Black owned syrup company sees sales spike after Aunt Jemima is cancelled

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South Holland syrup maker poised to pick up market share from Aunt Jemima



Jul 03, 2020
IP7TID4TU5CTZADCT45ASIVUZE.jpg

Michele Hoskins used an old family recipe to launch a syrup-making business in 1984. Now the South Holland entrepreneur's company is poised to pick up market share due to the retirement of the Aunt Jemima brand. (Provided by Michele Hoskins)

Michele Hoskins felt a seismic shift for her company on a Tuesday morning in mid-June when Quaker Oats announced it was retiring the Aunt Jemima brand due to concerns about racial stereotypes.

“My life changed,” Hoskins said. “Our company changed. It brought awareness to us.”

Her South Holland-based company, Michele Foods, has been selling syrup and other products since 1984. Still, she has a tiny fraction of a market dominated by Aunt Jemima.

Hoskins saw her company’s profile suddenly elevated.

“The next day my tech guy called and said, ‘Your website has crashed,’” Hoskins said.

People were discovering her company on social media. After 35 years of hard work, she was an overnight sensation.

The Aunt Jemima brand dates back to 1889, according to Quaker Oats.

“I never in my wildest dreams thought that anything would happen that would make her do anything that would affect my company,” Hoskins said.

After building her business for 35 years, the south suburban entrepreneur is poised to expand her company’s operations.

“I should be in every major retail chain in the country. I should be able to supply customers who want my product,” she said.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news...cgm673dce5lp4-story.html#nt=interstitial-auto
Hoskins expects other competitors also will try to seize the chance to increase their share of the syrup market.

“I’m not going to take Aunt Jemima’s place. No one ever can, because she’s a different brand from a different era,” she said. “But if you’re looking for a minority company that sells in that category, I’m that. I think we should have the same opportunity as everyone else because we persevered.”

EJ67N2POPFDALEFLYQELCXYUVM.jpg

Michele Hoskins and her South Holland-based company, Michele Foods, market three flavors of syrup: butter pecan, maple creme and honey creme.

Hoskins said she launched her company in 1984 while she was going through a divorce and moving back into her parents’ home with her three young girls.

“I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life,” she said.

She decided to make syrup based on a secret recipe developed by her great-great-great-grandmother, America Washington.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news...fn6nxp7jscgza-story.html#nt=interstitial-auto
“She was a slave who worked as a cook on a plantation,” Hoskins said. “The family she worked for did not like molasses. So she came up with this concoction of honey, churned butter and cream. It was delicious.”

Hoskins had her idea, but no clue how to start a business.

“I didn’t know anything about the food industry or product development,” she said.

She cooked up a batch on the stove and took it to local restaurants, whose owners told Hoskins the syrup separated and had to be reheated.

“I think at that point most people would have gotten discouraged,” Hoskins said.

[
She applied lessons she learned from teaching world religions at a private school.

“You can do anything if you put your mind to it,” she said. “I still believe that.”

Hoskins found someone to make her syrup so she could focus on marketing and distribution.

“I had a company at 35th and Kedzie that made the product for me and they would deliver it in 55-gallon drums in the alley,” she said.

She and her daughters would fill bottles and place handmade labels on them in her parents’ basement.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/life...tity-20190311-story.html#nt=interstitial-auto
“I would take it around to neighborhood stores,” Hoskins said.

Even though independent South Side retailers agreed to stock her product, no customers initially bought it.

“It wasn’t moving,” she said. “I would go in myself and buy it to create this illusion of movement.”

To expand her reach, she visited the corporate offices of Jewel Foods in Melrose Park. She asked to talk with a buyer.

“They had never seen anybody walk in like that,” she said. “I was the first minority supplier for Jewel stores.”

She expanded her line to three syrup flavors: butter pecan, maple crème and honey crème. She worked to get her products placed in Kroger, Publix, Safeway and other grocery stores across the country. Companies were eager to do business with her, she said.

“I realized who I am made a difference, because diversity was hot,” she said.

VDAXMLET6RBCVNGHCFRBJS7XMY.jpg

Michele Hoskins, owner of Michele Foods, poses in 2007 for a portrait outside her Lansing, Illinois, office. Hoskins uses her great-great-great-grandmother's family recipe to make three flavors of syrup. (Stacie Freudenberg / Chicago Tribune)

By 1990, after she had been featured on local TV news, she was contacted by Walmart, which was looking to increase its diversity, she said. Then she was contacted by Harpo Studios.

“Oprah was looking for women who had made their first million (dollars),” Hoskins said.

She appeared three different times on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” she said. The first appearance led to her getting called back for a second.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/subu...movie-st-1206-story.html#nt=interstitial-auto
“(Oprah) asked me something and I said you create your own destiny,” Hoskins said. “That’s profound, right?”

Her business continued to grow. She supplied syrup to Denny’s restaurants, then Popeyes chicken. While networking at a conference, she received another call from Harper Studios. They had learned a viewer in Texas had planned to take her own life but was stopped by something she heard on the television.

“She heard, ‘create your own destiny,’ and stopped,” Hoskins said. The woman started her own business and wanted to thank the woman who inspired her. The two appeared together.

“That was a tearful show,” Hoskins said.

She was featured in newspapers and business magazines and developed a reputation as a savvy entrepreneur. During an interview in her South Holland office, she pointed out a magazine cover about her doing business with General Foods.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/colu...ppke-20170508-story.html#nt=interstitial-auto
“I called up the head of General Foods and said I had done research on Bisquick,” she said. “Seventy percent of people who buy Bisquick use it to make pancakes, and you only have 2% market share in the African American community. “I didn’t have a pancake and General Foods didn’t have a syrup. I said, ‘I can get you some share in the African American community by my face.‘”

They partnered and offered a coupon where shoppers received discounts when they bought Bisquick and a Michele’s Foods syrup together, she said.

She reached out to Kellogg’s. The maker of Eggo frozen waffles and other breakfast products had no syrup brand of its own.

“They wanted a share because Aunt Jemima had 77% of the syrup market,” she said. “I helped them develop Eggo syrup. I did that because when they did that, it brought light to the syrup category.”

Aunt Jemima’s market dominance left little room for competition.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/midw...kf26a6wdhlwqm-story.html#nt=interstitial-auto
“The syrup category is a very unsaturated market,” she said. “There are certain products in retail where you don’t add to them, there’s no room for them, there’s no market share. It’s just a closed category.”

Aunt Jemima continues to dominate market share, with Mrs. Butterworth’s, Log Cabin and Hungry Jack distant competitors, according to 2019 market data published by Statista. Aunt Jemima sells about $500 million worth of syrup annually, Hoskins said.

“Aunt Jemima owned that category by her image and by the perception that she was African American,” Hoskins said. “A lot of us grew up on that not understanding anything about advertising.”

Brands like Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben perpetuated stereotypes about Blacks, she said.

“People would walk past me to get to her,” Hoskins said. “For years I didn’t have my face on there.”

TWKK3DSSSND7PC2KJYM2XXZALA.jpg

America Washington was a former slave who developed a secret syrup recipe in the 1800s as an alternative to molasses for her plantation owner's family, according to her great-great-great-granddaughter, Michele Hoskins, who markets syrup through her South Holland company, Michele Foods. (Provided by Michele Hoskins)
Hoskins said she introduced an illustrated image of herself to her syrup bottles about 18 months ago. She had resisted for more than 30 years because of something a grocery store buyer said to her when she was starting her business 35 years ago.

“I went out to one of these suburbs and told the manager that was my product,” she said. “He called (the regional grocery chain) and said, ‘I don’t want Black products out here. I don’t want anything that’s going to draw the African American community into my store.’”

Hoskins said she expanded her reach by masking her identity.

“I became a general-market product,” she said. “My product was sold in Colorado and Utah. No one knew this was an African American product.”

Hoskins has shared her expertise about business with others. She has mentored 225 people over the past 20 years, she said.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/coro...dr7uftxgvk35y-story.html#nt=interstitial-auto
“Some of them have great products,” she said. “One girl was on ‘Shark Tank.’ I have a guy in Virginia that’s doing about $20 million (of business) a year with the government.”

At this stage in her life, Hoskins could look back on an award-winning, successful career, but she is not one to rest on laurels.

“We still did not have the consumer awareness that we wanted,” she said. “Right now we’re in about 6,000 stores.”

Michele Foods remains relatively small, with just four employees and modest annual sales, Hoskins said. Her product is made by a subcontractor near Cincinnati, she said. Profits and sales have never been her primary motivation, she said.

“I’m in it to create a legacy,” Hoskins said. “I feel that at some point we as a people have to understand how to build, create and pass on wealth.”

Most minority-owned companies sell out or fade away, she said. Hoskins wants to eventually pass her company along to her daughter Keisha, who runs social media and other projects for the business.

“If my great-great-great-grandmother could pass down this recipe, I surely could pass it along to her,” Hoskins said. “That becomes our legacy. It’s my legacy in a bottle. Whatever wealth is built into that, we break that curse.”
 

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South Holland syrup maker poised to pick up market share from Aunt Jemima



Jul 03, 2020
IP7TID4TU5CTZADCT45ASIVUZE.jpg

Michele Hoskins used an old family recipe to launch a syrup-making business in 1984. Now the South Holland entrepreneur's company is poised to pick up market share due to the retirement of the Aunt Jemima brand. (Provided by Michele Hoskins)

Michele Hoskins felt a seismic shift for her company on a Tuesday morning in mid-June when Quaker Oats announced it was retiring the Aunt Jemima brand due to concerns about racial stereotypes.

“My life changed,” Hoskins said. “Our company changed. It brought awareness to us.”

Her South Holland-based company, Michele Foods, has been selling syrup and other products since 1984. Still, she has a tiny fraction of a market dominated by Aunt Jemima.

Hoskins saw her company’s profile suddenly elevated.

“The next day my tech guy called and said, ‘Your website has crashed,’” Hoskins said.

People were discovering her company on social media. After 35 years of hard work, she was an overnight sensation.

The Aunt Jemima brand dates back to 1889, according to Quaker Oats.

“I never in my wildest dreams thought that anything would happen that would make her do anything that would affect my company,” Hoskins said.

After building her business for 35 years, the south suburban entrepreneur is poised to expand her company’s operations.

“I should be in every major retail chain in the country. I should be able to supply customers who want my product,” she said.

Hoskins expects other competitors also will try to seize the chance to increase their share of the syrup market.

“I’m not going to take Aunt Jemima’s place. No one ever can, because she’s a different brand from a different era,” she said. “But if you’re looking for a minority company that sells in that category, I’m that. I think we should have the same opportunity as everyone else because we persevered.”

EJ67N2POPFDALEFLYQELCXYUVM.jpg

Michele Hoskins and her South Holland-based company, Michele Foods, market three flavors of syrup: butter pecan, maple creme and honey creme.

Hoskins said she launched her company in 1984 while she was going through a divorce and moving back into her parents’ home with her three young girls.

“I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life,” she said.

She decided to make syrup based on a secret recipe developed by her great-great-great-grandmother, America Washington.

“She was a slave who worked as a cook on a plantation,” Hoskins said. “The family she worked for did not like molasses. So she came up with this concoction of honey, churned butter and cream. It was delicious.”

Hoskins had her idea, but no clue how to start a business.

“I didn’t know anything about the food industry or product development,” she said.

She cooked up a batch on the stove and took it to local restaurants, whose owners told Hoskins the syrup separated and had to be reheated.

“I think at that point most people would have gotten discouraged,” Hoskins said.

[
She applied lessons she learned from teaching world religions at a private school.

“You can do anything if you put your mind to it,” she said. “I still believe that.”

Hoskins found someone to make her syrup so she could focus on marketing and distribution.

“I had a company at 35th and Kedzie that made the product for me and they would deliver it in 55-gallon drums in the alley,” she said.

She and her daughters would fill bottles and place handmade labels on them in her parents’ basement.

“I would take it around to neighborhood stores,” Hoskins said.

Even though independent South Side retailers agreed to stock her product, no customers initially bought it.

“It wasn’t moving,” she said. “I would go in myself and buy it to create this illusion of movement.”

To expand her reach, she visited the corporate offices of Jewel Foods in Melrose Park. She asked to talk with a buyer.

“They had never seen anybody walk in like that,” she said. “I was the first minority supplier for Jewel stores.”

She expanded her line to three syrup flavors: butter pecan, maple crème and honey crème. She worked to get her products placed in Kroger, Publix, Safeway and other grocery stores across the country. Companies were eager to do business with her, she said.

“I realized who I am made a difference, because diversity was hot,” she said.

VDAXMLET6RBCVNGHCFRBJS7XMY.jpg

Michele Hoskins, owner of Michele Foods, poses in 2007 for a portrait outside her Lansing, Illinois, office. Hoskins uses her great-great-great-grandmother's family recipe to make three flavors of syrup. (Stacie Freudenberg / Chicago Tribune)

By 1990, after she had been featured on local TV news, she was contacted by Walmart, which was looking to increase its diversity, she said. Then she was contacted by Harpo Studios.

“Oprah was looking for women who had made their first million (dollars),” Hoskins said.

She appeared three different times on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” she said. The first appearance led to her getting called back for a second.

“(Oprah) asked me something and I said you create your own destiny,” Hoskins said. “That’s profound, right?”

Her business continued to grow. She supplied syrup to Denny’s restaurants, then Popeyes chicken. While networking at a conference, she received another call from Harper Studios. They had learned a viewer in Texas had planned to take her own life but was stopped by something she heard on the television.

“She heard, ‘create your own destiny,’ and stopped,” Hoskins said. The woman started her own business and wanted to thank the woman who inspired her. The two appeared together.

“That was a tearful show,” Hoskins said.

She was featured in newspapers and business magazines and developed a reputation as a savvy entrepreneur. During an interview in her South Holland office, she pointed out a magazine cover about her doing business with General Foods.

“I called up the head of General Foods and said I had done research on Bisquick,” she said. “Seventy percent of people who buy Bisquick use it to make pancakes, and you only have 2% market share in the African American community. “I didn’t have a pancake and General Foods didn’t have a syrup. I said, ‘I can get you some share in the African American community by my face.‘”

They partnered and offered a coupon where shoppers received discounts when they bought Bisquick and a Michele’s Foods syrup together, she said.

She reached out to Kellogg’s. The maker of Eggo frozen waffles and other breakfast products had no syrup brand of its own.

“They wanted a share because Aunt Jemima had 77% of the syrup market,” she said. “I helped them develop Eggo syrup. I did that because when they did that, it brought light to the syrup category.”

Aunt Jemima’s market dominance left little room for competition.

“The syrup category is a very unsaturated market,” she said. “There are certain products in retail where you don’t add to them, there’s no room for them, there’s no market share. It’s just a closed category.”

Aunt Jemima continues to dominate market share, with Mrs. Butterworth’s, Log Cabin and Hungry Jack distant competitors, according to 2019 market data published by Statista. Aunt Jemima sells about $500 million worth of syrup annually, Hoskins said.

“Aunt Jemima owned that category by her image and by the perception that she was African American,” Hoskins said. “A lot of us grew up on that not understanding anything about advertising.”

Brands like Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben perpetuated stereotypes about Blacks, she said.

“People would walk past me to get to her,” Hoskins said. “For years I didn’t have my face on there.”

TWKK3DSSSND7PC2KJYM2XXZALA.jpg

America Washington was a former slave who developed a secret syrup recipe in the 1800s as an alternative to molasses for her plantation owner's family, according to her great-great-great-granddaughter, Michele Hoskins, who markets syrup through her South Holland company, Michele Foods. (Provided by Michele Hoskins)
Hoskins said she introduced an illustrated image of herself to her syrup bottles about 18 months ago. She had resisted for more than 30 years because of something a grocery store buyer said to her when she was starting her business 35 years ago.

“I went out to one of these suburbs and told the manager that was my product,” she said. “He called (the regional grocery chain) and said, ‘I don’t want Black products out here. I don’t want anything that’s going to draw the African American community into my store.’”

Hoskins said she expanded her reach by masking her identity.

“I became a general-market product,” she said. “My product was sold in Colorado and Utah. No one knew this was an African American product.”

Hoskins has shared her expertise about business with others. She has mentored 225 people over the past 20 years, she said.

“Some of them have great products,” she said. “One girl was on ‘Shark Tank.’ I have a guy in Virginia that’s doing about $20 million (of business) a year with the government.”

At this stage in her life, Hoskins could look back on an award-winning, successful career, but she is not one to rest on laurels.

“We still did not have the consumer awareness that we wanted,” she said. “Right now we’re in about 6,000 stores.”

Michele Foods remains relatively small, with just four employees and modest annual sales, Hoskins said. Her product is made by a subcontractor near Cincinnati, she said. Profits and sales have never been her primary motivation, she said.

“I’m in it to create a legacy,” Hoskins said. “I feel that at some point we as a people have to understand how to build, create and pass on wealth.”

Most minority-owned companies sell out or fade away, she said. Hoskins wants to eventually pass her company along to her daughter Keisha, who runs social media and other projects for the business.

“If my great-great-great-grandmother could pass down this recipe, I surely could pass it along to her,” Hoskins said. “That becomes our legacy. It’s my legacy in a bottle. Whatever wealth is built into that, we break that curse.”


This is good to hear. She stuck with it until she made it big. I am in food manufacturing too and it ain't an industry for the faint of hear or those who don't care to pay attention to details. I salute the sister :salute:
 
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