Small Business Builder: A Little Pepper Talk
— -- Craig Cornett is a “simple pepper man.” And he’s Frog Ranch Salsa’s most poorly kept marketing secret.
Cornett is president and cofounder of the Glouster, Ohio-based company, which started in 1994 with just one product, pickled peppers, made according to an old family recipe Cornett got from his Hungarian grandmother.
That first year, the company’s best customers were local stores and restaurants. Now the product is available through five large chains and numerous other outlets in some 25 states as well as mail-order distributors like the Salsa Express.
Today, Frog Ranch sells Medium and Hot Salsa, Garlic Hot Wax Peppers, Nacho-Sliced Jalapenos, and Hot Cherry Peppers “nestled in a locally produced crate made from our state tree, the Buckeye (can double as a CD holder),” plus the Frog Ranch Family Favorites Recipe Collection and the 100-percent cotton pocket T-shirt.
And from first-year sales of $30,000, the company expects to easily break the million-dollar sales mark this year, says Cornett.
Behind the Spice is Passion
What’s the secret of the condiment company’s success? Passion, says Cornett. Passion is the marketing principle he says he lives and breathes — passion for being part of a local and regional development push, for his product, for preserving the environment, and for developing the relationships that, he adds, are more important than profit.
Frog Ranch is located down the road from Ohio University in Athens, Cornett’s alma mater, and not far from the boyhood farm where Cornett grew up. The company got its start when he and company cofounder Christi Hewitt put out 10,000 pepper plants, cultivating them by hand.
The crop wasn’t especially successful, Cornett recalls, but “at the end of the year we wanted to celebrate. I found out there was no Ohio Chili Pepper Festival,” he says, so he applied for and received the rights to the name and held the first event, “which was basically a big keg party in a field.”
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