Mark and Matt Fitzgerald insist they are not professional chefs, nor businessmen.
Nonetheless, Scarborough-based Cool Beans, the all-purpose condiment the brothers created, now appears in 20 stores throughout Westchester County and several others in Connecticut since they begin bottling it in July.
Cool Beans is a bean dip, which the brothers say can also be used as a condiment for nearly any occasion.
The creation of the dip was very much a happy accident, said Matt Fitzgerald, when he and his brother were snowed in one evening and were looking to make something to eat.
“We looked through the pantry and used what was available and made a bean dip,” he said. “Little did we know we had made our first batch of Cool Beans.”
Over the next few years, they served it to family and friends, along the way experimenting with some other successful and not-so-successful flavor combinations.
Along the way Mark, the primary architect of the initial dip, created two more flavors, caramelized onion and hot and spicy, which the Fitzgeralds now offer along with the original flavor, roasted garlic.
After an off-the-cuff suggestion from Mark”™s girlfriend to bottle and sell the dip, the two brothers took it to heart and began the business.
Among the positive aspects of the dips, said Mark, is that they contain no transfats, no saturated fat, no cholesterol, and are vegan and Kosher certified.
But, like the creation of the dip themselves, the good-for-you aspect was an accident, too.
“We didn”™t try to make it healthy,” said Mark Fitzgerald. “It was only after the fact we discovered all the ingredients we used were really healthy.”
All the Cool Beans products are now made that way, which has opened door for the Fitzgeralds to display their product at health-food trade shows, such as a vegan food convention in Boston earlier this month.
While they initially made the dip using their mother”™s food processor, once they decided to take the business seriously they found a food-processing facility in New Haven, Conn.
Both Matt and Mark make regular trips to the facility to prepare the dips themselves. They have the capacity to make around 12,000 jars per day at the facility.
Once they had jars of product in hand, the two brothers just went about “pounding the pavement” to get the dip into stores, said Matt Fitzgerald.
“We would just walk into stores and ask to speak to the manager or buyer and present our product and what we”™re about,” he said.
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They also received requests via the company”™s Web site, and sold a batch of jars to a health food store in Michigan without anyone there even tasting the product.
“We”™ve had really good success (with stores),” said Mark. “We have almost a 100 percent success rate.”
The two brothers used a similar strategy to find street fairs, farmers”™ markets and trade shows to ply their wares.
“We did a lot of Googling,” said Matt.
Once they had been to a few fairs, talking with vendors and word-of-mouth led them to other opportunities. They recently participated in fall crafts fair at Lyndhurst and sold nearly 900 jars.
Since they began selling the dip commercially, each flavor has sold about exactly the same, said Mark.
Ultimately, the Fitzgeralds hope to have the product become a national brand without sacrificing its legume-based integrity.
“We”™d like to sell it everywhere, from gourmet shops to gas stations,” said Mark. “You can create a national brand that is in chain supermarkets and still not compromise the integrity of the product.”
The brothers point to Häagen-Dazs as an example of a product that has done just that.
“They have an incredible availability, and use excellent natural ingredients,” said Mark.
The two brothers refer to each other as “big guy and little guy,” with Mark, the older brother at 28, playing the role of big guy to 24-year-old Matt”™s little guy.
They use those monikers on the company”™s Web site and promotional material and it is helpful in getting people interested in the product, said Mark. “It”™s a conversation piece and a way for us to introduce the product.”
For more information about Cool Beans, please visit www.coolbeansdip.com.
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