Delta Cuisine provides ingredients for food company success

Jeff Marchetta said he was reading a newspaper article one day about the Delta Cuisine program when he decided to contact the people with the program. His decision helped his company get their food-related products to market and test different products as well.

The program, at the Arkansas State University-Mid South campus in West Memphis, began in September 2015 but got its start in 2012, program manager John Auker said. The idea first came about to the city of West Memphis and it was Main Street West Memphis that began looking for ways to help food artisans in the Delta.

According to the program’s website, the food business incubator program has a test kitchen and helps people interested in working in the food industry build their companies.

“Delta Cuisine will provide the licensed space and equipment, technical assistance, cooperative buying and marketing opportunities, and professional expertise to these food entrepreneurs and small businesses so that they can scale-up their current enterprises, access new markets, expand and create additional jobs, and foster a growing entrepreneurial environment in the Arkansas Delta and Mid-South region,” the website noted.

ASU-Mid South, located in West Memphis, also offers an 18-hour certificate program in which students can receive a certificate in proficiency in food service management. While the help can come from the program, the work has to come from the individual, Auker said.

“We try to help them so that they can market themselves,” Auker said, noting it is the owner’s responsibility to get his message out.

Auker said another goal for the program is to help food businesses “take it beyond friends and family and get the product to market.”

Marchetta, who owns Bluff City BBQ Supply in Memphis, said his company started online with a website, working with retail only. In addition to sauces, the company sells smokers, grills, thermometers and coolers.

Auker helped Marchetta with tips and advice about building an opportunity for wholesale. Marchetta said the help gave the company a good start.

“We went from about 100% retail to 20% retail to 80% wholesale,” Marchetta said, noting the business makes its own spices. “The commercial kitchen helped.”

Marchetta said the company employs four and uses subcontracted labor to make its products. Earlier, he used a smaller kitchen to produce the sauces, but noted there was a problem with supply and not demand.

“(The larger kitchen) has the equipment to mass produce,” Marchetta said, adding they were able to produce 30 gallons of sauce every two hours. “It is really important for small business, especially cottage foods, to start small.”

Since then, the company produces about 150 products a month and is sold in about 100 stores in Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi, Marchetta said.

“In order to scale up, you have to have money and start at the intermediate level,” Marchetta said.