🔒Kittery maker of dehydrated foods finds success with outdoor-focused retailers

When award-winning New York chef Jennifer Scism moved to Maine and began hiking and backpacking with husband David Koorits, she loved the outings, with one exception: the mushy, unpalatable packaged food.

So Scism, who has a tabletop dehydrator, experimented with recipes to make food that tasted good and would rehydrate into recognizable dishes. With the help of many taste-testing friends, she came up with four initial meals: herbed mushroom risotto, smoked three bean chili, Thai curry and classic marinara with penne, each in single- and double-portion sizes. The price is around $26 for four single-portion packets and $42 for four double-portion packets. The food, packaged in reclosable bags, has a two-year shelf life.

In 2014, she and David started Good To-Go, their Kittery-based dehydrated food company. Backed by $200,000 from family and friends, they had already formulated a business plan with help from the Maine Small Business Development Centers and business friends, set up a commercial kitchen, and got packaging, branding, and sales on target to start sales in April 2014. Today, the company they co-founded is selling to more than 320 stores coast-to-coast and in Hawaii and Alaska through REI, EMS and small outdoor-focused stores, plus directly on their website, which alone represents 20% of sales. Demand is so high they're turning away business until they can raise about $1 million and find space to expand their kitchen and business.

They expect sales of $500,000 by the end of this year, and a four-fold sales rise to $2 million by the end of 2016, when they also expect to at least double the current five full-time employees (which includes themselves). By the end of next year, they expect to expand the number of stores that sell their product to 800 in the United States, and possibly start selling into Canada and, later, Europe.

The company also plans to look beyond the outdoor market toward hospitals, the military and even quick lunches or dinners in cups for busy workers.

The couple talked about their plans recently from their kitchen, the air punctuated by the scent of “Thai curry day” cooking. An edited transcript follows.

Mainebiz: How did you get the idea for the company?

David Koorits: I did wilderness therapy, fought forest fires out west, ski patrolled and mountain guided. I grew up with parents who always had businesses. I currently work part-time as an ER nurse as we are starting this business.

Jennifer Scism: I worked for an architect in midtown Manhattan for four years, and then got laid off in the recession [in the 1990s]. I went to the French Culinary Institute in New York. [After jobs at several restaurants], Anita Lo and I started Annisa restaurant in 2000 in Greenwich Village. Everything was going great, but we had a fire in 2009. I met David in 2007. At that point I'd been in New York 23 years and it was time to try something else. I moved up here in 2010. David and I started hiking and backpacking. I was not really psyched with the food. We went sailing with friends and I brought some dehydrated food I made. People really liked it and suggested we should do this as a business.

MB: Why dehydrate rather than freeze-dry the food?

DK: With freeze-drying they cool the food to minus 30 degrees Celsius and then use a vacuum to pull out the moisture out. Then they typically combine the separate freeze-dried ingredients into a bag. We cook the entire meal together, heat it to 165 degrees Fahrenheit and then air dry it. Jen fully cooks these meals, so the flavors get to infuse, and she's an award-winning chef. Our competition just uses teams of food scientists.

JC: There's pros and cons to both. With freeze-drying, everything looks really pretty like bright green peas and orange carrots. Ours tends to look more shriveled. Freeze-dried foods come back faster when water is added, in 7-10 minutes, and ours takes 20 minutes. The reason we prefer dehydrating is freeze-drying breaks down the cell structure so that when you add the hot water, it becomes mushy. When you rehydrate ours, it comes back with chew.

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