Cayo kitchen tries new food products

It will never be a threat to multinational food conglomerates like Kraft or Nestle…and if the truth must be told our own Marie Sharp looks like a giant in comparison. But even the queen of pepper sauce started off in her kitchen… and that’s exactly where I found the subject of the following story.

Shannon Harrison, Verena’s Healthy Home

“Like this, the mango wah bruk up on its own. You noh have to cut it up or blend it, it will break up naturally after heating for a while.”

Janelle Chanona, Reporting

From her kitchen at home, twenty-four year old Shannon Harrison has been cooking up a storm…today it’s mango syrup, but she also bottles honey, cooking oil and most recently, ketchup…under her brand Verena’s Healthy Home.

Shannon Harrison

“I think maybe people have the idea that it’s too hard to do or too complicated or maybe we are already so used to imported products that we feel it can’t be done in Belize or people are always saying that Belize products aren’t be good enough, they don’t have a good quality. But we are doing an excellent quality ketchup, and cooking oil and honey. It’s all good, people love it.”

But it is a lot of hard work… And there’s no disputing that this mother of two has her hands full. But her husband, Richard helps to keep her focus on the big picture.

Richard Harrison, Verena’s Healthy Home

“We are making a run for it. We are confident in what we are doing. We are dealing with big sections like tomato ketchup, vegetable oils, which are big segments. Belize imports millions of dollars of these products into the country and we believe that working along with our government that we can form a small niche that will allow us to grow quickly in the market and to a scale where our costs will be lower than our selling price.”

Yeah, you heard right…Verena’s has yet to break even, much less make a profit. But the Harrisons are convinced that if they stick with it, it’ll soon be sweet success.

Richard Harrison

“People have to eat. People have to eat food and everyday people buy food and these products that we are producing get imported into Belize on a daily basis. Not only on a daily basis, but also in large quantities.”

Shannon Harrison

“The part I enjoy the most is when I put on the final label on the product and it goes through the door and it doesn’t come back.”

So far their biggest clients have been restaurants who buy their products in bulk, but their retail lines are catching on fast and are stocked on store shelves across the country, prompting Verena’s to try their hands at some off the wall products as well…like Orchata.

Richard Harrison

“We put the rice, the hard rice, just clean it, wash it, no boil it nor lef it over night. Put it in the blender with a little bit ah water, it mash it up and that deh give you your rice paste.”

But like any small business there are challenges a-plenty. Prices for the raw honey have doubled. Harrison also contends that fluctuating standards and availability of local produce have forced him to import tomato paste by the drum from Mexico that he then mixes with around fifteen percent local tomatoes.

Richard Harrison

“The honey is all Belizean. In the ketchup, we’re using a lot of the sugar and the tomato solids, which are Belizean. With the vegetable oil, we intend to be fully Belizean when the soybean project comes on to stream…But overall the picture is that we use approximately fifty percent Belizean raw materials and about fifty percent imported raw materials.”

“With our ketchup for example, people are asking if we bring in Heinz in the big drums and we just bottle it. You know things like that because people accept our quality equivalent to the products, which have a high brand internationally. And that’s exactly where we want to go. We want to go right up there into the high quality end and provide it at a competitive price. In most cases our prices will not be lower, but they will be equal to the products that are being sold in Belize.”

Harrison says he plans to start bottling barbecue sauce, olive oil and vinegar in the very near future. If you would like to contact the Harrisons at Verena’s Healthy Home in San Ignacio the phone number is 824-4888.