A recipe from Jamie Jackson’s childhood has turned into a business for him today.
Growing up in Pierre, SD, with his friend and now business partner Matt Bartlett, the two loved the mustard made by Bartlett’s mother, Gloria. Now Jackson and Bartlett manufacture Matt’s Mom’s Mustard and market it in 35-40 stores in eastern South Dakota.
“We just loved it so much as kids that as we grew older we wanted to make it into a business and share with others,” Jackson said.
Today Jackson lives in Lennox and Bartlett lives in Pensacola, FL. They do all of their collaborating over the phone. Bartlett, who works in human services, has been trying different ingredients to go in the mustard for the past few years. He has been testing his new flavors with consumers at farmer’s markets in Florida.
Neither partner has a background in food manufacturing or development. Jackson worked at Children’s Care Hospital for 17 years and now works at Sam’s Financial Group in Sioux Falls. He works on Matt’s Mom’s Mustard in the evenings and on weekends.
The partners use Bartlett’s mother’s mustard recipe as the base for their different flavors. Those flavors include Smokin’ Dixie, Mango Habanero and Roasted Garlic.
“He (Matt) has a bunch of other flavors in development. At some point, we’ll bring more flavors to market,” Jackson said.
Since they did not want to cook it themselves, they decided to manufacture their mustard through Backyard Specialty Foods Manufacturing in Sioux Falls. In order to do it themselves, they would have had to get a commercial kitchen and jump through many regulatory hoops. If they did it themselves, the mustard would need to be refrigerated. Doing it through Backyard, their product is shelf stable for two years.
Jackson said Backyard directed them to the different regulatory bodies that they needed to get in touch with to get their mustard to market.
Jackson said one of the biggest challenges was “jumping through the regulatory hoops and finding a process where our product could be shelf stable for two years so we don’t have to worry about our inventory turning over.”
Getting their mustard into grocery stores in the state has been surprisingly easy. They are in Sunshine in Lennox, Tea and Sioux Falls…
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