Making and selling Yoder's Good Health Recipe didn't come about because of some grand plan to enter the health food/supplement industry. I call this business "My Accidental Business". Prior to making the recipe for the first time, my background was primarily in the field of manufacturing consumer and commercial goods. Over a thirty year career, I held management jobs in Quality Assurance, Manufacturing Engineering, and Manufacturing Administration.
About ten years ago, I was injured and was required to recuperate at home for an extended period of time. After way too much time spent in front of the television, I decided (actually, my wife decided for me) to go through a bunch of boxes that had been stored away for a number of years.
While going through these boxes, I came across an old tattered recipe that was handwritten on five unlined pages. It was my Grandmother's recipe for her tonic.
As I looked over these pages, my memory wandered back almost fifty years ago to when I was just a five or six year-old spending time with my Grandparents. I thought back to the early mornings when Grandma would be busy in the kitchen to get breakfast on the table so that Grandpa could get an early start to his day as a farmer. Actually, he'd already been out to milk the cows, so his day had already begun.
Once Grandma had the breakfast on the table, she would go over to her icebox (not a refrigerator), get a little jug out of it, and pour herself a little bitty glass of a reddish liquid. When I asked her the first time what it was, her reply was, "It's my tonic that helps what ails me". I can remember that as if it was yesterday.
So, as I sat there repeatedly looking at those pages, I thought to myself that this might be something that other people would like.
I wrote down the ingredients and started to find out where I could get them. Once I found a source for the herbs, I ordered a small amount and waited anxiously for them to arrive.
In about a week, I received all the herbs and started the process of making each of the tinctures. It takes two weeks for the tinctures to mature, but it takes action everyday to make sure the process is completed properly.
Within three weeks, I finally had my first batch of the recipe and actually put it into mason jars. I gave it to a few friends and asked them to use it everyday for about a month. Of course, I was kidded about making moonshine.
After getting back some pretty good comments from my friends, I decided that I needed to go to the next step and to put the product into the hands of people who would be willing to buy it.
I didn't think the recipe or it's packaging was sophisticated enough to sell in health food stores, so I decided to call on beauty shop operators. I figured that women sitting in a beauty shop were bound to talk about their health. I gave them a sample bottle and a stack of brochures. I told them that if one of their customers wanted to buy a bottle,they could call me and I'd deliver it to them.
Pretty soon, some of the beauty shop operators wanted to buy a full case so they could display it in their shops. It was then, that I decided to bring our recipe to the marketplace.
After reading a number of books on marketing, I made some important decisions that would affect how we would be able to grow our new business. I didn't want our recipe to be "the miracle of the month". I wanted it to survive because it was a good product and not because we could come up with a gimmick to market it. I decided I wanted to grow the business carefully and I was going to sell it to "Mom and Pops" and keep it away from chain stores.
To make a very long story short, pretty soon, people started calling and wanting our product. Over the years, we've received thousands of positive comments about our recipe.
We still make it the same way that my Grandma did, except we make it in an FDA-approved Amish jam kitchen. It's still mixed by hand, bottled by hand, and labeled by hand. We will never make it using a high-speed bottling line. It just wouldn't be the same.
We still don't have a high-powered marketing organization. We rely mostly on word-of-mouth and depend on people telling their local health food store about us.
We're still a very small business and we'll continue to be small. That's just the way I want it. If you call the number on the back of the bottle, chances are, I'll be the one to answer the phone.
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