Recession gives rise to 'Matie Sauce'
Published:Sunday | June 6, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Dionne Rose, Business Reporter
It has been said that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. The current recession, too, the pundits say, is chock-full of opportunities.
Lloyd Sterling is taking the experts at their word. The budding entrepreneur has invested close to $1 million to develop an authentic, multi-purpose spicy Jamaican jerk sauce, which, he says, has been on the market since December.
Asked why he decided to launch and seek to market a new product even as the country and the world slowly recover from an economic recession, the small-business operator responded that the recession provided the opportunity for him to venture into the business.
"Out of a recession, you have to look for the opportunities to provide something new, innovative and speaks directly to what the consumer demands, and that is what this product is," he said.
Sterling and his mother, Mary Brown, already operate a take-out and catering business in the Chisholm Avenue inner-city area of Kingston. For him, the deve-lopment and marketing of 'Matie Sauce', said to have been in the making since 2000, is a natural spin-off from the cooking business.
"One of the reasons we had not marketed it earlier was because I was concerned about the use of preservatives in the product," the entrepreneur said.
He explained that while he is wary of preservatives and prefers seasoning prepared with natural ingredients, he is aware that without the use of preservatives, his product would have a very short shelf life.
Matie Sauce is made from ginger, guava and other locally grown spices. The Scientific Research Council (SRC), Sterling said, helped with the formulation of appropriate preservatives for the sauce, distinguished, its developer said, by the flavourful taste of the guava fruit.
The cooking-enhancement product and dip, packaged in sachet form, is now sold by several Kingston locations, including retailer of market provisions and other foods, JoJo's Farm Market, Things Jamaican, Lee's Food Fair, Rocky's Wholesale, and in Jamaican speciality items shops at the country's two airports, and at Devon House in St Andrew.
Sterling is constantly seeking out new outlets for the product.
"One of the challenges we have been having is that because it is fairly new, (retail) managers are reluctant (to stock it) because of fear that it might sit on them," he said.
product expected to do well
However, the businessman said he was confident, based on the responses from customers, that if given the opportunity to hit many store shelves, the product would do well.
For economy, production of the sauce is done at the Old Hope Road manufacturing facilities of the SRC, from where Sterling operates on a production contract.
Production volume is now an average 1,200 per day depending on demand, but Sterling, in his Internet marketing pitch for the product, said his venture has a 50,000-sachet per day production capacity.
"We are renting the facility, we make the product, we store it, and we make a portion that we know will be distributed within the shelf life, and subject to the demand, we may produce again," he said, explaining his cost-controlling production cycle.
Monthly production costs run in the region of $200,000 for manufacturing, space rental, raw materials and packaging.
Financing for the venture comes entirely from personal resources.
Sterling uses the context of its market standing to explain the product's name, derived from the Jamaican colloquial use of the term for a man's mistress, as well as from the more traditional connotation of a mate as a helper or assistant.
"It is the competing sauce, so in that sense it is the 'Matie' in competition with the other products, (but) more importantly, it is a chef's mate. It assists the chef in rescuing or creating new and exciting meal ideas."
Matie Sauce is also promoted as a dip companion for crackers and sandwiches, as well as a meat seasoning and flavouring for stews.
Even as he works for the product to take off, Sterling is already thinking expansion. He hopes to start exporting and wants to develop other sauces.
"We hope to do a milder version (too)."