🔒Nervous Nellie’s Jams & Jellies mixes food and art — and everything’s still made by hand

Anne and Peter Beerits, co-owners of Nervous Nellie's Jams & Jellies in Deer Isle, sell into a niche industry that keeps their business small, and they like it that way.

After all, the business, which started in 1984 using family money, is more than just selling jams and chutneys: Peter makes sculptures that dot the premises, helping draw visitors who in turn linger, tour the 375-square-foot factory, buy jams or art, snack in the coffee shop or browse the gift shop. The have two year-round employees, and five part-time seasonal employees.

A visit to Nervous Nellie's defines experiential buying. Pulling into the parking lot, the first sight is a large sculpture of a man and a woman drinking coffee on a deck outside a small cottage.

The Beerits sell 90% of what they produce in person, over the phone or via the Internet. They have one distributor, Nova Foods in Ellsworth, that puts their jams and chutneys into 15 small coastal specialty shops. That comprises less than 10% of sales. Total sales are around $400,000.

Mainebiz took a leisurely tour of the sculptures and kitchen, and talked to the owners over a scone with fresh-made raspberry jam. The edited transcript follows.

Mainebiz: How did the business start?

Peter Beerits: I went to art school to study sculpture, but I had to start making jam to make a living. I was barely making money and I did all the work. I'd pour six jars and cap them and pour another six jars and cap them. We finally hired a cook, Patty Heanssler, and I got back to sculpture. The sculptures are outside, so people would come and look at them and they'd stay longer and buy more jam. It became clear to me that having all these visuals and things you experienced was really helping business.

MB: Why the name?

PB: As a child I read comic books and watched cartoons, and the characters had funny names. So Nervous Nellie's Jams & Jellies was a funny name. For years everybody tried to talk me out of that name when I went to SCORE and CEI. They said you should have a name that sounds like you've been in business for 100 years.

MB: Originally you targeted the specialty foods market. What happened?

PB: I was doing trade shows and traveling. We sold in Macy's and Dean & DeLuca in New York. Unfortunately that's not a business model on which you can survive. As an afterthought, I put it in stores around here. Because people were just driving around Deer Isle looking for something to do, they would drop in to see the jelly being made. We were barely surviving in the early 1990s. The people showing up pulled us out of that lean period. If you sell almost every jar retail, you get to keep all the money. We make 40,000 to 50,000 jars per year of jams, chutneys and a hot pepper jelly.

MB: You also sell through inns and the Christmas catalog?

Anne Beerits: We'd be in trouble without the inn and the Christmas business. In October I send out a paper catalog to about 22,000 people. Christmas sales are about one-third of our business.

MB: So everything is handmade?

PB: We have a tapered jar which doesn't work well on a labeling machine. We do everything by hand. We're in an odd niche where people who make their own jams and jellies are either a farm stand or a huge company. The people in between go to a co-packer. I tried that. I brought my own ingredients and supervised things, but there was a huge kettle and it took hours to make the jam. The strawberry jam was brown. The co-packer was making other things like spiced mayonnaise and the flavors would creep in. It didn't work at all.

MB: What makes a good jam?

PB: Making it quickly and in small batches. The cooking time should be kept to a minimum. The longer you cook it, the flavor, nutrients and color all start to go.