Business Focus

Lightly-processed soups full of Vermont farm-grown ingredients.

Loan Summary

After being turned down by conventional lenders, a $6,000 loan from the Vermont Farm Fund fueled an R&D project to create new soup recipes and new processing techniques that will enable Two Guys to use more Vermont Farm products in the future.

The Backstory

The “Two Guys” behind this Vermont Food business are NECI Chef Instructor Doug Barg and retail expert and founder Jeff Weinstein, whose professional career is grounded in consumer packaged goods. Together they launched their venture in 2010 focusing on soup that is canned in glass jars, convenient, healthy, and featured ingredients from Vermont farms. Encouraged by the initial market response to their introductory offerings, they were eager to expand their product line and feature even more Vermont ingredients. Jeff and Doug knew that developing new recipes and techniques would mean an investment, one that conventional bankers weren’t willing risk making. That’s when they turned to the Vermont Farm Fund and secured a $6,000 loan in time to take advantage of the 2012 fall harvest.

“Without unique loan sources like this, a small start-up like ours wouldn’t have the means to test using local foods in place of industrial and nationally sourced varieties.”

The Bottom Line

In the test kitchen, Jeff trialed ways to prepare firm, full-flavored Jacob’s Cattle beans for his soups. The experience from this kitchen research and development has provided learnings that are sure to highlight the virtues of this local heirloom legume in future recipes.In another pilot project, the Two Guys teamed up with Rambling Harvest Farm to source and process locally grown garlic. Seeking local sources first enables this specialty food business to flavor batches with locally grown foods rather than follow traditional sourcing methods that rely on the global network. Meanwhile, Jeff produced a full batch of Hearty Curried Apple Butternut Squash Soup for retail, with 99.5% of the ingredients coming from within 60 miles of the kitchen. The Guys expect to begin testing a Three Onion Potato soup come fall 2013 with the remaining funds from their VFF loan.

All photos for this story were provided by Two Guys in Vermont.