CARL WESCHCKE, St. Paul, Minnesota
Inasmuch as there are so many words of wisdom and advice showing the reader how to make money in different ways, I have started a new line of caption with the hope that it might serve as a warning for those who would stick their necks out, as the term applies to those people who venture beyond safe margins of restraint. Since this is a recital of facts, and since Professor George L. Slate has requested me to report on my experiences, I submit the following for what interest it may hold for the readers.
Most ventures are backed by optimism of some sort or other, coupled with some experience, capital, hopes, and ambition. The project which sparked the entrance into the manufacture of filbert butter was the success that I was having with hybridizing our best native hazels with the best known filberts, such as crossing of the wild American hazel with Barcelona, DuChilly, Italian Red, Purple Aveline, Red Aveline, White Aveline, also filbert strains from J. U. Gellatly of Westbank, B. C., Canada, and strains from J. F. Jones, hybrids, European strains of filberts from the Carpathian mountains, and any right pollen which could be obtained from known filbert parents. Today we have over 2,000 seedling hybrids of which between 500 and 600 have come into bearing. Some of these are really surprising varieties of the combination hazels and filberts, but a complete history of the hybridization work and the results really deserve a separate account to be published some time in the future. I merely mention this because the success of these plants in producing nuts leads me to contemplate the future production of these hybrid nuts, called Hazilberts,[4] on a large scale.
[4] Another coined name, by Mr. Gellatly, is "Filazel."
My problem was to engineer a scheme whereby I could interest farmers in setting out small acreages of these plants and guarantee that there would be a market when the plants produced nuts, which would be in about three years from the time they were planted. Seeing that the filbert producers in the west were struggling for a better market, since conditions were not too favorable for the filbert in its competition with the foreign nuts and the California produced Persian walnut, I decided that nuts in the shell were a little bit old-fashioned. Many of our prominent members of the NNGA have from time to time advised the marketing of nut kernels rather than nuts in their natural containers, and I thought a step in the right direction would be to manufacture a ready-to-eat product from the kernels. And what could be nicer than a butter similar to peanut butter?
So I began scouring the market for a grinding machine that would grind filberts to the consistency of a smooth peanut butter. My first machine was a Hobart peanut grinder. When buying this machine the mistake I made was to let the agent of the manufacturer demonstrate how good it was to grind Spanish peanuts; I should have had it tested on filberts as they are much tougher, even though they do carry more oil. This machine was installed, but it was a complete failure and I decided to buy more expensive machinery, and also put in a cracking plant and buy the nuts by the ton or carload, if necessary, directly from the growers on the Pacific Coast or through their organization, the Northwest Nut Growers. I located a satisfactory machine for the purpose, which required about 7 horse power to run. Since this was during the war and no motors of the right speed and power were available at the time, I set up my own generating plant, using a 25 kilowatt generator driven by a Diesel engine which generated direct current so that I could use direct current motors which I already had among my machinery supplies. Then a separating machine, which required a 10 horse power motor just to operate the fan, which is part of that equipment, was purchased. Also, a nut cracking machine was secured from a West Coast manufacturer. Along with tanks and containers and other necessary equipment, all set up in a little factory building I had available for that purpose, I commenced the manufacture of filbert butter on a commercial scale.
The product was declared by every one to be excellent. We were quite sure of this since we had taken pains to buy up any product that purported to be a nut butter, and had tested those products in many ways to assure ourselves that we had a product superior to anything that we could find on the market at that time. The Owens Illinois Glass Company designed our label and gave us the benefit of their experience with containers. Then we placed our initial order for glass containers and re-shipping cases. Every detail in handling this material was properly taken care of, to insure that if the orders came rolling in we would be able to supply the demand and have our shipments reach the consumer in first class shape.
Then we initiated an advertising campaign, coupled with sampling, and received many fine letters which encouraged us to hire a salesman who sold the product to the stores in the Twin City area so as to have proper distribution. Advertising was done also in two national magazines, so we sat back, hopefully anticipating the big orders that we were soon to receive. The reorders from the local stores came in slowly, too slowly for our set-up. We received suggestions from the store keepers and from other persons that perhaps the product was too high priced, so we made experiments in other towns where we set the price so low that there was no profit. In fact, there would be a loss of money were we to do business on that basis. Yet there was no stimulation of sales due to this reduction in price.
Many good suggestions came in; among these was the suggestion that the product lent itself nicely to an ice cream topping; by mixing it with honey or with syrup we interested our largest manufacturer of ice cream in this locality and he did a lot of experimental selling. He was very cooperative. He also sold it in his branch stores as milk shakes; everybody liked it. No complaints whatsoever except that the manager said it was too expensive to compete with a chocolate flavor on which he made much more money. Finally this whole thing fizzled out and was discontinued.
The next experiment was with candy; as a candy center it was one of the finest tasting confections that had ever been made, but the oil which would ooze through the chocolate coatings prevented the practical use of it. You see, the filbert has about 65% oil, and when it is ground into a fine, creamy butter, this oil will come out and sometimes be an inch or more in depth over the top of the butter in the glass container in which it was marketed. So we investigated several methods by which we could eliminate the oil. We could pour it off and sell the oil separately; we could emulsify the product with the addition of certain emulsifiers, so as to keep the oil mixed with the starch and protein of the filbert nut. We tried many ways; there is only one method that we haven't used and that is to combine solidified or hydrogenized peanut oil with the filbert butter in order to prevent this liquid oil from rising to to the top of the product. The reason we did not do this is quite apparent—we did not want to mix peanuts and filberts, as we considered peanut butter a cheaper and inferior product. We could not hope to compete with peanut butter with the prices already set for peanut butter recognized by the trade.