Local Mom Starts Baby Food Company

OH BABY! FOODS HEADQUARTERED IN ARKANSAS, MADE USING LOCAL INGREDIENTS

By Lana Flowers

Monday, November 16, 2009

ROGERS — Parents who want to feed their babies a nutritious food, sourced from farms within 300 miles of Washington and Benton counties, can buy Oh Baby! food in local stores.

Mother and business owner Fran Free Gunsaulis displayed the baby food, which she cooked in her own kitchen on her Cincinnati farm this summer, at local stores Friday. They included the Pinnacle Station Local Market at New Hope Road and Promenade Boulevard in Rogers and Harps on Crossover Road in Fayetteville.

Gunsaulis brought along daughter Lucy, who celebrated her first birthday with the launch of the food created in her honor.

Gunsaulis said she spent between $50,000 and $100,000 of her own money to launch Oh Baby! Foods Inc., the first baby food company headquartered in Arkansas.

The frozen baby food company started in February, but Gunsaulis mapped out business plans while earning a master’s degree in agricultural economics at the University of Arkansas.

“The business plan was a project for one of my classes, and the industry analysis was a project for a diff erent class,” Gunsaulis said. Lucy was born two weeks after she completed the course work.

Sales of specialty baby foods, including organic lines and those with locallysourced ingredients, generated $58 million in 2008, a 69 percent increase from 2006 sales, according to an April report in trade publication Supermarket News. The figures exclude sales at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and at Trader Joe’s.

The Federal Trade Commission’s “The Evolution of the Baby Food Industry 2000-2008,” published in April, stated the baby food market still is concentrated. Gerber had about 72 percent of the baby food market in 2000 but that increased to 73 percent to 80 percent by 2008, according to the report.

Lucy taste-tested Oh Baby! food, including “bean me up baby” and “sweet potato boogie.”

“She will no longer eat our food because she has eaten it so much,” Gunsaulis said, but Lucy sat on grandma’s lap early Friday afternoon, eating a little Oh Baby! while squirming.

Gunsaulis has a farming background, as her family has a farm in south Arkansas near Dumas. She and husband Johnny live on his family farm between Cincinnati and Siloam Springs, along Arkansas 16. That farm life inspired Gunsaulis to source ingredients from local family farms, including from the Ranallis, named Washington County Farm Family of the Year in 2006.

Gunsaulis and two fulltime employees sought local ingredients and prepared the baby food in her kitchen from about May through October. She has about 16,000 packages of Oh Baby! food — 4,000 each of four flavors — sold at area stores for $4.98 per three-container package.

The Federal Trade Commission report indicated all prepared baby foods, including baby yogurts, food in glass jars and food in plastic containers, averaged $2.02 per package in 2008, the same price as in 2000.

Gunsaulis said her food may be a little more expensive than other jarred brands, like Gerber, but she hopes customers like the local farms and sustainability aspect of her product.

Oh Baby! food is sold in six Harps locations in Springdale and Fayetteville; Pinnacle Station Local Market, Cook’s Natural Market and Rogers Natural Foods, all in Rogers; and Ozark Natural Foods in Fayetteville.

One Harps location already sold out of Oh Baby! food.

When Oh Baby! food is gone from store shelves, it’s gone until local produce comes into season next year, Gunsaulis said.

Using locally grown ingredients means less fuel is burned to get those ingredients to Gunsaulis’ kitchen, making Oh Baby! more sustainable than other foods.

“Consumers want transparency. They want to know who contributed to their purchase and who is benefi ting from their purchase,” said Mike Faupel of the University of Arkansas Applied Sustainability Center.

Gunsaulis also is sustainable by recycling the plastic containers because the city of Fayetteville doesn’t accept for recycling the particular containers she uses.

She takes the containers to Marck Industries and gives Oh Baby! customers vouchers for products if they clean and return their used food containers for recycling. The used containers are not reused for Oh Baby! food, Gunsaulis said.

Comments

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Not true. She rented a empty cafe building in Evansville where she made it from May through Oct.
Why would she lie about that? Does saying she made it at home make a better story?

Posted by: hick

November 16, 2009 at 6:28 a.m. ( | suggest removal )

Play nice; that was a misprint. None of the baby food was made at home, but rather in an FDA permitted facility.

Posted by: OhBaby

November 16, 2009 at 12:46 p.m. ( | suggest removal )

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