Articles
9 February 2012

Utah's Own Roundtable Discussion

by Sarah Ryther Francom

09 February 2012—

 

 
 
Participants:
Steve Rich, Associated Foods
Sondra Latham, Tom’s Gourmet
Bob Harmon, Harmon’s
Mark Sullivan, Nicholas & Co.
Sherman Robinson, Lehi Roller Mills
Mike Dutton, Winder Farms
Amber Smith, KUTV Channel 2
Spencer Beckstead, Clear Channel Communications
John Fredrickson, Miller Honey
Kerry Smith, FatBoy Ice Cream
Gayle Smith, FatBoy Ice Cream
Gary Summers, Meadow Gold Dairies
Steve Crane, FatBoy Ice Cream
Peggy Whiting, Seal Sama Foods
Paul Colosimo, Colosimo’s
 
What is it like to be a homegrown product? Is it hard to get into the market? What kind of challenges do you face?
 
SUMMERS: I think one of the hardest parts is letting people know that you are a homegrown product. Especially in Utah, we have such an influx of people moving into the state that it makes it hard to get that message out. That's what is so important about Utah's Own. We put it on all of our advertising. From billboards to print advertising, we try and put the Utah’s Own brand out there to educate the consumers that we are a Utah company.
 
WHITING: What I have noticed is how many doors have been opened by using the Utah’s Own brand. When we first had the product it's like we were just pounding the pavement going from grocery manager to grocery manager. Harmon's was the first to say yes and put us on the shelves, and then it was all the independents. They follow and back up the fact that it is a Utah product. When I said I was a part of Utah's Own products, it was almost an immediate response to try it on the shelf.
 
FREDERICKSON: At a Utah's Own conference a little over a year ago, we had a man from England talking about the presentation on how you get into the grocery business in the European market. He said there were only 157 buying desks in the entire European section. If you wanted to get into the European market, you had to funnel through these people.
Without Utah's Own, Peggy wouldn’t be on the shelf and FatBoy would not have grown as much. There's two parts to this, dealing with the effort we give and that the state gives and the support that they have. We have some state Senators who don't believe in this, but Utah's Own is really important. Utah's Own also helps us protect against the Chinese threat. The biggest threat to the grocery industry is China.
 
LATHAM: I have coined my own phrase. You either need a hundred years behind you, or you need several hundred thousand dollars, and I don't have either one. I'd love to be in the third-generation shoes like some companies around the table, but I'm not. It has been extremely difficult. Without Utah’s Own, I would be nowhere, literally. I'd be out of business.
            Through our association, I have formed a little organization that I call the Utah Specialty Food Association. In January we will have the first Utah pavilion at the Fancy Food show. Ten companies will be there representing Utah.
 
COLOSIMO: Is the success category specific? I'm in a fairly tough category because the product is perishable and you can only have a specific number of sausages on the shelf. I also look at the beer section as an example. You've got the microbrews out there and there's 25 different beers on the shelf. Really, Colosimo is the microbrew of sausage, but you can only carry so many sausages on the shelf.
I always felt like if I had a six-month shelf life it would be easier because you could go in and say, "Look, there's no loss here. Put it on the shelf. It will sell." So I have another barrier, but Utah's Own definitely helps drop that barrier.
I go into all these stores, and I see sausage coming from New York. Does that make sense? My biggest competitor is Johnsonville. They don't think I'm their competitor. They come from Wisconsin, 25 hours by truck. Does that make sense? What you have with Colosimo sausage in Utah is not only the economic choice, but it's the environmental choice. One of the things we all have going for us is our food is made 25 miles from the store, and that's a big advantage.
            Associated Foods gets it, and that's great, but Albertsons doesn't get it. Kroeger doesn't get it. Wal-Mart, who really has the most reason to get it, doesn't get it. Wal-Mart has this reputation of being a community wrecker. But if they could point to Colosimo Sausage and say, "We are not a community wrecker, we have Colosimo sausage on the shelf." That would help assuage people's hard feelings. "They are not a community wrecker. We are doing business with Fatboy and SEAL SAMA and Tom's Gourmet." That's where I see how we have to position ourselves in that company, and I think Utah's Own helps do that.
 
One point that has been brought up is that Utah people stick together and that there's a loyalty there. Is that true? Do you find that to be to your benefit?
 
K. SMITH: I remember helping Harmon’s open one of their stores with an event and snowmobile giveaway. Since that time we have kind of formed a little bit of a group and gotten pretty close as companies. Randy Harmon once asked me to speak on the radio. All I wanted to talk about was Harmon's. And when Paul and Sondra and I became friends, we have appeared on the Grocery Guru talking about each other. It is good to promote each other’s products, because when it comes from a different source, it's a very effective way to market each other’s products.
The strength in numbers is, I think, really the significant part. And when you have a legislature that will allocate some funds, then all the sudden you see a Tom's topping or Paul Colosimo's sausage or Peggy or Meadow Gold on TV. I'm telling you, it's big.
            What I love about this concept is that it makes us all emotional. It is so much more than selling our products. It is so much more than just making money. I think money is a by-product of good programs.
 
COLOSIMO: Raising the level of awareness of what we do is so critical. We all are familiar with how important the tourist industry in Utah is. The tourist industry gets a lot of money from the government to go out and promote it. We are bringing people from all over the country here so they can bring their wallet with them and they can leave their money here. We have to have their bodies here. We have to have them in a rent-a-car driving on our freeways. We have to have them using our infrastructure so we can get their dollar.
            What we can do is get their dollars here without having to bring them here physically. We can go to New Mexico, we can go to Las Vegas, we can go to Boise. We can bring in the dollars from the seven or eight surrounding states without one expense to our infrastructure in the state. We don't have to have a body here. We don't have to have them skiing our powder. We can save it for us.
            I want to see us raise the awareness level for what this group can do and what impact we can have on the state. Why shouldn't we have as much awareness in the state as the tourist industry? We could potentially have the same impact. There are small companies with a small idea that need to be raised up. Why not have Utah's Own be an organization that has more capabilities to help us, too? I think Winder Dairy is now in Las Vegas now. So that's bringing dollars to the state of Utah. That's what is worthwhile about it. And that's the awareness level we need to raise both within the communities and within the legislature, to see just how valuable this organization can be for the state of Utah.
 
DUTTON: I think that customers want to buy local.      We have done a lot of research, and have found out what it really means for customers to buy local. We have really found that customers want four things. First, they believe that if they buy local the product is better and fresher. Second, the product is more environmentally aware if it's produced in Utah. The typical product in a grocery store travels two thousand miles to get there. If you can produce and package it locally and ship it locally, the carbon footprint on that product is much smaller than if you buy a national product.
            The third thing is that customers have this feeling like they want to support the local farms. People are tired of urban sprawl. They want to see some farms out there, and this provides a little bit of nostalgia. The fourth reason is the economy. Do I want to keep my dollars here in Utah or do I want to buy my products from California and have my dollars go to California? I think if we can get those four points across it's a win for everybody.
 
ROBINSON: Where my mind goes on this, you have to remember flour milling for example. In 1952 there were 5,000 flour mills. How many flour mills do you think there are today? There's about 150. There's about twenty our size. I have been addressing these issues. If we keep doing what the industry is doing, I'm not going to be in business. More than 4,500 flour mills are proof of that.
            There is a message that I think is going to be huge. I can cite more of these statistics than I should be able to. They had a big egg recall in New York a few months ago. It was kept very quiet. Guess where the eggs are from? China.
 Now, let me tell you about wheat. Wheat in this country is only harvested once a year and we harvest it in July or August. Just as the old crop is getting all used up the new crop comes on. How much extra wheat do you think we have? Nobody actually knows, but experts estimate that we only have 67 days of carryover.
            Now, this suits my need, but when these things start getting out there in the public's awareness, I think we have a huge opportunity because they understand the word "local," and all of its implications. What if in all the Utah's Own things we had something that said, "Would you like to know more about this product?" They come to your Website and it says, "Here is the plant it was made in." Then we could offer an online service where if you put a dot on a map you can know how far away things are produced. Somebody said the normal distance was 2,500 miles. Our products come from about a 100 mile radius.
            Now, a lot of the reasons we like the food from overseas is because it is cheaper. One thing we need to do in some cooperative way is have people pay more for their food. I think the "local" can actually help solve this because it is going to be more expensive. It just is. I can't make it like the big companies can.
 
RICH: I was up in Manitoba, Canada helping them launch a local program. They asked me to come up about a month ago. It was interesting as I went around and saw the different needs, they said, "Steve, we are glad what you are doing in Utah, but let us tell you something about you as an American. We think you guys are crazy. Did you know that 50 percent of your economy is based on retail? Over 50 percent of your retail is Wal-Mart. Over 80 percent of Wal-Mart comes from China. We don't think you guys get it; where you could go, the problems that could happen in the future."
            We all saw that Time magazine article that came out a little while ago that talked about, "Forget organic. Eat local." They talk about organic and natural. People are looking at local as more trust in the safety and the security of those products, the economic footprint that we have talked about, and how that is stronger.
            If I go to Chicago or New York or Texas and look out the window of my hotel, I love to look at all the unique shops. I'm kidding here. If you look out the window, there's not unique shops or unique things out there. People in America are starting to get tired of standardization. They are starting to look for things that are new. They are looking for those products that are unique, those prides of local flavors that mean a lot to them.
            We love that in the grocery store business because they don't see a Harmon's in New York. They see it here. They see the uniqueness. They see what they built here. The same goes for the products on the shelf. I think we need to take advantage of that.
            The same old same old is not fun. The fun is using those unique things, find those unique flavors, and find how to prepare them in better ways and how to produce them for your family. We have that ability right now because our economy is still okay. It is questionable sometimes, but it is still okay.
            And so I think somehow we have to come back, and Bob Harmon told me that when I walked in, it's a fun business. We have to remember that food is fun and take advantage of that and promote it. And the same old same old is not fun. What is fun is the unique items that we represent, the unique products that are out there, the unique stores. And that's another avenue where we can take it to the next level is start to kind of push that more than we have in the past.
           
FREDERICKSON: Utah's Own has been founded on retail grocery, for the most part, but we should also look at the restaurant industry. Over half of our food dollars are spent on their products as we go out to eat, or on prepared things -- all the way from hospitals to the whole works. We have been extremely weak, in Utah's Own, in penetrating these other market places. We have no recognition of Utah products on menus.
I want to be able to walk in to any restaurant and see on that menu a Utah's Own label, and recognition of Utah products in the food service industry. I don't care if I'm at the new Intermountain Healthcare center, I'd like the people who were getting better in those hospitals to see a Utah's Own emblem on that food plate. We need to work really hard on these things. I'd like to go into a restaurant that serves the new Lehi Roller Mills raspberry muffins. That new raspberry muffin mix is a killer. It is so good, especially when you put Meadow Gold butter and Miller honey on it.
 
FREDERICKSON: But if you hear what I'm saying. We need some organization like Nicholas & Co. to stick its neck out the same way Associated Foods did. Associated stuck its neck out extremely far to support Utah's Own. We have not had any of that support from the food service industry in the same way, to where they will take the risk and allow a number of these products in.
 
SULLIVAN: We do support some Utah's Own companies. I wondered, ‘Why am I promoting Good Humor novelties as opposed to FatBoy?’ So I made a note. I guess our awareness has to increase but it has to increase at a restaurant level. That's sort of what you are talking about. We wonder when we present Colosimo sausage, why do they still buy Johnsonville? Somehow we need to get the message out. We all get it. I'm getting it.
 
WHITING: It’s at the chef level.
 
COLOSIMO: But it goes back to the customer demanding it, too.
 
SULLIVAN: You mention programs in food service are huge. Nicholas is on board with supporting Utah's Own. Most of you know the Mouskondis family and what they do in the community. I'm from south Florida, but I'm getting it now. We are here to support the local products.
 
G. SMITH: On the same note, it's our responsibility to broaden that vision. But it starts with our families. It starts with our children. It starts with our community. It's been proven that we affect 33 people a day. And then you can imagine that rippling effect. I know we all see the big picture and we know that we are taking baby steps right now. But those baby steps can be taken, and can turn into giant steps just in our own sphere of friends and family. Some of these discussions we have had today would be fun to have with our family and our friends so that we can get that knowledge out. That is who we want buying our products.
            America is becoming very homogenized. The same stores and same malls and same strip malls are everywhere. We need to preserve our community. Sometimes we think of it just as business, but it isn't. This is what we do as a family. This is what we do as a community. Somehow we can inspire some of the smallness around it in order to get to the bigness that we all want.
 
K SMITH: How does the consumer know it's a Utah made product? Right now you have a few people out there putting up shelf-talkers. And we have an aggressive program the ad department put together on radio. But they can't buy what they don't know.
            How many of you have talked to a consumer and they didn't even know that your product was made in Utah? I would have never known that about Colosimo sausage, and I'm huge in barbecuing. The reason I bought Johnsonville is because, like most people, I’m traditionally minded.
            I think one of the serious subjects that we have to discuss is how we aid the agricultural department with our budgets. We each have our own individual marketing funds. We have partnered on a few things this past year, but we haven't even scratched the surface. When I do a demo, I still have tons of people say, "I didn't know that that was made in Utah."
 
COLOSIMO: My goal is to be a regional guy. I want to be the largest sausage maker in the Intermountain West. So by putting "Utah's Own" on my ads, does that help me in Idaho?
 
Let’s continue this discussion about messaging. What message are we trying to get across to the consumers?
 
BECKSTEAD: I'm not third generation of anything, and I don't represent a company, but I have been getting a lot from this discussion. I hope you guys all understand the vested interest the people at Utah’s Own have in your businesses. Everybody is at a different stage in their company and putting this group together represents a significant challenge from the Utah's Own standpoint of how we do something and create something that helps everybody. It is easy to help the well-branded products. But it is difficult to get the facing and the shelf space for the companies that need the help, the ones that have a great product but nobody knows about it.
            Ultimately, we all want consumers purchasing our product from our stores or the restaurants as it gets better, and it's all about market share. That's what it is all boiling down to. We are eating this elephant bite after bite after bite, but I have to kind of stop for a minute. We were in Steve Rich’s office a few months ago, and year to year he saw a $2 million lift in sales from Utah's Own products.
 
RICH: It was last year. It is going to be greater this year.
 
BECKSTEAD: That's a huge increase. But I know that no good advertising campaign is worth anything unless you know what the next step is. We talk about brand recognition. K-Mart has all the brand recognition in the world. But we know what K-Mart has done. Their model is failing. Really, what we have to do is find ways that touch the consumer.
            I don't know how to eat the elephant faster, but I know what we are doing here is tremendously successful. The other issue I heard is that we want our companies talking about where the stuff comes from. I had no idea that flour mills were that few in number. That blows me away. I had no idea that the Colosimo family patented the sausage-making press. Consumers like that kind of stuff. The internet is a great way to leverage this. It's a great way to open up doors and get in front of people. Everybody goes there to research their favorite product. I can't think of a better way to get in front of a platform to tell these stories.
            I don't want to see us get the cart in front of the horse, and maybe I'm speaking out of turn, but I think we are on the right track and I think we are going in the right direction. It's just a matter of planning what we are going to do next.
 
RICH: I ask myself all the time how we can get this message out better. As I look at it, and I look at my responsibilities with working with the independent grocers, there are some of them that get it and some of them that don't. I know all of you have seen it.
            Our next step falls along with what Gayle Smith was saying. In the marketing world, we call it the sneeze effect. I think we all need to sneeze on people and infect other people. You sneeze on a few and they get infected. They feel the passion and start to learn about the environment and start to learn about those things. Then they sneeze on a few people. Some people have a stronger immune system than others, and you have to sneeze on them four or five times before they get it. But the effect is out there.
So I look at our own independent stores, and I am not happy with the sneeze effect that we have given to them. When you look at the growth, they have come a long way. But they still aren't there. They still don't get it. I have put together a coaching module that actually talks about those emotional things.
            How can we share that same emotion I feel about it? How can I get that out to my store leaders and then how can they get it out to their stores? The only way I can think to do it is to keep spending more time with them. I've got to tell them a little bit about Lehi Roller Mills, I have to tell them a little about Colosimos. I have to spread the word.
            But I think each one of us has got to take another step and remind ourselves always. Even if I go on a road trip, if I'm out of town, I try to buy Olympus water if I grab a bottle of water. And knowing that they may not have it, I make a point to talk to them about it, and I make a point to bring it up and say, "You don't have Utah water? You don't have Olympus water? You have this import water. I don't know if I want any of that." You make the points out there.
            But that becomes the responsibility of all of us. Once we do that, I think that grows, and that infection gets out there and it spreads. I love the fact that we have to keep remembering these unique points and continue to highlight them.
 
K. SMITH: It is really about helping each other. I recently did a demo where I sold out of everything, including the Tom’s Gourmet and Seal Sama products I had at the table. When I see a Lehi Roller Mills product, I make sure it is faced up. I would never take someone else's facing.
            I'm emotionally connected to many people in this room, and I know their objectives. I'm hoping that when you also go into our stores and you see a couple of Fatboys far back on a shelf that you pull them forward for us. I promise you that we and our team will do likewise; we will face up your products in our team, and stress them with our brokers. Because the more people that we have looking out for each other, the better.
 
BECKSTEAD: I just spent the last two days in Boise, Idaho in the Albertsons' buying office with some companies and the Idaho Potato Commission. The Idaho Potato Commission is having a real problem. Everybody knows Idaho potatoes, but the problem they are having is that most of the private labels in other stores are using their Idaho potatoes but they are not putting the Idaho potato logo on there.
Someone said they weren’t sure whether the Utah’s Own logo will help in other states. Everybody's business model is different and that's really up to you. But I think there is nothing to be ashamed about if my product is made here in Utah, and there's nothing to be ashamed about to say it comes from here. If my sausage is better here than I could get anywhere else, why wouldn't I tout that it comes from Utah?
           
A. SMITH: I want to make a point from a consumer point of view. I have only been involved with Utah’s Own for six months, and I didn’t realize how many Utah's Own products there were out there. I just want to remind you that there are some people out there out in the community who don't know about the initiative. So your point of going smaller to get it bigger is really valid. There are a lot of people that aren't aware of it.
 
LATHAM: We know there's a lot of history, we know there are a lot of tremendous stories right here around this table. And I'm an emotional buyer. If you went through my mom's refrigerator and then you went through my refrigerator, you would find a lot of the same food in there because I'm emotionally connected to the foods that my mom served me when I was growing up.
            I think the key is we can get that Utah's Own logo out there. But why does it choke me up to look at it? Because I know the stories behind it. I know the people and I have relationships. We need to get those stories out. We need for people to hear our histories and to be able to say, "Wow, that's cool." In my mind, I keep seeing this flier that is going in every grocery bag that has four or five of the Utah's Own companies on it and some of those historical pictures. There's a great picture on Paul's Website of the little Magna store, I would be personally crushed if I had to drive through Lehi and not see the Lehi Roller Mills building there, because I'm emotionally attached to that building and that history, and I take a personal pride in it.
            Bob and Randy Harmon are the kings of doing this very thing. If you go in their store, you see the history, the pictures. I know about his dad. I know when his dad died. I know those things because they put them out for you. And not only that, they are walking around the stores handing out stuff to little kids and greeting customers. They have created a personal relationship with their consumers.
 
What message do you hope that the Utah's Own brand sends for your product?
 
FREDERICKSON: Within Utah, the Utah's Own brand is extremely valuable. Within Utah, it puts a tag on the shelf. I can sell up to the state line in Tremonton with Utah's Own. But the minute I go into Burley or Pocatello or Idaho Falls or if I go up to Red Apple in Ontario, Oregon and put the Utah's Own label on my honey, it would just defeat me. Because up there it's "Idaho Preferred."
            I have to be very protective of my business first and use Utah's Own to the benefit of my Utah customer base. We are a commodity that is very different and our honey is not all Utah. It's Intermountain Region honey. When Wal-Mart came to me and they said, "We would like to eliminate your honey in our stores,” I said, "Your people, your farmers in all of the stores in the outlying areas, they produce this honey. We buy it from those farmers. It comes back, we process it, and we ship it out through you. The cycle and the dollars run a complete circle."
           
COLOSIMO: You know, we all have the 800 pound gorilla that we are competing against, and in my case it is either Johnsonville or Jimmy Dean. What they offer the consumer is trust. It's a brand that they trust. In Utah, Crown Burger outsells McDonalds, but Crown Burger doesn't mean anything in Texas. So when you are there, you want to go with what you trust. We all need to become the brand that people trust.
            That's why Utah's Own is valuable, because we trust another Utah product. Colosimo should be the number one selling sausage in Utah. If I can't own my backyard, how do I get out to the surrounding states? I think Crown Burger owns Salt Lake City. You would rather have a Crown burger than you would a McDonald's burger. I have to get people to see that with Colosimo's sausage. Coca Cola and McDonald's don't spend millions advertising every year because they need to. They do it because there are still people out there that they need to convince to buy Coca Cola and McDonald's.
            We just need to keep on this path. We need to get more money from the legislature if we can. We need to have a more diverse organization that can offer other advantages to the members. Funding, for example. Financing. Angel investors that want to see Utah companies grow. These are all the things that will help our companies grow.
 
CRANE: At FatBoy we commissioned a study about Utah consumers and their preferences. I think Utah's Own for them means a lot of different things, whether it is higher quality or more economical or just local pride of a company.   In that study, we found that consumers want to buy Utah products. The demand is there. The follow-up question that we asked was whether they were able to identify which products are Utah made and which ones aren't. It was surprising that they didn't know. That's where we want the Utah's Own logo to be widely recognized enough for people to make that connection, because we already know that they want to support a Utah company. It's just getting them to that next level of bringing those two pieces together.
            The $2 million increase from last year is a huge step in the right direction, but I feel that that's a drop in the bucket. Paul brought up, if the legislature allocates enough money, the message can get out there. We already know that there's a multiplying effect across the state; that the dollars going to Utah products are going to multiply throughout the economy, through the trucking, through the raw ingredient, through the packaging companies. We know that overall it's going to have a resounding lift in the Utah economy.
 
BECKSTEAD: If you look at the companies around this table, they each have a vested interest in Utah's Own. Everybody believes in it. But there are a lot of companies under the Utah's Own umbrella. Do they have the same passion about it that you guys do?
            I think it's our responsibility to say to some of the other companies, "You guys need to be more involved and be more a part of this because if you can't support this program, nobody is going to win." We are all going to lose if not every company under the umbrella has 100 percent vested interest in the program.
 
The next question is for the distributors we have here. What do you get from promoting Utah's Own products, and what do you wish that the Utah's Own message would get across when you are selling it?
 
HARMON: There's been some tremendously great discussion here and some enlightenment for myself. One thing that I have always believed is that two years is a very short window, and developmentally I think it has taken us 75 years and we still don't know what we are doing.
            We have changed dynamically. The big boxes were coming. We knew it 10 years ago. We studied every book, literature, e-mail, text message. We went out and visited several states. We changed dynamically. I think that this group and Utah's Own products can do much of that same broad thinking.
On the selling side, I think the biggest thing is that price sensitivity is a category killer for Utah's Own products. We have tried to, from a retail standpoint, put your products out there with these multi-gallon dairy facilities that can produce products just at a much less expensive price. Quite frankly, your products are better, and if they are not better, then you need to do something about that.
            The thing to do is get that message out in a very succinct way; younger people are smarter than we are. Information is so readily available. They seek it. They actually do homework on products today – far more than I know I did or my parents did.
What different mediums can be used to get that out there and put it together in a way -- because everyone here has a tremendous story. I think the better you can actually deliver that, the more people are going to be the sneezers and the tippers. You know, there's a tipping point. And it changes everything once it hits the tipping point. I think you are on a tipping point here with Utah's Own, and I think funding is just critical.
            Maybe there's some penny profit that you can save on your cost to us, not saying we want you to raise it too much, because we want you to be competitive still. Take some of those dollars and put them into education and communication, because that's really what you are talking about. You have a different product, and people are really getting that more and more today. It's different. It's natural. It's organic. It is made here. It is local. It is helping the community and supporting the school system because of taxation.
 
RICH: As we try to be unique, I think obviously the products help us do that. The carbon footprint thing. Sometimes we fall into what Bob was mentioning; we all fall into that old price point mentality. We talk about it, we talk about the important things, and then when we put it on an ad, we put Lehi Roller Mills muffin mix, 99 cents, and don't tell the story. We tell the price point.
            Some educational material would be great. I think we need to advertise the fact that sometimes your costs have stayed the same or gone down and competitors' have gone up because of fuel costs. Spotted Dog Ice Cream is absolutely fabulous. It is natural ice cream. The owner, John Winders, is trying to get this thing going and spent all this money on building this new plant. When he first came here, he was competing with some of the high end ice creams like Ben and Jerry's. He was a little bit higher than them in costs. Did you know with the cost of fuel going up he is now about 40 cents a unit less than what they are? Because he is local, some of those costs have come down, and we need to talk about that.
           
DUTTON: I think everybody agrees that Utah's Own just makes business sense and sense for the consumers. I also think that it's important that it's got to be more than just Utah's Own. It has to be products that consumers want. We have two sides of our business; one is selling through grocery stores and the other is our home delivery business. We are always looking for more products to sell through the home delivery channel. We added a hundred products last year. We'll add another hundred products this year. And it's tough to find Utah's Own products in the fastest growing categories, like organic food.
            So if there's ways that we can partner and get creative on the partner side so we don't have to produce the products, if we can buy them from other Utah companies, we would love to do that.
 
COLOSIMO: Our all-natural sausage has gone crazy with you guys. We never made an all-natural sausage until we started making it for Winder Dairy. Year over year, we are probably up 35 percent.
            An association with obvious Utah companies is great for all of us. Lehi Roller Mills, every time you drive down I-15 you see the plant, so you know it's a Utah company. Harmon's, you know it's a Utah company. Nicholas, you know it's a Utah company. Guilt by association; if my logo can be next to their logo, whenever that can happen that’s good for me too.
 


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