November 14, 2005
Spice of life | A women-oriented nonprofit looks to seasonings as a way to boost funding and enhance services
By Jeffrey Bouley
Shalom Odokara is thinking big. Her Portland nonprofit organization, Women in Need Industries, serves women in difficult transitions, whether they are displaced from their home nations because of civil war or other strife, fleeing from an abusive household or laid off from jobs they cannot live without and cannot easily replace. Since 1995, when Odokara founded the organization in Washington, D.C., WINI has provide resources and services to these women and their children to help them with financial self-sufficiency and personal independence.
WINI's services range from acting as a clearinghouse where women can go for the latest information on jobs and housing ˆ and be sure someone can talk to them in their own language ˆ to providing advocacy services and day-to-day needs like clothing or a ride to the doctor's office. Now, Odokara intends to have WINI play a much more direct role in helping these women find stability. Through Many Hands Industries, the nascent for-profit subsidiary of WINI, Odokara plans to own and operate a spice-production business in which women in transition can work. In addition, she plans to provide affordable housing nearby for those who need it, and to run an on-site daycare facility as well.
While these ventures will serve WINI's clients, they'll also create a revenue stream that can fund WINI's other programs. "The genesis of this whole idea is that in looking into women's life needs, especially those we serve, we have found that it's not always just about finding a job but sometimes more about issues like quality affordable daycare and affordable housing," Odokara says.
WINI has already leased a 5,000-square-foot office/factory space on Rodman Road in Auburn to house the manufacturing facility temporarily; a deal for a nearby 2.3-acre property on Manley Road that would house the permanent facility was expected to close this month, Odokara says. Another 10,000 sq. ft. of city-owned land nearby might be used for the housing and daycare. Odokara estimates that WINI will need $1.5 million to finish phase one of the MHI project; the organization, she says, is roughly halfway to that funding mark. (Roland Miller, Auburn's economic development director, says the city could contribute as much as $100,000 to the project via a federal affordable housing grant program.) The factory space is scheduled to be operational by the end of the year, but Odokara says she is confident she can secure the funding in time.
Although the market is hot for spices and seasonings and both Odokara and Miller think the project is promising, much remains to be done, both logistically and financially, to get Many Hands Industries off the ground ˆ and no one can predict what will happen between now and when MHI's first spice samples go out in the spring and summer of 2006.
"So much is going on right now," Odokara said in the last week of October. "We're closing on property and doing title searches and planning the build-out of our factory and trying to determine all the certifications we will need. It's almost overwhelming, and we also have to run a nonprofit organization at the same time. But I really think this is the way to go to sustain ourselves and provide additional resources for those we serve, because resources are becoming more scarce, but our clientele is not."
Market forces
Odokara, who was born in this country to Nigerian parents, worked for various multinational organizations, including the World Bank Group and Mobil Oil, before founding WINI. She moved WINI to Portland in 2002. Since then, the organization has served women from a wide range of mostly African and Asian countries, such as Somalia, Sudan and Cambodia; Odokara notes that 90% of WINI's clients are U.S. citizens. She says the organization has been very successful, already at its 10-year goals in Maine despite only having been here a few years. Still, like other nonprofits nationwide, WINI has had an increasingly difficult time securing federal and state funding, private grants and individual donations ˆ thus the idea of a for-profit subsidiary to help bolster the bottom line.
That part of WINI's concept isn't new. But what is unique about Many Hands Industries, according to Odokara, is the fact that it will combine employment for the women WINI serves with a nearby apartment building aimed at helping to house women with children who need help. These are women, Odokara says, who don't necessarily have the resources to pay market-rate housing. More importantly, they may not have the means to afford transportation to commute to a job, something that will be irrelevant if they live in the building and work at the MHI spice factory. The plan is to start with seven employees and grow to 15 by the end of 2006. And Odokara says the women won't have to worry about where to put their children during the work hours since, if everything goes according to plan, a daycare operation that can accommodate up to 100 children will be located near the factory and housing.
"What Shalom is doing is not just helping people out and promoting good public sector work," says Miller, who is working closely with Odokara on the project. "She is creating what she hopes will be a model that can be used elsewhere as well ˆ something that would be eagerly embraced by agencies responsible for delivering services to people in need in Maine and the rest of the country."
For that to happen, though, the factory needs to take off. Odokara is secure in the notion that she and her staff have done their homework and picked the right kind of business, the right market and the right location. "We picked doing spices because it's an area I'm well experienced in and it doesn't need a lot of manufacturing," she explains, noting that her World Bank experience included helping to set up farm co-ops in various countries. In addition to helping women in those co-ops secure funds and develop marketing plans, Odokara says she has a very personal connection to seasonings, coming from a culture that uses spices heavily. "We needed something that was almost like a finished good already that we could quickly process and package."
She notes that the market for spices is $1.5 billion in the United States alone. MHI will begin by marketing curry, hot red pepper, nutmeg and vanilla beans, in part because these spices are often grown by women.
MHI is aiming for the high-end spice market, which is a fairly small market segment but an important one, Odokara says. For one thing, the spices MHI will focus on tend to be organic, which cost more but also have more market appeal with the customers in one of the three groups MHI is targeting: urban professionals aged 25 to 60, with an income of at least $50,000 per year, who enjoy eating ethnic foods and shopping in specialty food stores or online.
In addition, the company will go after baby boomers in general because, as they are reaching retirement, their taste buds are becoming less acute, Odokara says, and they are craving spicier, more flavorful food ˆ as well as perhaps eating lower-salt, lower-fat food for health reasons and needing spices to compensate. Finally, the third group of potential customers would be immigrants from Asian, Latin, African and Caribbean countries who demand authentic, superior quality culinary spices, Odokara says.
The effort may face some challenges, says Cheryl Deem, executive director of the American Spice Trade Association in Washington, D.C., as getting on store shelves in particular can come with a hefty price tag. While Deem declines to comment on the viability of the MHI business, she does note that the rapid growth in Asian and Hispanic population over the past two decades or so, among other factors, has helped boost the spice and seasoning market significantly.
"As the population changes, you see the influences from ethnic cuisines start to work their way into our culture," Deem says. "You see those influences not only on restaurant menus but also prepared foods, like chipotle-flavored mayonnaise and more and more Asian-influenced rice and pasta dishes."
Step by step
Many Hands Industries is expected to progress in two phases. Phase one will involve the startup portion of the spice project as well as the housing and daycare facilities, and will accommodate the company for the first three years of growth. Startup costs for the first year of this three-year cycle are expected to be $320,000, with a total cost for phase one of $1.5 million.
Phase two of the project will involve the development of a campus consisting of a light manufacturing facility of about 25,000 sq. ft., with offices for lease, a conference center and commercial kitchen, a greenhouse and additional daycare and housing space. This phase of the project, which also is expected to be located in Auburn, will require 12 to 20 acres of land; development costs are expected to range from $5 million to $10 million, according to Odokara.
MHI will, in the temporary factory space for phase one and the larger space for phase two, repackage spices for the wholesale and high-end market, including specialty food retailers, health food stores and restaurants. In addition, Many Hands Industries will sell directly to consumers through mail order and the company website, which is still in the planning stages.
"I think the spice category is a great one for them to choose," says Denise Shoukas, communications director for the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade, pointing out that the spice and seasoning market grew more than eight percent from 2003 to 2004. She also thinks that Odokara's plan to get into chef-owned restaurants could be an effective marketing angle, particularly if patrons know that MHI is the source of the spices in their meals.
The Good Hope Child Care Center will offer daycare services for children between the ages of six weeks and five years to employees of MHI, but also to the broader Auburn community.
The housing aspect of the project will include both affordable and market-rate rental units. WINI has obtained $250,000 from the Region II Homeless Council to fund this initiative, along with the potential $100,000 through the city of Auburn, to provide multi-family housing to up to eight families each year in two- and three-bedroom units. The housing initiative's success will be measured according to the following goals: a 95% occupancy rate and 75% of tenants obtaining work or enrolling in full-time education while they are in the housing.
"The plan is a good one, and we have high hopes it will all come together," Miller says. "When we first started talking with Shalom, she was talking about the housing and daycare and we were interested in that, of course, from a public service standpoint. But when she also talked about bringing employment into the mix, that really closed the loop and sold us on the idea. It was a sustainable model, and that's what we are always looking for in developing this kind of project."
Odokara, though, hopes to do even more. "We are planning a cooking show on public access television to start in January and a Web marketing campaign," she says. "We are really pursuing multiple avenues for this. More than that, we don't just want to sell the products; we plan to educate people on where the spices come from, how they were grown, who grew them and such. This is not just about supporting WINI financially, but also carrying out our larger mission to women and their families."
WINI's services range from acting as a clearinghouse where women can go for the latest information on jobs and housing ˆ and be sure someone can talk to them in their own language ˆ to providing advocacy services and day-to-day needs like clothing or a ride to the doctor's office. Now, Odokara intends to have WINI play a much more direct role in helping these women find stability. Through Many Hands Industries, the nascent for-profit subsidiary of WINI, Odokara plans to own and operate a spice-production business in which women in transition can work. In addition, she plans to provide affordable housing nearby for those who need it, and to run an on-site daycare facility as well.
While these ventures will serve WINI's clients, they'll also create a revenue stream that can fund WINI's other programs. "The genesis of this whole idea is that in looking into women's life needs, especially those we serve, we have found that it's not always just about finding a job but sometimes more about issues like quality affordable daycare and affordable housing," Odokara says.
WINI has already leased a 5,000-square-foot office/factory space on Rodman Road in Auburn to house the manufacturing facility temporarily; a deal for a nearby 2.3-acre property on Manley Road that would house the permanent facility was expected to close this month, Odokara says. Another 10,000 sq. ft. of city-owned land nearby might be used for the housing and daycare. Odokara estimates that WINI will need $1.5 million to finish phase one of the MHI project; the organization, she says, is roughly halfway to that funding mark. (Roland Miller, Auburn's economic development director, says the city could contribute as much as $100,000 to the project via a federal affordable housing grant program.) The factory space is scheduled to be operational by the end of the year, but Odokara says she is confident she can secure the funding in time.
Although the market is hot for spices and seasonings and both Odokara and Miller think the project is promising, much remains to be done, both logistically and financially, to get Many Hands Industries off the ground ˆ and no one can predict what will happen between now and when MHI's first spice samples go out in the spring and summer of 2006.
"So much is going on right now," Odokara said in the last week of October. "We're closing on property and doing title searches and planning the build-out of our factory and trying to determine all the certifications we will need. It's almost overwhelming, and we also have to run a nonprofit organization at the same time. But I really think this is the way to go to sustain ourselves and provide additional resources for those we serve, because resources are becoming more scarce, but our clientele is not."
Market forces
Odokara, who was born in this country to Nigerian parents, worked for various multinational organizations, including the World Bank Group and Mobil Oil, before founding WINI. She moved WINI to Portland in 2002. Since then, the organization has served women from a wide range of mostly African and Asian countries, such as Somalia, Sudan and Cambodia; Odokara notes that 90% of WINI's clients are U.S. citizens. She says the organization has been very successful, already at its 10-year goals in Maine despite only having been here a few years. Still, like other nonprofits nationwide, WINI has had an increasingly difficult time securing federal and state funding, private grants and individual donations ˆ thus the idea of a for-profit subsidiary to help bolster the bottom line.
That part of WINI's concept isn't new. But what is unique about Many Hands Industries, according to Odokara, is the fact that it will combine employment for the women WINI serves with a nearby apartment building aimed at helping to house women with children who need help. These are women, Odokara says, who don't necessarily have the resources to pay market-rate housing. More importantly, they may not have the means to afford transportation to commute to a job, something that will be irrelevant if they live in the building and work at the MHI spice factory. The plan is to start with seven employees and grow to 15 by the end of 2006. And Odokara says the women won't have to worry about where to put their children during the work hours since, if everything goes according to plan, a daycare operation that can accommodate up to 100 children will be located near the factory and housing.
"What Shalom is doing is not just helping people out and promoting good public sector work," says Miller, who is working closely with Odokara on the project. "She is creating what she hopes will be a model that can be used elsewhere as well ˆ something that would be eagerly embraced by agencies responsible for delivering services to people in need in Maine and the rest of the country."
For that to happen, though, the factory needs to take off. Odokara is secure in the notion that she and her staff have done their homework and picked the right kind of business, the right market and the right location. "We picked doing spices because it's an area I'm well experienced in and it doesn't need a lot of manufacturing," she explains, noting that her World Bank experience included helping to set up farm co-ops in various countries. In addition to helping women in those co-ops secure funds and develop marketing plans, Odokara says she has a very personal connection to seasonings, coming from a culture that uses spices heavily. "We needed something that was almost like a finished good already that we could quickly process and package."
She notes that the market for spices is $1.5 billion in the United States alone. MHI will begin by marketing curry, hot red pepper, nutmeg and vanilla beans, in part because these spices are often grown by women.
MHI is aiming for the high-end spice market, which is a fairly small market segment but an important one, Odokara says. For one thing, the spices MHI will focus on tend to be organic, which cost more but also have more market appeal with the customers in one of the three groups MHI is targeting: urban professionals aged 25 to 60, with an income of at least $50,000 per year, who enjoy eating ethnic foods and shopping in specialty food stores or online.
In addition, the company will go after baby boomers in general because, as they are reaching retirement, their taste buds are becoming less acute, Odokara says, and they are craving spicier, more flavorful food ˆ as well as perhaps eating lower-salt, lower-fat food for health reasons and needing spices to compensate. Finally, the third group of potential customers would be immigrants from Asian, Latin, African and Caribbean countries who demand authentic, superior quality culinary spices, Odokara says.
The effort may face some challenges, says Cheryl Deem, executive director of the American Spice Trade Association in Washington, D.C., as getting on store shelves in particular can come with a hefty price tag. While Deem declines to comment on the viability of the MHI business, she does note that the rapid growth in Asian and Hispanic population over the past two decades or so, among other factors, has helped boost the spice and seasoning market significantly.
"As the population changes, you see the influences from ethnic cuisines start to work their way into our culture," Deem says. "You see those influences not only on restaurant menus but also prepared foods, like chipotle-flavored mayonnaise and more and more Asian-influenced rice and pasta dishes."
Step by step
Many Hands Industries is expected to progress in two phases. Phase one will involve the startup portion of the spice project as well as the housing and daycare facilities, and will accommodate the company for the first three years of growth. Startup costs for the first year of this three-year cycle are expected to be $320,000, with a total cost for phase one of $1.5 million.
Phase two of the project will involve the development of a campus consisting of a light manufacturing facility of about 25,000 sq. ft., with offices for lease, a conference center and commercial kitchen, a greenhouse and additional daycare and housing space. This phase of the project, which also is expected to be located in Auburn, will require 12 to 20 acres of land; development costs are expected to range from $5 million to $10 million, according to Odokara.
MHI will, in the temporary factory space for phase one and the larger space for phase two, repackage spices for the wholesale and high-end market, including specialty food retailers, health food stores and restaurants. In addition, Many Hands Industries will sell directly to consumers through mail order and the company website, which is still in the planning stages.
"I think the spice category is a great one for them to choose," says Denise Shoukas, communications director for the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade, pointing out that the spice and seasoning market grew more than eight percent from 2003 to 2004. She also thinks that Odokara's plan to get into chef-owned restaurants could be an effective marketing angle, particularly if patrons know that MHI is the source of the spices in their meals.
The Good Hope Child Care Center will offer daycare services for children between the ages of six weeks and five years to employees of MHI, but also to the broader Auburn community.
The housing aspect of the project will include both affordable and market-rate rental units. WINI has obtained $250,000 from the Region II Homeless Council to fund this initiative, along with the potential $100,000 through the city of Auburn, to provide multi-family housing to up to eight families each year in two- and three-bedroom units. The housing initiative's success will be measured according to the following goals: a 95% occupancy rate and 75% of tenants obtaining work or enrolling in full-time education while they are in the housing.
"The plan is a good one, and we have high hopes it will all come together," Miller says. "When we first started talking with Shalom, she was talking about the housing and daycare and we were interested in that, of course, from a public service standpoint. But when she also talked about bringing employment into the mix, that really closed the loop and sold us on the idea. It was a sustainable model, and that's what we are always looking for in developing this kind of project."
Odokara, though, hopes to do even more. "We are planning a cooking show on public access television to start in January and a Web marketing campaign," she says. "We are really pursuing multiple avenues for this. More than that, we don't just want to sell the products; we plan to educate people on where the spices come from, how they were grown, who grew them and such. This is not just about supporting WINI financially, but also carrying out our larger mission to women and their families."
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