"I make everything to order, and I always will," says Jack Aronson, founder and president of the Ferndale-based Garden Fresh, maker of salsa, hummus, tortilla chips and dips.
"We're making some pretty good food out of here. I want to make great food here that tastes 30 days from now as good as it does today."
He already is, judging by meteoric growth that represents American entrepreneurialism at its very best, writes Daniel Howes in the Detroit News.
In a nondescript industrial zone on Bonner just south of Nine Mile, is a company whose founder has no formal culinary training but is nonetheless building a foodie powerhouse attractive enough to fire the predatory interests of PepsiCo and Nestle, among others that tried to buy it.
No sale, for now. Garden Fresh, founded in 1997 in the back of Aronson's Clubhouse Bar-B-Q on Woodward near Eight Mile, is on track to book $100 million in revenue this year, up from $4.6 million in 2002. The company controls 31 percent of the nation's fresh salsa market through its own brands and private-label manufacturing.
