Each week, people in green shirts and red aprons bustle around the commercial kitchen at the Winston Lake YMCA. They slice hundreds of pounds of cucumbers and pack them into glass jars with vintage-looking labels advertising "Miss Jenny's Pickles."
Miss Jenny is Jenny Fulton, and she runs the company with Ashlee Furr. The women worked together at Morgan Keegan, a stockbroker and financial-advisory company, until they lost their jobs in the bad economy.
The women said they knew that they wanted to continue to work together, and the layoff prompted Fulton and Furr to consider an entirely new field -- the food industry.
Fulton's husband, Bo, had encouraged her to sell her homemade pickles for years. Jenny Fulton was known for making pickles from her grandmother's recipes for family and friends.
Mamie D. Cooper worked at Reynolds Tobacco Co. for 40 years, making pickles for her family on the side. Another foods company in Alabama had trademarked the name Mamie's, so the name "Miss Jenny's Pickles" was chosen for the new business.
Fulton and Furr dove into the new project by researching what it would take to be successful in a food business. They formed Old Orchard Foods LLC last July, and attended a three-day "pickle school" in October.
"Really, it was an acidified-foods course," Fulton said.
"Really, it was three days of chemistry, which is a kind of torture," Furr added jokingly.
"Pickle school" is technically Acidified Food Good Manufacturing Practices School held yearly on the campus of N.C. State University, said Roger McFeeters, the research leader of the food-science research unit, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's research service.
"This is the only short course devoted specifically to pickles in the United States. We usually have 30 to 40 people from all over the U.S. and other countries like India and Canada attend,'' McFeeters said. "The FDA requires people who supervise production of acidified foods to attend to assure that processors know the basics of producing safe food."
The women developed specific guidelines for their venture: They wanted to use as much local produce as possible, including some of the cucumbers grown on land that Fulton owns in Belews Creek. They wanted to employ local people, and they worked out a plan with Goodwill for employees.
Fulton and Furr hope to educate children, too, starting with some of the kids in the after-school program at the Winston-Lake YMCA.
"Some of the kids didn't even know that pickles come from cucumbers. Our ultimate goal is to get kids back into farming," Furr said.
Currently, Miss Jenny's Pickles has three flavors -- hot with fresh jalapeño peppers, bread and butter, and their signature pickle, the salt-and-pepper pickle. They use all-natural ingredients and no preservatives.
They said they see themselves as providing a niche or gourmet N.C. product, and have begun placing the pickles in high-end stores. A local grocery chain has agreed to sell the pickles in seven Triad stores.
The women's work styles so far complement each other well. Furr said that Fulton is the "gas" with the visions and that she is the "brake" figuring out the details.
"If anything, our story shows how you can rise above the economy and try something new," Fulton said, "and most importantly, have fun doing it."
Cyoung9@triad.rr.com
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