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See, peanut roasting launches a great deal of moisture, which is OK for peanuts, but popcorn acts like a sponge. And this was in the summer, keep in mind-- when it tends to be damp anyway. So it was coming out of the popper into what should have been a completely dry environment and passing through some of the dampest square video in New England.

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Smartfood was supposed to have a service life of about 10 weeks, however after about 2 weeks a lot of it was turning soggy. We didn't solve that issue till we moved into our new center [in Might 1986] and constructed a climate-control system.' Meanwhile, Smartfood was dealing with climate-control problems of a graver sort.

Its bank, the United States Trust Co., was "worried" about its modest debt exposure (a $20,000 term loan), and its accounting firm was about to release a "certified viewpoint" on the company's financial health. Rubbing salt in the wound, a Midwestern distributor had actually just recently absconded with $25,000 worth of item. Financiers and directors alike agreed that things did not look good." From the very first day Andrew and I spoke about putting the item in a bag and calling it Smartfood," says Meyers, "I thought it would work.

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Yet we 'd bungled it. Probably my darkest day, the least expensive point of my entire career, was available in July, when a lot of us-- Andrew, [advisors] Tom Gregory, John Harrington, and I-- were sitting around a conference table, taking a look at the mess we had actually made and disputing whether to shoot the pony.' Abundant Savran is a buyer for Christy's Markets Inc., a 97-store benefit chain based in eastern Massachusetts, with outposts in Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island.

" Smartfood was currently in our stores already," Savran remembers, "generally due to the fact that it was being dispersed by Wise. Otherwise, we mainly carried name brand names like Frito-Lay and Charles Chips. I can't think about any other independent [snack-food brand] on our racks at the time, besides Smartfood. There was definitely no other 'premium' cheese popcorn around-- simply the standard cheese popcorn that everybody had actually constantly carried." But the item itself hadn't really captured on-- or so it seemed.

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They stated they were hearing complaints from clients who couldn't find this product. 'We're selling 5, perhaps 10 cases a week,' they reported. 'It's hard to keep it in stock.' 'With any brand-new product, you try to find repeat service, however suddenly here were brand-new consumers being available in and asking for it all the time.

When you see something like that, you understand they're rushing to fill a whole brand-new specific niche. Why the abrupt interest? I actually don't understand. Individuals were certainly trying to find a treat that wasn't pure junk food, and Smartfood fit the bill. Plus, obviously, the product packaging was special. I believe at least part of the reaction related to this little business, not one of the corporations, saying it desired to do something different and doing it.' A battle-scarred veteran of the software market, Tom Gregory came across cheese popcorn through his association with John Harrington, president of the Frontier Group, a Boston-based monetary consulting company that did private-placement stock offerings for small business.

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After Frontier Group signed on in May 1985 to help recapitalize Smartfoods Inc., Gregory came in as an adviser, rewording business plan upon which two rounds of offerings were based, pulling in $200,000 and $225,000, respectively." At the time I got involved," remembers Gregory, "Smartfoods was at the Click for more edge of a financial precipice.

I truly liked the item, however it was clear to everyone-- consisting of Andrew and Ken, who were both extremely good online marketers-- that we needed more marketing horsepower if we were going to do anything about increasing consumer awareness.' Doing not have cash and competence, Martin and Meyers were quite much creating their marketing method as they went along.

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There wasn't even much nontraditional marketing. Rather, the snack food was distributed totally free at youth-oriented events like road races, beach celebrations, and ski satisfies. And it was not uncommon to ride the chairlift at a major ski resort like Killington, Vt., and see a six-foot bag of cheese popcorn schussing down the slopes.

At any rate, they got individuals talking, and Smartfood soon established a word-of-mouth track record that cash couldn't purchase. Sales for the ended June 30, 1986, increased to $550,000-- up from $35,000 in financial '85-- as very first one and then a whole string of New England supermarket chains fell for the glossy black bag.

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The scarcity, in turn, drove consumer mania higher, making Smartfood an object of cult praise. Even Gregory concedes, furthermore, that the initial success of Smartfoods owed much to the lack of "marketing horsepower" in the company. "We had both the chance and the requirement to be extremely unconventional. Our only hope was to walk around the competitors and method the marketplace nearly as an exercise in guerrilla warfare." What Smartfoods really did was innovate the obvious.

When people in the snack-food industry appearance at it today, they slap themselves on the forehead and say, 'Why didn't I think about that?' 'Withey and Martin had married in the summer season of 1984, with Meyers serving as an usher at the wedding event. Soft-spoken and nearly painfully shy, Withey played no role in the management of Smartfoods (" I don't really like organisation," she explains) besides acting as the company's biggest single investor, holding roughly 35% of the equity in her own name.

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" We were chosen 10 days. The day we returned, there was a board conference in Boston. It was funny, since I remember walking past a lobby newsstand and seeing a front-page heading in The Boston Globe about Marcos stepping down. We hadn't read any newspapers, so it was a total surprise to us.

I got a copy of the program. The very first agenda was a vote on Andrew Martin's resignation as president of Smartfoods. The second was a vote on Ken Meyer's election to change me. My first reaction was, 'Well, I think Ken's cast his lot with Gregory and Harrington.' My second was, 'Hmm, this is a quite rotten way of discovering out about it.' 'Meyers has a rather various recollection. "As soon as success came to Smartfoods," he preserves today, "it only magnified the disputes that were currently there. Each side was declaring duty for the product's success, but it was really the item that was driving all of us along. People were at each others' throats. It was like, 'Whoa, what happened to all that love and respect we've been discussing?' "These days, Martin and Withey yap about love and respect, which does not stop them from making inflammatory comments about "Ken losing his soul." They are also susceptible to make inflammatory comments about other Smartfoods board members.

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( U.T.), a military specialist for which he had such antipathy that he fired off a letter asking U.T.'s chairman to intervene. Another, states Martin, runs a big real-estate development company and is a former CIA employee to boot. To hear Martin tell it, the presence of such individuals was a nightmare come to life, as if William Casey and General Westmoreland had actually signed up to do Smartfood TELEVISION commercials." Smartfoods was a popcorn company, for God's sake," Martin says, shaking his head, "and here you had ex-CIA people and military specialists coming on board

." His voice tracks off. In fact, his headache was at least partially the item of an overactive imagination. The "military professional" is really an accounting professional with Pratt & Whitney Airplane, a U.T. subsidiary that makes aircraft engines. Among the original backers of Smartfoods, the guy had been chosen as a director at the very first investors' conference, when it was agreed that the preliminary group of financiers need to have a representative on the board.

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" I'm grateful to Smartfoods, and I'll tell you why," says Withey. "It lastly opened my eyes to what company is everything about. Here was this item we had actually come up with-- a natural product, a fun item-- and it highlighted the worst in everybody. We lost a genuine excellent pal due to the fact that of it.

However the worst-- the worst-- was when Ken went on and took my name off the bag, like I was no longer part of that business. Of all the injures, I wept the hardest over that. Service or no service, that just wasn't right.' Joseph P. Pellegrino initially satisfied Andrew Martin and Ken Meyers in 1984.

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" Ken was based in our factory for about a year, I think, working out all the problems they were having with the innovation, and we ended up utilizing Tug-N-Tie on our 16-ounce bag of Dutch Housemaid noodles. The bag worked well, and Prince still utilizes it. I was very satisfied with both Ken and Andrew.

And it took guts for them to come out with this new popcorn and stick it in a black bag. My own kids went crazy over it.' About a year ago, Pellegrino states, Martin showed up at his workplace with another idea: pasta-based junk food. At the time, Pellegrino presumed that Martin was developing the item for Smartfoods, where he was still a director.

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The items got great reception, but no one had actually put anything like that on the market. When Andrew announced that he wished to sell pasta treats, I said terrific, we would too. I think that's when I found out about Hampton Hill.' Briefly touching upon his departure as president of Smartfoods, Martin outlined the shape of the brand-new company he and Withey were starting, Hampton Hill Inc

. And it would be committed to supporting social and environmental causes they deemed worthwhile-- devoted up front, that is, with a percentage of gross earnings (not revenues) earmarked for charity, so that customers and charities alike could value the connection. He and Pellegrino thereupon exercised a production deal making Prince the exclusive producer of Hampton Hill's very first items: a boxed macaroni dinner (Shells & Annie's Cheddar) and a cheese-flavored pasta chip (Zeuschips)." It wasn't so much the causes that attracted me," states Pellegrino, who confesses that conserving the Brazilian tropical rain forest is not his number-one charity.

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Certainly there aren't a lot of companies out there ready to commit a portion of their incomes the way they do, and I admire them for it.' From the outset, Hampton Hill targeted 2% of sales of Shells & Annie's Cheddar to a 4-H camp for clingy kids, with a like portion of Zeuschips revenues going to an organization dealing with conserving the rain forests, among Withey's passions.

Each bundle brings a message, and the message, broadly speaking, is this: the world is being raped; the clingy are being ignored; all of us have an obligation to do something; even purchasing treat food can help. As for Smartfoods, Pellegrino believes the going may get tough. "If I were Smartfoods, and I had the very best [white cheddar-cheese] product-- which I think they do-- I 'd beware.

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As soon as you awaken the huge men, you can have issues handling the trade. Greed ends up being a huge player. The message they'll be hearing is, you can purchase our product more affordable and make much better margins on it.' The year Smartfood was developed, The Bachman Co. was celebrating its centennial anniversary in business, having actually been purveying its own line of treat foods given that 1884.