The oil business is booming in the Finger Lakes
-- without the aid of roughnecks or drilling rigs. It's culinary oil, and
for husband-and-wife entrepreneurs Gregory Woodworth and Kelly Coughlin, it's
turning into a thriving business, with products winning over both professional
chefs and health- and taste-conscious home cooks.
Woodworth and Coughlin's Stoney Brook
Wholehearted Foods produces varietal seed oils from locally grown butternut
squash, delicate squash, oilseed pumpkin, and kabocha squash -- each with
its own personality, flavor, and behavior under various cooking conditions.
The squash-seed oils have high smoke points, making them ideal for
frying. The pumpkin-seed oil -- derived from an heirloom varietal, the
Kikai, grown specifically for its hull-less seeds -- doesn't do well at high
temperatures and is best drizzled over salads or soups, or added to rice,
couscous, or pasta. Their most popular oil is butternut squash-seed, the
product that launched the company. Says Woodworth: "It has a flavor
that pleases just about everybody --toasted almonds, walnuts, peanuts, and warm
butter."
The primary markets for the Wholehearted oils
are specialty stores such as Dean & DeLuca and Whole Foods.
They've also been welcomed at natural food stores, including Ithaca's
Greenstar Co-op. A third and fast-growing market is in "tasting
stores" in places as far away as New Mexico and Oregon, where sales have
more than doubled in the past year. The oils have also found favor with professional
chefs in Maine, Massachusetts, and New York City.
Woodworth, who earned an MBA from Bentley College
after graduating from Cornell's Hotel School, and Coughlin, who studied marine
biology and fine arts at Cornell, moved their mail-order cookie company from
Boston to more easygoing environs. Their dreams of returning to Upstate
New York solidified when they learned about Cornell's New York State Food
Venture Center, an incubator for food-related start-ups. A program of the
Department of Food Science, the center offers help with product development and
safety evaluation, guidance through the regulatory maze, and links to
business assistance, financing sources, and local suppliers and service
providers. "We get around 1,700 calls a year from people producing, or
trying to produce, all kinds of food products," says technician Herb
Cooley. "Some are from companies as large as Unilever and some as small as
the Mennonite farmer down the road whose wife is trying to make pickles to sell
at the farmers' market."
Cooley told Woodworth and Coughlin about a farm
in Brockport, New York, that grows thousands of acres of squash that is peeled,
seeded, and cut up for sale at supermarkets. The process leaves behind
twenty-five to thirty tons of seeds each year; disposing of them was burdensome
-- and expensive. Cooley roasted and pressed a test batch. "The
roasted seeds were good to eat," he says," and when pressed the oil
was plentiful and a beautiful color and flavor."
He suggested that Woodworth and Coughlin look
into extracting oil from the seeds to replace some of the butter in their
cookies -- and they were impressed. "I though, This is amazing stuff and
with a little tweaking of the flavor profile, I'd like to see this developed in
a culinary oil," Woodworth says. "It became our calling."
After further experimentation and refinement, the couple had a
product that seemed more promising than cookies. They switched gears and
founded Wholehearted to produce and market squash-seed oil as an alternative
to olive oil and other specialty oils, most of which are imports.
Drawing on her background in art, Coughlin designed packaging, labels,
and a website (wholehearted foods.com). She aimed for clarity and simplicity.
"You don't need a lot of bells and whistles to showcase a product you've
put so much of yourself into," says Coughlin. "We care about how we
make that product, and that's what we want to get across."
Venture capitalists found the idea too risky, so
the entrepreneurs moved ahead on a shoestring budget with equipment borrowed
from Cornell. They got a boost when Noah Sheets, the chef at the New York
State Governor's Mansion, purchased their squash-seed oil for a special event
-- becoming their first official customer. Sales took off; last year they
were up 25 percent and they continue to rise. The company's modest
profits have fueled growth, with new equipment including an expeller press from
Germany and a roaster custom manufactured by one of the few U.S. producers.
"And maybe one day," muses Woodworth, "we'll have the time to go
back to doing cookies."
