Today we’d like to introduce you to Pamela Powell.
Hi Pamela, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story. Tell me about how Salad Girl got started.
When I was 15 years old, I began my first job in the food industry at a small, northern Minnesota resort kitchen during the Summer. I started out as a dishwasher, and with hard work and a bit of luck, by the end of the Summer, I was promoted to being the Salad Girl! That was the beginning of my fifty-year love affair with making beautiful salads.
My fresh food prep skills allowed me a steady income while attending art school and when working as a freelance artist. In the 80’s my husband, Jim, and I ran an organic and natural food catering company on weekends to save to buy a little house in Mahtomedi. My favorite part of the catering business was designing beautiful, seasonal salads.
My knack for designing fresh, delicious & uniquely flavored, seasonal dressings (made without preservatives and not cooked) was my forte! The dressings became a hit at the parties we served, and when folks began to request extra bottles of dressing after our gigs, I truly began to dream of someday bringing my own line of freshly made, cold-blended, uniquely flavored, certified organic salad dressings to the marketplace.
In 2006, our family-owned interior and exterior house painting and design business started to take a hit from the housing bubble crisis. For the first time in 15 years, neither one of us had any painting nor mural jobs lined up. Paint store employees, decorators and designers we had worked with for years and years were all of a sudden out of jobs. It was the beginning of a recession, and we needed to make a plan. We decided it may be the perfect time to pivot our energy into bringing my organic salad dressings to market.
Fortunately, the timing was perfect. One of my very last mural jobs was handpainting an Italian frieze in the kitchen of a lovely White Bear Lake family who happen to own a beautiful Twin Cities chain of boutique grocery stores called Kowalski’s Markets.
As I was cleaning up my paints and brushes, I took a chance and asked Jim and Mary Anne Kowalski how a food entrepreneur would get their products onto the shelves of their markets? Mary Anne Kowalski laughed and graciously set up an appointment for me to pitch my fresh organic dressings to Teri Bennis, the director of new products.
Teri loved my concept of putting a certified organic line of fresh dressings for fresh greens into their refrigerated produce area right next to the salad fixings! Teri assured me there would be a spot on the shelf for me as soon as I figured out how to make enough fresh dressings to fill their shelves consistently for all their stores.
So in 2007, at the beginning of the recession, Jim and I (both in our 50’s) took a crazy leap of faith and brought four salad dressings to the Mill City farmers market as a test market. We named our little Mom & Pop company “Salad Girl” in honor of my first job in the food industry. The first weekend at the Mill City Market we brought 100 bottles with us, and we sold out in an hour. As the weeks went on, we scaled up production and kept selling out!
We started getting great reviews from Rick Nelson, food critic at the Star Tribune, as well as Kathy Jenkins, a food critic at the Pioneer Press. Soon area Co-ops and other local Twin Cities grocery stores started asking for Salad Girl to be on their shelves.
By 2008, Salad Girl filled the refrigerated produce shelves of all Kowalski’s Markets and began to grow into all of the area Co-ops, Lunds and Byerlys stores, Festival Foods, Midwest Whole Foods Markets and Super Targets, Coborns Grocery stores, Cub Foods, Jerry’s Markets, and metro Hy-Vee stores. Now, 15 years later we are on the refrigerated produce shelves of more than 450 stores throughout the Midwest!
What makes Salad Girl unique?
We designed our dressings to be made fresh & refrigerated, not cooked like all of the shelf stable, bottled dressings. Salad Girl is made only with the finest & freshest organic ingredients, and they are sustainably processed with a cold blending method (using a big whisk and cold kettle) instead of thermal processing. This cold blended method maintains the nutrients of the organic ingredients as well as preserving our fresh, homemade, just-whisked flavor. Other unique qualities of our dressings — they make amazing finishing sauces, marinades, dips, and condiments along with all varieties being gluten-free and dairy-free.
Do you have a personal favorite dressing out of your lineup?
Being a seasonal foodie, I purposely designed each flavor with special seasonal usage in mind. Salad Girl’s Lemony Herb Vinaigrette lends itself perfectly as a light, fresh, tangy marinade with my asparagus, as a dipping sauce for artichoke leaves, or as a dressing to drizzle upon a beautiful Spring salad full of radishes, fresh peas, pea shoots, paper thin rings of vidalia onion, ramps, sugar snap peas… For Summer salads, I am in love with fresh berries and greens so of course our Blueberry Basil Vinaigrette shines, and of course, there is no such thing as a Slaw without Salad Girl’s Sweet & Sassy dairy-free, creamy dressing. I could go on and on. It’s easier to go to saladgirl.com to check out all the beautiful, seasonal salad recipes online.
Anything new in the works that you can share with our readers?
We are in the process of switching out the local honey for organic fruit juice in more of our flavors to satisfy the growing need for more vegan options. Soon all of our vinaigrettes will be totally vegan.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
We began Salad Girl out both a dream and necessity during the 2008 recession and have persevered through the pandemic years. Bumpy roads are just part of the gig. We pivot as needed and fortunately are graced with persistance. Covid has been extremely difficult for folks like us since we have not been able to use our tried and true marketing program that involves live demos in stores. Demos are the most important way to gain new customers and maintain the old. Customers try it, they buy it, and many say you’ll only find Salad Girl (multiple flavors) in their fridge.
Currently, inflation and supply chain issues are the biggest challenges we are facing – ingredient costs are rising and availability of ingredients, bottles, labels, etc… is unpredictable.
We’ve been impressed with Salad Girl Organic Dressings Company, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
We designed our dressings and our company with our core beliefs in mind: We believe eating fresh, organic goodness benefits us individually, communally, and environmentally. We are committed to bringing healthy, safe, and tasty organic products to our customers tables. Our fresh, organic, cold-blended dressings are never cooked, never heated to optimize the nutrients and flavors of our organic ingredients as well as preserving our fresh, homemade, just-whisked flavor!
Alright so before we go can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
We love to collaborate! Because of Covid, social media has become a great way for us to connect with salad lovers, Salad Girl fans, potential new customers, and other small, Midwest companies. We love to share Social Karma – just reach out on saladgirl.com.
Pricing:
- Each bottle of Salad Girl is approx. 5.99
Contact Info:
- Email: saladgirlinc@comcast.net
- Website: www.saladgirl.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/thesaladgirl/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesaladgirlpampowell
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/1saladgirl
