Vermont cracker queen's idea has proven fully baked
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Whitney Lamy shows off the different varieties of her artisanal crackers at the Castleton Village Store. Photo by Vyto Starinskas |
Toolbox
By Chuck Clarino
Staff Writer - Published: September 13, 2009
CASTLETON — Whitney Lamy has spent her life moving between art and food.
She dreamed of opening a bakery or a small café, but it wasn't until she started experimenting with a cracker recipe that her creative food dreams materialized.
Lamy baked three different kinds of crackers in the bright but small kitchen of her Castleton home. She packed them up in homemade bags and went off to the indoor farmers market in Rutland in November 2007.
All 30 bags sold in less than two hours; a little more than a year later, her signature crackers Whitney's Castleton Crackers are on the shelves at Whole Foods, the upscale food chain, and are distributed to a wide variety of outlets in all four corners of Vermont and into New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New York.
"I'd have to say that Whitney's crackers are one of the fastest-growing success stories I've seen," said Kim Crosby of Vermont Roots, the largest of Lamy's four distributors. "I found the crackers unique and artisan. And they just took off last year."
A graphics designer by trade, Lamy had worked at a variety of positions in the art world before getting into the cracker business. Most recently, she was the director of Crossroads Arts Council in Rutland. But Lamy needed a change and decided to reinvent herself.
"I'm 54 and Julia Child didn't really get going until she was in her early 50s, and look what she did with her career," said Lamy, sitting at the counter in her sunny kitchen one summer afternoon. "I felt like anything was possible."
Her dreams of opening a bakery or a small café would take a big investment and involve tremendous risk, so she went in another direction.
Lamy had watched the rise in popularity of Vermont artisan cheese. Yet she was struck by the fact that with all the tasty cheese being produced in the Green Mountain State, no one had come up with a complementary artisan cracker.
Lamy reworked an old recipe she had and conjured up three cracker flavors. She tagged them with regional Vermont names to give them more cachet: Middlebury Maple, Windham Wheat and Rutland Rye.
The thin crunchy crackers are broken, rather than cut, giving each a particular size perfect for twinning with cheese or a spread, or dipping in soup.
Lamy also put some thought into presenting her product. When she joined the Rutland Farmers' Market, she asked the organizers to place her table next to a cheese maker. Lamy understood that cheese and crackers went together like bread and butter and that it would be difficult for customers to pass by without wanting a taste.
Before long, she was sending samples of her cracker to Hunger Mountain Coop in Montpelier or to the Middlebury Co-op, while spending her days rolling and baking the crackers and her nights using her artistic talents to hand-letter the bags.
"They just started to take off," said Lamy. "Three or four weeks after I started going to the farmers market, the Vermont Country Store placed an order. I thought, 'Something is happening here.'"
Next, Lamy realized her old oven just wasn't big enough for the batches of crackers she had to make; she invested in a more commercial oven. Still, the demand for her crackers was increasing to the point that it was getting away from her.
She'd recruit one of her daughters or solicit friends to help her hand-crack and pack the crackers. Meanwhile, she was running herself ragged getting up at 4 a.m. to bake, all the while trying to market and also distribute them to the various outlets that wanted her product on their shelves.
In short, she needed help.
A business consultant friend told her that when she reached 300 bags a week, she needed a co-packer, someplace that would make and pack her crackers.
In May 2008, she signed up with Vermont Roots, a specialty company that distributes unique Vermont foods. As she explained, "I figured that I could stick with the farmers market, but I didn't want to turn down the opportunity to go all over the state. What I found out was that there was a frustrating lack of co-packing in the state, especially compared to the number of specialty food items."
With the distribution taken care of, Lamy searched for a bakery and ended up finding one in Chester. But while baker John McClure was willing to make the crackers, he didn't want to package them. So Lamy ended up driving to Chester each week and collecting the crackers in bulk, then had to go home to crack, weigh and bag the crackers.
Meanwhile, she was still hand-lettering the bags and was up to nearly 400 bags per week before she finally ordered a supply of printed bags.
Eventually, Lamy connected with Cathy Bacon, who had a line of pancake mixes and was opening a commercial facility in Randolph called Freedom Foods. Bacon wanted to produce her own line but also saw the need to offer her services to other clients, and Lamy became her first client in January.
"To have someone make the crackers and hold the inventory allowed me to grow the company, to focus on sales and marketing," Lamy said.
She was able to get on the road and demo her crackers.
Using her artistic eye, she dressed up her tables in the best Vermont country style and presented her product at events such as the Vermont Cheese Festival at Shelburne Farms, where her crackers are on sale in the gift shop.
Lamy has a nice way of relating to people and has a friendly manner, but she knows that the crackers themselves and their taste are their best selling point.
The Rutland Rye with its caraway and sesame is perfect with her roasted onion dip or garlic-laced hummus, while the more neutral buttery Windham Wheat is perfect with a sharp cheese. The Middlebury Maple plays off a salty cheese, so you get the combined tingle of salty and sweet.
Lamy is exploring how to use more Vermont ingredients in her crackers, while experimenting with new flavors. At the same time, she knows the importance of keeping her enterprise manageable.
"What is so exciting about being in Vermont is the whole local food thing," she said. "These are still artisan crackers so they are still made in small batches. There's something about the aura of Vermont; there's real power in Vermont."
As far as the future is concerned, Lamy is taking it slow. She recently brought in her brother, who is an accountant, as her first employee to help her with the financial end. She will continue to look at ways to expand the business.
She offers her crackers in bulk for food services and the like, as well as the smaller bags you will find in stores and specialty shops, which can cost anywhere from $4.95 to $7.95.
For now, Lamy is content to run her business from home and go to various food shows to demonstrate her product to widen its appeal, all the while networking to prepare for the next step.
"It's funny, but I keep thinking of Julia Child and the whole thing about reinventing yourself," she said. "It validates to me how important it is to be creative and to follow your passion. It all comes back to the fact that I love food and I love to cook for people. I have this business now and I'm surrounded with it. It's just wonderful — a great world to be in."
chuck.clarino@rutlandherald.com
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