For his sourdough bread starter, he even uses bottled water from Manchester. During the summer, he estimates that 85 percent of his restaurant’s ingredients are local – aside from things like limes and lemons, Niman Ranch beef and Alaskan salmon, for example. For food that’s not local, he says, “we make sure it’s sustainable.”

Vinology restaurant on Main Street.

It’s all about building relationships with the people who run these farms, Johns says. And you have to be flexible – sometimes you can’t get what you’d ideally like, so you need to adjust the menu accordingly. “It takes time, and it takes commitment, too,” he says. He’s also glad that Eat Local Eat Natural has come onto the scene. That business, which started earlier this year, acts as a middleman to supply local restaurants with food produced in this area. (They’re delivering a whole pig to Vinology next Tuesday, Johns says.)

Fundamentally, the locavore movement goes back to relationships. Johns hopes to emphasize those connections at his 100-mile dinner next week – he’s invited several of the farmers whose food he’ll serve, so that diners can meet and talk to them about their work.

“It does help develop that sense of community that’s missing in the world nowadays,” he says.

The menu: Assorted canapes. Heirloom tomato and fresh mozzarella salad, basil oil and chives. Braised rabbit stew with stone-ground polenta, mushrooms and herbs. Roasted pork, sweet corn succotash, house maple cured bacon. Herb and garlic crusted leg of lamb, apple and root vegetable puree, natural jus. Poached pear and goat cheese tart. Each course is paired with wine.

Farms featured: Almar Orchards, Back Forty Acres Farm, Calder Dairy, Ernst Farm, Four Corners Creamery, Garden Works, Jennings Brothers Stone Ground Grains, Kapnick Orchards, Proschaska Farms, Snows Maple Syrup, Tantre Farm, Turk Farms.

Other dinner details: The dinner begins at 6:30 p.m and costs $80 per person, plus tax and gratuity. Make a reservation by calling 734-222-9841 or emailing vinology@vinowinebars.com.