ground piment d’Espelette.
I emailed, as it turns out, Catherine Schopfer [partner and chef liaison for the company] and started a beautiful friendship.I asked her about the rice and she said that was the test crop.
They didn't really have rice to sell.She gave me the name of someone else, a man named Mike Booth, who was growing Carolina Gold rice.His job was something completely different, like an electrical engineer, it was really like a side gig, and I bought rice from him..
But Catherine said, "Well, we do have some other things."At the time, they had grits and cornmeal, which I started buying from them.
After a couple of years, something happened with Mike's crop and he kind of got out of the side gig.
It was like, "Okay, the crops are ruined.and the Food Network, et cetera, also wanted to look and feel proper and legitimate, like the chefs that they admired so much.
We were outfitting those chefs..The direct-to consumer side has really evolved and grown so much.
We were still trying to only service the restaurant industry, so for the past couple of years and especially through COVID, because of the pivot we made, we have dramatically leaned into the direct-to-consumer model.That means we now outfit the home cook and the pro chef.