"In a growing number of grocery store chains in Kentucky, there is a brand of products with a Kentucky Proud logo sitting prominently on the shelves in the all-natural and organic aisles: Rebekah Grace.
Sporting a small image of the world with the logo "Healthy, Sensible and Always Natural," Rebekah Grace can be found on products from jams to relish and cookies to milk.
Though the variety of Rebekah Grace branded products might be new to the store shelves in many areas, it is a brand that goes back almost ten years ago to one couple's dream.
A brand concept
David King and Rebekah Grace developed the concept of a line of all-natural and organic products in the late 1990s. At that time David was working in the retail food industry and began to see a trend in the retail marketing industry toward organic products.
In the eyes of these two entrepreneurs who shared a love for the food industry, two major issues were emerging in the organic segment. First, there were a lot of producers creating healthy products who didn't know how to get those products to market. Second, retailers really wanted farm-fresh organic products, but they didn't want to deal with 50 vendors to have an organic line on their shelves.
That's when King and Grace decided to launch Rebekah Grace as an entity to take the organic, farm-fresh products to the retail outlets under a single label. Yet, like so many entrepreneurs that move into an emerging market, King and Grace struggled to get started.
"We invested a lot of our capital, time and energy into this dream, but we did not have the resources to reach the numbers to make it successful," explained King when talking about why the brand did not take off in 2000 when it was initially launched. "I also believe we were before our time in many ways; this was before organic and all-natural products were really mainstream."
Soon after the initial launch of the Rebekah Grace brand, King and Grace divorced. However, their dream of a Rebekah Grace brand remained.
"It's funny. Even after the divorce, the Rebekah Grace dream was there," said Grace. "In fact, it was more like our children wouldn't let us let go of the dream, because we all had the time and emotional capital invested in it."
A new direction
After the divorce, Grace went back to work and King looked at moving his career in a new direction. He called up an old business acquaintance, Keith Rogers, and Rogers pointed King toward Allied Food Marketers, a project that had recently been funded by the Agriculture Development Board.
After several meetings with Rick Raque, owner of Allied, and the other business partners, King accepted a job with the company. As Raque and King traveled the state meeting with farmers on behalf of Allied, they said they kept seeing a common theme among small producers. The producers wanted to take their product to the market but the cost of developing a market and brand was too high.
"Don't get me wrong — some value-added producers in the state had created the market and brand they wanted for their product," explained Raque. "But then there were those producers that wanted to focus on the production and didn't want to take on the time and cost of branding and marketing a product."
After weeks of meeting farmers facing the same obstacle, King told Raque that the Rebekah Grace brand, now owned solely by Rebekah Grace, was the key to helping these farmers. Raque admits he agreed to read the Rebekah Grace proposal to hopefully placate King and get him to quit talking about it. Four hours after Raque picked up the proposal he was convinced it would work, but it would take them much longer to convince the other partners at Allied.
"I went in and told my partner Scott (Norman) that Rebekah Grace was the missing piece of the puzzle we had been struggling with for months," said Raque. "I told him I know we might get criticized by some over this approach, but it is what the small producers needed."
After much deliberation, the Allied staff agreed to approach Rebekah Grace to develop a plan to redesign the concept to focus not just on all-natural and organic, but to also make sure the product line would focus on Kentucky products. So Grace came to the table with her company, Rebekah Grace Food and Supplements for Life, as a brand. David King developed his company, Kentucky Marketing Solutions, to be the exclusive sales and marketing arm for Rebekah Grace. Finally, the last piece was supplied by Allied, as the broker for Rebekah Grace.
In 2005, under the umbrella of Allied Food Marketers, Rebekah Grace was awarded $500,000 in ag development funds for sales, marketing and promotion of Kentucky products under the Rebekah Grace label. According to Raque, Rebekah Grace receives quarterly allocations of $125,000 and is required to show both Allied and the ag development board how those funds are impacting farm gate sales for Kentucky farmers.
"I knew that this time Rebekah Grace had the niche beyond all-natural and organic that would make it work," said King as he explained the relaunch of the brand. "This time we were focusing on Kentucky products that were not only high quality, but that would also have the local appeal, as Kentucky Proud, to build a brand across the state."
A brand line
"It was important for us to get a few key items in place as we re-launched Rebekah Grace," Grace said. "The jams and jellies came along quickly, but our big surprise and success was Schrock's milk.
Willis and Edna Schrock and their eight children are a Mennonite family who were looking for a way to stay on their dairy farm in Logan County. They decided to build their own bottling operation at the dairy, but they didn't have a strong marketing plan for the bottled milk."
"I simply wanted to milk the cows and not have to concentrate on selling and marketing the milk," said Willis Schrock. "Working with Rebekah Grace has allowed us to do that, plus they were able to get us more money than we originally thought possible for our half gallons."
Schrock's milk, which is sold as Rebekah Grace All-Natural Milk, is just one of the 150 products now in the Rebekah Grace line. Grace estimates that they are currently impacting over 50 farm families, and she believes that that number will continue to grow.
"We present Rebekah Grace to many of the farmers we meet with across the state," said Raque. "It isn't right for everyone, but we want to make sure that those (producers) with high-quality, all-natural or organic products know that this is an option to reach the marketplace."
With sales approaching $100,000 in November alone, it appears that Rebekah Grace products are building a foundation with Kentucky producers, a foundation that two dreamers hope will help to one day position Rebekah Grace as the Betty Crocker of all-natural and organic product lines.
"The market is now ready for our brand," Grace said. "In the last three years, 'buy local,' 'all natural' and 'organic' are the buzz words in retail, and Rebekah Grace has set the standard that reaches all three."