Siblings Jenny and Willie Rosoff believe good taste is key when it comes to running their Irvine-based food manufacturing company, Village Green Foods Inc.
The company generates $2.5 million in yearly sales making handmade soups, sauces, salad dressing, fillings and marinades for restaurant chains such as Newport Beach-based Ruby Restaurant Group, Santa Ana’s Wahoo’s Fish Taco, San Diego’s Pat & Oscar’s Restaurant and Karl Strauss Brewing Co., also of San Diego.
Village Green Foods is sort of like the back-up kitchen for small to midsize restaurant chains that don’t have enough time or workers to make certain foods.
Inside its 13,000-square-foot headquarters, about 18 of the company’s workers follow its clients’ specific recipes.
The key is to follow each and every specification so that clients can expect to have consistent foods.
“Our customers’ recipes require different ingredients so their foods have consistent flavor profiles and textures,” Jenny Rosoff said. “We can have three different types of chili powder on our spice rack because one customer will prefer one over the other. The crazy thing is that you can actually taste the difference.”
All of the foods are made by hand and poured into 4-gallon plastic pouches that are then refrigerated or frozen before they’re packaged. They’re picked up by distributors and shipped to restaurants.
About five of the company’s workers, including Jenny Rosoff, who is president, and Willie Rosoff, who is chief executive, oversee operations and sales.
The Rosoffs started Village Green Foods in 1991 but were no newbies to the food biz.
The two grew up in a family full of foodies and helped their parents run their catering company, Meyerhof’s in Irvine, and their family’s restaurant, Back Bay Running & Rowing Club, in Costa Mesa.
The siblings then went to college and pursued careers in the contracting and travel industries. But when their careers came to a fork in the road in the early 1990s, they decided to come back to what they knew best.
“It wasn’t our dream to be in the food business but in the end, it just made sense,” Jenny Rosoff said.
At the time, their parents wanted to retire and Jenny and Willie Rosoff took over the family’s catering business and restaurant.
They started making soups and other foods for restaurant companies as a side business through Village Green Foods and continued to own and operate Myerhof’s until the late 1990s when they sold the business to one of their former employees.
The time and money the Rosoffs spent getting Village Green Foods off the ground was overwhelming, Jenny Rosoff said.
Being in the restaurant and catering business for several years helped them attract customers yet there was still a lot to learn about managing costs and finding workers, she said.
Dealing with growth was another lesson they had to learn, Rosoff said.
When the Rosoffs bought their 13,000-square-foot factory for more than a $1 million in 2000, they knew there was no turning back.
“We were like ‘are we really doing this?'” Rosoff said.
Buying the factory turned out to be a good investment. Village Green Foods still has room to grow, she said.
Rosoff is targeting $5 million in sales in two years but says the company will have to enhance its production process with more automated equipment in order to reach that goal.
Sporty Shades
Corona del Mar-based FishGillz Inc. wants to make a splash with its floating sunglasses.
FishGillz makes sunglasses that float when dropped into water for fisherman, jet skiers, boaters, wind surfers and other water sports enthusiasts.
It rivals other floating sunglass makers such as Georgia-based Gill North America Ltd. and sunglass heavyweight Foothill Ranch-based Oakley Inc., which is being acquired by Italy’s Luxottica Group SPA for $2 billion.
FishGillz’ half-ounce glasses are made with a flexible, polymer blend and lenses made by 3M Corp. that reduce glare and offer 100% ultraviolet 400 protection.
The glasses are assembled and packaged in factories overseas. The company taps distributors to ship its sunglasses to more than 200 stores in America including Angler’s Center California in Newport Beach and Magic Power Boats in Lake Havasu, Ariz. They sell for less than $50 a pair.
Jeffery Taylor, an avid fisherman and boater, started the company earlier this year.
“I was tired of losing my sunglasses at the bottom of the ocean. I realized that other people had the same problem and that there’s a market for this,” he said.
Starting his business wasn’t easy, Taylor said.
It took Taylor several months to develop the right pair of floating sunglasses, which was expensive and time consuming, he said. Taylor tested more than 100 sunglasses before he settled on his model, he said.
Taylor declined to disclose sales. Nor did he want to say where he’d like the company’s revenue to be at next year. Taylor did indicate that he expects to sell 20,000 pairs of sunglasses each month starting next year.
FishGillz employs 10 workers. Taylor expects to hire more next year.
The company has had interest from venture capitalists but Taylor said he’s not ready to bring in investors just yet. Once the company has built up its brand and has entered more stores, Taylor said he would consider bringing in investors.
