Why it matters:
- The specialty food market has grown from $88 billion in 2013 to around $207 billion in 2023, an increase of 149%, evolving from niche products to a major driver of grocery sector growth.
- Essiespice owner Essie Bartels wanted to see more representation of African foods and flavors on supermarket shelves.
- Bartels’ corporate background at companies like Unilever, leaning into social media, networking, and word of mouth, have all helped to fuel her startup’s success, landing in national chains like Whole Foods.
In college in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Ghanaian immigrant Essie Bartels missed staples from home like plantains and goat meat, neither of which she could find at her local market. The experience left her wanting to see better representation of African foods and flavors in U.S. supermarkets.
After earning a degree in international business, Bartels joined corporate America, rising up through the ranks in international companies like Hitachi, Panasonic, and Unilever in procurement, strategy, and purchasing roles. At the same time, Bartels hosted dinner parties where she served homemade stews, jollof, puff-puffs, and kebabs. Her guests told her she should open a restaurant.
One friend of a friend gave her $2,000 toward starting a food business. Bartels ultimately put the money toward a business license. Perhaps more importantly, the gesture was a boost of confidence that people would really buy her food. Her first product came about after Bartels returned home from a trip to Mexico with tamarind candies. They were too sweet to eat, so she turned them into a sauce for chicken wings.
“Everyone was fighting for the last piece,” she said. “I realized, I didn’t have to have a restaurant, but I could have something people can have in their homes, and I could reach more people that way. That was the birth of Essiespice sauces.”
The Essiespice owner and spice mixologist started selling her African-inspired sauces and spice blends direct to consumer online. Now, her products are sold in 100 stores across the United States and Canada, including 50 Whole Foods stores across Bartels' home state of New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut, and on Amazon. Sales have topped $200,000 from $7,000 when Bartels started out in 2013, and she’s sold more than half a million bottles. Her corporate background, leaning into social media, networking, and word of mouth, have all helped to drive her success.
Essiespice is part of the specialty food market, which has grown from $88 billion in 2013 to around $207 billion in 2023, an increase of 149%, having evolved from niche products to a major driver of grocery sector growth.
Essiespice brand identity shaped by family recipes and a preservative-free pledge
Around the same time as Bartels was developing her sauces, she became more aware of the ingredients in the bouillon cubes that her immediate family — and her extended family in Africa — had gotten used to adding to their stews and other dishes. She didn’t like the added artificial preservatives and pledged to keep her products preservative-free.
She also noticed other sauces on store shelves had food dye as an ingredient to standardize color. She didn’t want that either for her products, including a tamarind guava sauce, and dry rub with peanuts and West African and Asian spices. On her labels, Bartels decided to print “This is real food! Color may fade after opening, flavor will not," as a reassurance to customers that color variations didn’t mean a batch was bad.
When Bartels’ father got sick and his kidney function declined significantly, she helped him to remove all artificial ingredients from his diet plus reduce added sugar and salt. In the following months, his kidney function drastically improved, she said.
“That was the push I needed to really make sure I didn’t put any of these artificial ingredients into my products,” she said. “It’s something I’m very passionate about.”
[Read more: How Companies Are Monetizing Consumer Demand for Street Food From Around the World]
Sales have topped $200,000 from $7,000 when Bartels started out in 2013, and she’s sold more than half a million bottles. Her corporate background, leaning into social media, networking, and word of mouth, have all helped to drive her success.
A robust social media following and finding a first willing retail buyer emboldened the founder to focus on the business full time
When Bartels was still working at Unilever and hosting dinner parties in her spare time, she often posted enticing pictures of the dishes she cooked and her recipes on social media. She managed to build up a sizable following.
Bartels officially launched Essiespice in November of 2013 with her loyal followers by her side.
“When I started selling online direct to consumer, all of these people really rallied around me,” she said.
She also brought her products to several boutique grocery stores in Manhattan. All rejected them but one, the buyer at Kalustyan’s specialty foods store in Kips Bay. From there, Bartels got her sauces into a few more mom-and-pop markets.
But real traction came after Bartels left a new corporate job at ADP in 2016, taking a leap of faith to focus on her business full time.
“I called my parents and I told them, ‘I’m not going back to corporate,’” she said. “I’m going to give myself six months of undivided attention to Essiespice.”
Essiespice connects with Whole Foods through a network of Harlem entrepreneurs
Bartels’ freed-up schedule made it possible for her to attend a daytime meeting with Whole Foods, which had reached out to Harlem Park to Park, a network of Harlem entrepreneurs, to source products to sell in the store from locals.
Out of the 25 entrepreneurs who met with Whole Foods that day, Bartels was one of three who Whole Foods determined had a shelf-ready product.
Essiespice products started off on shelves at a Whole Foods in Brooklyn before the Harlem location opened. Slowly, additional Whole Foods stores across New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut started to carry Essiespice products.
The exposure led to meetings with magazine editors and people at cooking channels. Time Magazine did a piece on Bartels' company and so did Forbes. “It was like a snowball effect,” she said. Then in 2020 in People magazine, Chef Marcus Samuelsson singled out the Essiespice Essential Sauce Collection as one of his picks for gifts for foodies, noting that “These make everything taste better.”
“It hasn’t slowed down since then,” Bartels said.
Bartels’ products were also featured in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and now they’re sold in the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.
[Read more: How Three Startups Scored Millions in Funding]
Back to basics: Refocusing on direct to consumer and partnerships with brands that understand her business
Launching her businesses, however, hasn’t come without its significant challenges. Bartels launched with another major retailer, but the partnership fizzled out.
With that retailer, she was surprised to find her business was financially responsible for jars of sauce broken by customers in the store or damaged while on a shipping truck operated by the retailer. Costs associated with being on the retailer’s shelves, including payments to a distributor, for special software to fulfill orders, and for shipping added up, ultimately making the already small margins not worth it in the end.
“You really need somebody full time dedicated to these accounts,” Bartels said, “because a lot of time there are invoice errors, and you have to fight to get your money. There’s a whole system behind being in these types of stores that can cripple you if you’re not ready.”
And on top of that, the lofty funds needed for in-store marketing to increase brand awareness are often unaffordable for companies just starting out, she said.
Whole Foods has been different, said Bartels, and a good partner, because the company understands the struggles of smaller brands. She also works with a regional distributor, who doesn’t charge for fulfillment software or damage fees.
Having solid connections and partners to get you in the door is critical, said Bartels, and means you don’t have to spend the bulk of any capital you manage to raise on forging connections and marketing.
“Things like paying influencers, that’s the longer route,” she said. “The money you’ve raised should really go to product testing, to paying your team, and to new products. That’s been a huge challenge for us. Partnerships and community is very important, and especially when you’re starting out. Leverage what it is that you have to get into the rooms that you can get into.”
Bartels is also refocusing on what’s brought her company success over the years, namely her direct-to-consumer business.
“I used to be a ‘what’s next girl’ for the longest time,” she said. But currently, she’s evaluating what’s worked for her business in the past before pursuing new endeavors.
“We’re definitely falling in love with our direct-to-consumer [business], and we’re nurturing relationships with brands that understand our process,” she said. “It’s one step at a time.”
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