Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 28, 1993 TAG: 9311240294
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BY MOLLIE GORE RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH
DATELINE: RICHMOND (AP) LENGTH: Long
"We only had a manual can opener," Nelson recalled.
"An old, rusty can opener," Justice added.
They also had fed a friend's dog that liked dry and canned dog food.
"We were sitting around one day and said, `There has to be a more convenient way to add flavor and nutrition,' " Nelson said.
They came up with the idea of a dog food gravy. The concept made so much sense, they sat around asking themselves: "Why hasn't somebody done this already?" But no matter how they evaluated the idea, "we couldn't come up with anything negative," Justice said.
That was around the first of June 1992. In the next six months, Nelson and Justice traveled to Blacksburg, Maryland, Lynchburg and Louisville, Ky. They talked to veterinary nutritionists, a food technologist and contract food manufacturers.
And they taste-tested dog food that they cooked up in their kitchen.
"We came in here and took different amounts of salt, different amounts of the various ingredients, honey and the meat digest," Justice said. "We kind've used our own preferences as a guide."
So they were scooping out spoonfuls to decide whether it was too salty?
"I wouldn't say spoon," Nelson said. "We were dipping our finger in it."
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which runs shelters, "helped us a lot with testing," Justice added. "We would take batches over there" for tasting.
The dogs loved it, he said.
That is the boiled-down story behind Gravy Time.
It is a tale of entrepreneurship and product development masterminded by two 27-year-olds. Gravy Time has been on supermarket shelves just seven months or so. Nelson and Justice have signed investors, stirred some interest and are waiting to see whether the product takes off.
Justice and Nelson attended high school together in Roanoke. Justice then went to Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, where he graduated in 1990 with a degree in economics. Nelson graduated from the University of Virginia in 1989 with a history degree.
Nelson moved to Richmond in 1990 and became a sales representative for his father's wholesale hardware distributor company. His father sold the company in February, and "our business was getting more involved," so he took a part-time job with the Raintree Swim and Racquet Club in Henrico County.
Justice went to The Portfolio Center in Atlanta after college, and studied advertising for six months. He was interested in exporting cars, so he bought a Mazda Miata, took it to Europe and sold it.
But "it wasn't as lucrative as I'd thought," so he came to Richmond and took a job as a sales representative for Inland Products Co.
Justice still occasionally does some work for Inland, but his full-time job now is Grateful Pet, the name of Gravy Time's company.
"Since I've lived with Jim, he's come up with about five different businesses" to start, Nelson said.
This time, "the attraction here, it's a real business. It was manufacturing a product, advertising a product, taking a product to market and selling it," Justice said.
Once Justice and Nelson came up with the idea for Gravy Time, they acted quickly. They called the local extension office and were put in touch with a professor at Virginia Tech.
That professor was interested in the idea but didn't have the time to work on it, Justice said. So he referred them to a friend, a veterinary nutritionist in Maryland.
Justice and Nelson talked the Maryland nutritionist, whom they wouldn't name because the person also works with main dog food brands, into working with them for a stake in Grateful Pet. The fourth-largest shareholder is another friend, Wayne Hudgins, who owns about 5 percent of the company.
"That's the day we took this seriously," said Justice, who is basically working full time on Gravy Time. "We said, `Let's go out and start this business.' "
Neither Justice nor Nelson knew anything about commercial food preparation or preservation. "We wanted it to be brown in color like table gravy, to be shelf stable," Nelson said. "We wanted a pleasing smell to humans and dogs."
They needed a name.
"We had like 100 names . . . so many names we really had a hard time," Justice said.
"We set up a meeting with a friend in Charlottesville who is a professional at this," he said. She offered three suggestions; Gravy Time was one of them. Good Gravy was a second, "which didn't mean anything to Bo and me," Justice said. He couldn't remember the third.
They turned to a food manufacturer in Lynchburg for initial help making the gravy.
Then they had to find a food manufacturer to make Gravy Time. After some digging, they located Silver Foods Corp. in Louisville, a company that makes sauces, dressings and other liquid products.
"It's a great idea," said James R. Smith, president of Silver Foods. "I've used it on my dogs at home and they loved it."
The first manufacturing run was in January. Justice and Nelson rented a 16-foot truck and drove to Louisville to oversee the run. They then returned home with the gravy.
For distribution, they approached Ukrop's Super Markets Inc., which not only agreed to stock the product but also to let them set up a display.
"Ukrop's has been great," Justice said. The chain "has led us along the whole way."
The display has increased sales in the Ukrop's stores fourfold, Nelson said.
To date, there have been four manufacturing runs; after the first, they scaled back the size of the container so they could charge less. Products from the first run sell for $4.50 a bottle. The smaller bottles sell for just under $3.
The change came after interviewing prospective buyers, who said they thought $4.50 was a bit steep for a container of supermarket dog food. Gravy Time is in about 100 grocery stores, including Ukrop's and other supermarket chains in Virginia, Maryland and West Virginia.
Richfood Inc., the Richmond-based wholesale grocery distributor, is stocking the product for its client stores, including some in Western Virginia.
"I tried it and the dog loved it," said Barry Roupe, a buyer for Richfood. "It's not a huge mover but . . . it looks like there are some people out there who want it."
Richfood has been carrying the gravy about four months and is selling 35 cases a week.
by CNB