Orange-based Stir Foods LLC is thriving on value meals.
The 3-year-old seller of soups, sauces and dressings to major restaurant chains projects it will do more than $15 million in sales this year—more than doubling what it did its first year.
Most of that gain came from new, undisclosed contracts.
The company says it’s doing well because a couple of its fast food customers have been expanding with the popularity of their lower-cost meals.
Many of its customers are in Southern California, which is why it stays local with its 35,000-square-foot operation that employs 75.
“We’re a restaurant chain’s best kept secret,” said co-owner and co-chief executive Kevin Takabayashi.
In all, it has about 30 customers, including manufacturers that sell to stores.
It sells about 100 different products, including cheese, salsa and marinara sauces, which it makes thousands of gallons of each month.
Consistency in taste is key for restaurants that want their customers to ex-pect the same eating experience at each location.
Stir has more than 20 competitors that range in size from small local companies to larger ones, such as Minnesota-based Cargill Inc., which has more than $1 billion in sales.
Irvine-based Golden State Foods Corp., with $3.7 billion in 2008 sales, also is a competitor.
Stir hopes to grow sales by about $5 million each year.
Takabayashi is a former Marine pilot and an owner of Corona del Mar restaurant The Bungalow.
He and Phil de Carion, his partner, were minority owners in Phoenix-based soup maker Todds Enterprises Inc., which was sold in 2000 to H. J. Heinz Co.
Credit Union Stability
Financial software specialist MeridianLink Inc. of Costa Mesa is hinging this year’s growth on its more stable customers.
Started in 1998 by Vietnamese refugees Binh Dang and Tim Nguyen, the company’s anchor product allows customers to pool data from the major credit reporting agents, such as Britain’s Experian Group Ltd., and package the data for mortgage brokers.
Growth this year will be just slightly higher than last year with sales of more than $10
million, according to Linn Cook, marketing director.
Customers include Citigroup Inc. and Maryland’s Credit Bureau Of Del-Mar-Va Inc., better known as Credit Plus, as well as a number of credit unions and banks.
It’s the credit unions that have provided the most stability for the company as many of the mortgage brokers it once dealt with have either gone away or are seeing slower sales.
“There’s been a shift to more business with lenders with stronger deposits,” Cook said. “Community banks have helped fill the void left by private mortgage companies.”
Its fast-growing product allows the credit unions to instantly check an applicant’s credit while telling them what interest rates they’re qualified for on various loans that include cars, credit cards and homes.
Competitors include Santa Ana-based First American Corp.’s Credco and LandSafe Inc. in Pasadena, which became a unit of Bank of America Corp. after Bank of America took it over from Calabasas-based Countrywide Financial Corp.
PriceMyLoan is another of MeridianLink’s software products. It automates the underwriting process for mortgage lenders.
Most of its competitors in the underwriting business are smaller, such as Irvine-based Loan-Score Decisioning Systems and Overture Technologies Inc. in Maryland.
Meridian employs some 100 people, about 85 of which are in Costa Mesa as developers, programmers and technical support people.
Dang and Nguyen met while in school at University of California, Irvine, where they studied computer science. They first started the company as a consultant before growing into a software developer.
High Bounce
Brian Spencer is eyeing the next leap for Vurtego LLC.
The Mission Viejo-based maker of pogo sticks has doubled in sales each of the last five years it’s been in business. This year it’s cracking $1 million for the first time.
Vurtego’s pogo sticks rely on compressed air to create the bounce rather than coiled springs like traditional models.
The idea came from Spencer’s father, Bruce, a retired engineer who worked on fighter planes for Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman Corp.
He wanted to make the strength of the bounce adjustable and saw an advantage in not relying on a coiled spring that could wear out.
Vurtego’s jumpers tend to be either casual enthusiasts looking for a fitness kick or the more adrenaline-oriented extreme sports types.
To increase sales, Spencer plans to take on an investor within the next year, which would lead to a new product geared for the mass market.
Its Vurtego Stealth model sells for about $350. A cheaper one would go for less than $100, he said.
For professional riders, he makes a model he claims can bounce a rider higher than 16 feet in the air.
Spencer is betting the sticks will gain admirers with a rising popularity of Pogopalooza, an annual competition where riders trade flips and twists with their sticks.
“This has all the elements of an urban sport,” he said.
Spencer also hosts the nationally syndicated show “Planet X,” which profiles extreme sports.
The idea for the pogo business came to him while he was a chief operating officer of a pharmaceutical company.
“I left a career paying six figures a year to do this,” he said. “I felt in my gut that this would take off.”
The vast majority of Vurtego’s sales come from the Internet. It sells to riders in 40 different countries.
Spencer credits spots on shows such as the “Late Show with David Letterman” and NBC’s “Today Show” for a run-up in his company’s popularity.
His biggest competitor is Ellenville, N.Y.-based Flybar, which sells more than a half million sticks a year, he said.
