April 4, 2005
A better biscuit | Michael Gagné hopes a line of specialty foods will supplement the seasonal nature of his Georgetown restaurant
By Sean Donahue
Whether it's pasta, sausages, salad dressing or ice cream, nearly everything Chef Michael Gagné serves at the Robinhood Free Meetinghouse is made from scratch. So a few years ago, when he began selling frozen packages of his 72-layer cream cheese biscuits, Gagné envisioned them serving as "little ambassadors" to promote his Georgetown restaurant across the country.
Now, those ambassadors have a farther reach than ever before. In late March, California-based kitchenware and specialty food giant Williams-Sonoma began selling Meetinghouse biscuits through its website and catalog ˆ a contract that Gagné says took a year of "aggressive marketing" on his behalf to land. Though Gagné says Williams-Sonoma expects to sell between 2,000 and 3,000 packages of biscuits this year, compared to the 6,000 units Gagné sold in total last year, he isn't counting on the deal for a major revenue boost. The real value, he says, is the potential exposure for the Meetinghouse name. "Williams-Sonoma has historically helped make businesses," Gagné says.
In fact, Gagné's longer term focus is putting Meetinghouse biscuits on more store shelves ˆ at both independent grocers and supermarket chains ˆ to create a wholesale packaged foods business with a following to match his critically lauded restaurant. A Biddeford native, Gagné's career took him to restaurants in Virginia and California. He returned in the mid-1980s to manage and cook at the Osprey, just down the road from his current location, and built a reputation as one of Maine's best chefs.
After leaving the Osprey in 1994, Gagné bought and renovated an 1855 Congregational and Methodist meetinghouse as the headquarters for his new restaurant and catering business. Along the way, he says he became committed to the difficult task of providing year-round employment for his full-time staff of 25, which can swell to 60 during the summer. "Our big problem is how to deal with seasonality when you have a restaurant out in the woods," says Gagné.
Initially, Gagné thought biscuits would help fill the lean winter months. But after selling biscuits for several years at local stores like Brackett's Market in Bath, and more recently in chains like Whole Foods, Gagné says the biscuit business is showing the same seasonal spikes. One reason: Bed and breakfasts are one of Gagné's biggest wholesale customers.
That's why Gagné hopes to grab more year-round shoppers by expanding distribution. But with current prices at $12 to $24 a dozen, Gagné knows he needs to lower the product's costs through bulk purchasing of ingredients and investment in equipment to speed up the production process, such as an automatic biscuit cutting machine he plans to buy. He'd like to boost production from 200 dozen a day to 200 dozen an hour.
Though he's envisioning an off-site facility that employs 15 to 20 people, Gagné's challenge is how to timing the move and the estimated $500,000 investment: It's hard to make the commitment without the order volume to justify the facility, but waiting until volume increases enough to support a new space would overwhelm the Meetinghouse's cooking and storage space. "It's the quintessential problem of starting any manufacturing business," says Gagné.
Either way, increasing sales will be essential, so Gagné is planning to package other varieties of biscuits, as well as other baked goods, such as scones. He's also eyeing other homemade restaurant staples, such as spicy jerk rub and the house salad dressing, as candidates for new products. Because even with the endorsement of Williams-Sonoma, Gagné knows that turning the Meetinghouse name into a specialty food brand will require more than just frozen biscuits, no matter how good they are. "What brokers and distributors want is a product line," says Gagné. "So we're going to develop a line."
Now, those ambassadors have a farther reach than ever before. In late March, California-based kitchenware and specialty food giant Williams-Sonoma began selling Meetinghouse biscuits through its website and catalog ˆ a contract that Gagné says took a year of "aggressive marketing" on his behalf to land. Though Gagné says Williams-Sonoma expects to sell between 2,000 and 3,000 packages of biscuits this year, compared to the 6,000 units Gagné sold in total last year, he isn't counting on the deal for a major revenue boost. The real value, he says, is the potential exposure for the Meetinghouse name. "Williams-Sonoma has historically helped make businesses," Gagné says.
In fact, Gagné's longer term focus is putting Meetinghouse biscuits on more store shelves ˆ at both independent grocers and supermarket chains ˆ to create a wholesale packaged foods business with a following to match his critically lauded restaurant. A Biddeford native, Gagné's career took him to restaurants in Virginia and California. He returned in the mid-1980s to manage and cook at the Osprey, just down the road from his current location, and built a reputation as one of Maine's best chefs.
After leaving the Osprey in 1994, Gagné bought and renovated an 1855 Congregational and Methodist meetinghouse as the headquarters for his new restaurant and catering business. Along the way, he says he became committed to the difficult task of providing year-round employment for his full-time staff of 25, which can swell to 60 during the summer. "Our big problem is how to deal with seasonality when you have a restaurant out in the woods," says Gagné.
Initially, Gagné thought biscuits would help fill the lean winter months. But after selling biscuits for several years at local stores like Brackett's Market in Bath, and more recently in chains like Whole Foods, Gagné says the biscuit business is showing the same seasonal spikes. One reason: Bed and breakfasts are one of Gagné's biggest wholesale customers.
That's why Gagné hopes to grab more year-round shoppers by expanding distribution. But with current prices at $12 to $24 a dozen, Gagné knows he needs to lower the product's costs through bulk purchasing of ingredients and investment in equipment to speed up the production process, such as an automatic biscuit cutting machine he plans to buy. He'd like to boost production from 200 dozen a day to 200 dozen an hour.
Though he's envisioning an off-site facility that employs 15 to 20 people, Gagné's challenge is how to timing the move and the estimated $500,000 investment: It's hard to make the commitment without the order volume to justify the facility, but waiting until volume increases enough to support a new space would overwhelm the Meetinghouse's cooking and storage space. "It's the quintessential problem of starting any manufacturing business," says Gagné.
Either way, increasing sales will be essential, so Gagné is planning to package other varieties of biscuits, as well as other baked goods, such as scones. He's also eyeing other homemade restaurant staples, such as spicy jerk rub and the house salad dressing, as candidates for new products. Because even with the endorsement of Williams-Sonoma, Gagné knows that turning the Meetinghouse name into a specialty food brand will require more than just frozen biscuits, no matter how good they are. "What brokers and distributors want is a product line," says Gagné. "So we're going to develop a line."
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