Today we’d like to introduce you to Bob & Billie Edwards.
Hi Bob & Billie, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Cache Lake Camping Foods was born on a rock in the BWCAW (Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness) in 1998. We (Bob and Billie) were celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary with a canoe trip in the BWCAW. We were experimenting with wild rice based, long-cooking dehydrated soup mixes from The Secret Garden™. (We had been gifting these Minnesota based products to customers of their optical supply business.) The products were really good, but required the addition of non-dehydrated ingredients (ie: milk, canned tomatoes etc.) and were long cooking. The hope was that with some adaptations to these products, they could become “quick cooking, tastebud pleasing, belly-filling” camping food. As a result of our experimentation, we found that we were able to adapt these products to meet the needs of campers, canoeists and hikers. After the trip, we approached Anne, owner of the Secret Garden, to see if she would be able to manufacture these new recipes. With a handshake, a partnership with the Secret Garden was made and continues to this day. Six months later we were calling on the outfitters in the BWCAW, with the five soups and 2 salads we had produced. With biannual visits to the BWCAW outfitters, we listened to their suggestions and needs for food outfitting and continued to develop recipes and source new ingredients. Currently we carry 84 products, having developed nearly a hundred products over the past 28 years.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Every challenge required solutions which created more challenges.
Challenge:
Seven products and need for buyers
Solution:
• Contact BWCAW outfitters. guides and stores
• Make appointments (around Bob’s full-time work schedule)
• Prepare all seven products to sample out
• Cook a soup of their choosing during sales call and reheat samples in their micro or in the one we brought along
• Try to convince them, these would be good additions to their current menus
Challenge:
As a small company, being able to purchase ingredients in smaller quantities from large suppliers
Solution:
• Research the web for possible suppliers, contact them, get samples and convince them that we were a growing company and hopefully, set up an account
Challenge:
Outfitters lose their main supplier and ask us during our fall visits, if we could fill their need by expanding our product line (Great opportunity… huge challenge, moving from being a provider of add-on products to providing a full menu of products)
Solution:
• research, research, research for more ingredients and products
• lock Billie in the kitchen for the next 6 weeks to come up with 32 new products and test them. Our lunches for those 6 weeks consisted of the trials … ugh, some were downright awful …. back to the “drawing board ”
• price and create an order form by mid-December to present to the outfitters
Challenge:
We lost the managing partner of our optical supply business of which Cache Lake was a division.
Solution:
• Billie, with no business background, had to take over managing the business
• a warehouse/shipping manger had to be found.
Challenge:
Losing ingredient suppliers
Solution:
• research other companies
• adjust and refigure recipes
• drop some products
Challenge:
We were the first camping food company to have a website. Keeping up with all the changes in our product line and with the technology is a continuing challenge
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Bob: optometrist, specializing in brain injury rehabilitation (recently retired)
Most proud of creating innovations in recovery of the visual areas of the brain. Instrumental in creating a visual hospital-based therapy for brain injured individuals.
Billie: registered nurse (retired for several years.), specializing in geriatric care and for training nursing assistants. also, an active volunteer.
Most proud of creating a “Nurses Guide to Vision” for geriatric nurses, while serving on the board of the American Foundation for Vision Awareness.
Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
Bob: Growing up in Bemidji, had a lot of friends, actively involved in Boy Scouts, involved in athletics , love the outdoors fishing, canoeing, camping, hiking
Billie: Growing up as a country kid on the Iron Range, was involved in activities centering around the township hall … 4-H, square dancing, ice skating … in high school band, church youth group, candy striper.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.cachelake.com
- Instagram: info@cachelake.com
- Facebook: 800-442-0852
