Cody Vinegar Business Launched with help from FPC Expertise
Quality apples, raspberries and Sandhills grapes are just some of the fruits that go into gourmet products made by George Paul Vinegar of Cody.
“Chefs say it’s unlike any they’ve ever tasted,” said owner George Johnson.
Johnson’s latest business venture is the culmination of years of product and business research, coupled with significant capital investments. His open house last October showcased vinegars made in open tanks and aged from six months to two years. The resulting products are concentrated and aromatic; the only ones similar are made on the coasts, he said.
“The project would not have happened without The Food Processing Center (FPC at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln),” Johnson said.
“When we suspected we had a potential business, Durward Smith was the first person I went to.”
Johnson sought out Smith, UNL Extension food processing specialist, because Smith knows the chemistry and research of processing wild and cultivated fruits in Nebraska.
Smith taught Johnson how to freeze fruit juices to make into vinegar concentrate.
“That single thing provided us with the process in making our very best vinegars,” Johnson said.
Smith was just one of several FPC experts Johnson tapped to develop his business. FPC consultant Suzanne Weeder Einspahr helped with grant applications for value-added agricultural products, rural development and operating expenses; Food Entrepreneur Assistance Program manager Jill Gifford made marketing and other suggestions; others assisted with developing a business plan, and an exhaustive, yearlong feasibility study that compiled marketing data and research.
“The Food Processing Center put all these together in a way that made sense,” Johnson said.
It all took time.
“It was six years before we bottled any vinegar,” Johnson said. Now high-end restaurants demand his vinegars.
“They’re exactly the type of thing we look for,” said executive chef Paul Kulik of The Boiler Room Restaurant in Omaha. “These vinegars have a tremendous amount of character on their own.”
The Boiler Room, ranked by the Omaha World Herald as the city’s top new restaurant in 2009, likes to support Nebraska grower-producers, Kulik said, “especially when they are doing interesting and cool stuff. Nebraska should be especially proud.”
Johnson started his vineyard just over a decade ago when he retired from ranching and business management.
“All my life I’ve had to have a project,” Johnson said, adding Sandhills grapes are desirable because of the intense flavor profiles and good sugar/acid balance they develop from growing in hot days and cool nights.
Orchards of Nebraska City and Cuthills Winery and Vineyard of Pierce with offering guidance, and the Nebraska Department of Economic Development and the Nebraska Rural Development Commission for grants to help start the business.
Currently George Paul Vinegar has one full-time and two part-time employees, but Johnson expects that to grow to up to three full-time employees and multiple part-time harvest employees.
For now, the business is family-oriented. Daughter Emily, who has a local printing business, designed the building, called a vinegary, with two-foot thick straw bale walls that provide excellent insulation. Son Eric, a financial adviser who recently moved back to the area, did financial projections for the business while in college. Son Adam, a 2007 College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources animal science graduate of UNL, handles the family ranch. Extension education has long been a source of unbiased, research-based information for the Johnson family.
“Extension is integral to the success of everything in agriculture,” Johnson said.
“I call extension first — whether it be for insects in my vineyard or on the family ranch. Extension is integral to an agricultural-based economy. It’s a place to go to get answers.”
Learn more at: www.georgepaulvinegar.com
Story by: Cheryl Alberts University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension Connect
