The story from a post on The Straight Dope message board. Found thanks to DocJon.
I bought some. I tried it on various items from a Steak&Cheese to Corn on the Cob. All were a hit.
It is heavenly on mashed potatoes. It is not the God of all spices but I will use a lot, it is good...it is very good, enough said 🙂
==========================================================
Here's the story within this thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showth...age=1&pp=50
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Bacon Salt: because everything should taste like bacon
Zero fat, zero calories, bacon flavor. Hot new Seattle condiment is causing a stir
By RODGER NICHOLS
of The Chronicle
It's a classic American story. A couple of guys have a dream, tinker in their spare time, get a key lucky break, persevere, and invent/discover/perfect the Next Big Thing.
The two guys in this case are Dave Lefkow, 34, and Justin Esch, 29, both of Seattle, and the next big thing is... Bacon Salt.
Yes, a seasoning that imparts bacon flavor. Really, really good bacon flavor, according to dozens of online testimonials. And Bacon Salt has zero calories, zero fat, zero carbs, and zero meat content, so vegetarians can indulge.
What's more, is it has less than half the sodium (150mg per gram) than standard salt (393mg) or even Morton Lite Salt (207mg.)
It's even kosher, which offers Jews and Muslims a whole new taste.
It's a classic why-didn't-I-think-of-that? product that's been on the market by word of mouth (and blog and message board) less than two weeks and sold more than 1,000 bottles.
And none of that would have been possible without the help of Lefkow's three-year-old, Dean. The family recorded a video of the boy hitting a T-ball into his dad's face. That video was picked in a random drawing from America's Funniest Home Videos, winning $5,000.
"That was the seed money for Bacon Salt," Lefkow said in a phone interview Tuesday. "I still owe Dean several thousand dollars for that."
Lefkow credits Justin Esch, a co-worker at a Seattle software company, with the idea.
"When I heard it, I said 'We've got to get on this and get it going right away.'"
That was in mid-January. By February the two were deep in research, and Bacon Salt, in three varieties â regular, pepper, and hickory â was trademarked and ready to roll out in mid-July.
Advertising was by word-of-mouth and on the company website, www.baconsalt.com.
From there, it was picked up by a poster on the Straight Dope Message Board, a lively discussion board based on the Straight Dope syndicated column from the Chicago Reader. (Motto: Fighting ignorance since 1973. It's taking longer than we thought.)
"I learned about this five minutes ago," wrote a poster known as Asimovian. "Four minutes and thirty seconds ago, I placed my first order."
The thread has generated, as of Wednesday morning, more than 333 responses, and has been viewed by more than 13,0000 people, most of whom have been wildly enthusiastic.
"Exactly why wasn't this on the national news?" one poster asked.
And when one doubter asked why people would want everything to taste like bacon, the poster known as Cervaise replied, "Okay, let me see if I can explain it to you. You can make food... that is not bacon... taste like... bacon. I hope that clears things up."
Cervaise, who lives in Seattle, was also one of the first to acquire a supply of Bacon Salt, conduct cooking tests, and review the product.
"Bacon Salt is far better than any artificial bacon bit product I've ever had," he wrote. "There's a care to the flavor balances I don't get from the ordinary fake stuff. If this is nothing but an artificial bacon bit, it's the best artificial bacon bit I've ever had. This stuff has punch and character. There's real personality here."
The response has been huge, according to Lefkow. "We've gotten tons of orders from the Straight Dope," he said. "I came from the social media phase and understand the power and potential of those types of sites and what they can do for companies. I think it makes it easier for people to tell a good product like this instead of something that's just a bunch of hype and fluff."
Lefkow acknowledges that Bacon Salt is an underdog in the world of spice marketing.
"The big spice companies, they come out with something, they've got a $20 to $30 million marketing budget behind it. We've got 5,000 bucks from America's Funniest Home Videos."
But Lefkow also noted the Internet offers more chances for startups. "If the software world has shown anything," he said, "it's that the rules of business have changed, you can be scrappy and do things in a guerrilla type of way versus the way everybody else thinks it needs to be done.
"I can think we can make a really good run at it."
The following is the full version of an e-mail question and answer exchange conducted Tuesday, July 31 with Dave Lefkov of Bacon Salt.
Q: In "our story" on your website, you talk about working for a small technology company. I'm assuming that does't mean a food technology company. Did either of you have a background as either a chef or chemist?
A: We both love food, but we've never done anything remotely like this in our lives. Some people thought we were crazy (and many still do), but we knew that there was an army of bacon lovers out there who were ready for this.
Q: Did you hire our the concocting or do it yourself?
A:Bacon Salt was not built in a day. We've had lots of help with everything we've done.
Q: Is there a Secret Ingredient™?
A: Love (of bacon) is the secret ingredient.
Q: What was it like getting kosher approval? Were the rabbis shocked,
amused, sympathetic?
A: Rabbi Londinski and Bacon Salt are cool. We think he was actually pretty amused by the whole thing. Other people we've talked to in the kosher food industry have said that they love it and can't wait to carry it, so this is actually a big market for us.
Q: Which was the hardest part to get? The real bacon flavor, the zero calories, or something else?
A: We actually didn't go into this trying for a zero calorie, zero fat, vegetarian and kosher-certified gourmet seasoning - we just wanted to create a seasoning that tasted "like the smell of delicious bacon frying on a Sunday morning" (exactly how we phrased it in our original business plan). That taste is the hardest thing to replicate, as you need the right mix of savory, smoky and a little bit spicy to make it really taste like great bacon. The zero calorie and zero fat aspect just sort of happened, so we ran with it!
We definitely had our share of misses in the beginning. For example, we started with three flavors, Original, Hickory and Maple. The maple flavor really tasted too sweet for our taste, although we get requests for it every now and then so maybe it will be a seasonal thing. So we decided to develop a Peppered flavor instead, and that's been a really big hit.
Q: Have you quit your day jobs yet?
A: Dave still does some consulting work, although he's scaled back dramatically and recently had to turn a big Fortune 500 company away because "I launched this Bacon Salt thing that's taking over the world." Justin still works at the technology company we hatched this whole scheme at.
Q: Which foods have customers found to add Bacon Salt to that you never imagined?
A: Bacon Salt is outstanding on grilled meats, fish, vegetables, salads and a wide variety of everyday food items. Everything really should taste like bacon.
One guy recently sent us a picture of Bacon Salt on watermelon, which he said was "amazing" and had a similar appeal as Mexican candy, sweet and spicy. Dave's father in law likes it on ice cream, although Dave definitely doesn't care for that. Justin likes it with his tequila shots and bloody marys. In terms of pleasant surprises, corn on the cob with Hickory Bacon Salt was a revelation for us, as were mashed potatoes. J&D's Bacon Salt on bacon itself (initially tried as a joke at a tasting party) was described by a local Seattle chef as delicious and like "bacon on steroids."
Q: What's been the biggest surprise so far?
A: "Soft launching" Bacon Salt to a group of about 200 family and friends and getting over 1,000 orders in 2 weeks from all over the place. We thought we'd get 40 or 50 orders in our first week, and we ended up with over 600 of them. And we've gotten orders from all over the world - the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland and Norway.
Q: New York Magazine food critic Josh Ozersky (known in other circles as Mr. Cutlet) said that, after hundreds of years of delicious history, bacon has now "jumped the shark." What about Bacon Salt did Mr. Ozersky fail to understand? Do you have a message for him?
A: We love Mr. Cutlets. Like us, he also loves meat products and the taste of great bacon. He's written extensively on the subject. If he loves meat as much as he says he does, we think he'll come around and realize that we can all use a little Bacon Salt in our lives. He has samples now and has agreed to try it out on a bunch of things.
Q: Will success spoil you, and will you have to seek refuge from the paparazzi?
A: We don't know of many pork industry titans that are stalked by the paparazzi, so we think we're pretty safe there.
Q: Is there any question are you are dying to have us ask?
A: Our top 5 favorite foods with Bacon Salt are:
1. Everything.
2. Everything.
3. Everything.
4. Everything.
5. Everything.
You really can't go wrong.
Q: It looks as if the news about Bacon Salt has gone viral. Are you going
to be able to ramp up production for the demand?
A: We knew this could be big, so we have suppliers lined up that can hit any capacity imaginable. We're doing a run of 100,000 containers at the end of this month, and have the ability to do millions a month when people are ready to fully embrace their inner bacon-lovers.
Q: Any famous chefs signed on yet? How about famous chefs who are secretly
using Bacon Salt?
A: A close personal friend of ours named Beau Guthrie is a respected gourmet chef in the San Francisco area, and he donated several of his favorite Bacon Salt recipes to our website. We can't tell you the name of the restaurant, but if you went there, you'd think everything was delicious.
Our first Seattle area restaurant is going to launch in the next month - they're unbelievably excited about putting Bacon Salt on the menu, and the chef is going to do some amazing things with it. We'll have more on that soon!
Q: Any grooming tips for your fans?
A: Wear some Bacon Salt merchandise! It's a hip and fashionable way to display your love of pork-flavored products, and for sale on our website - with all of our proceeds going to Mercy Corps, a charitable organization that helps alleviate suffering worldwide.
I bought some. I tried it on various items from a Steak&Cheese to Corn on the Cob. All were a hit.
It is heavenly on mashed potatoes. It is not the God of all spices but I will use a lot, it is good...it is very good, enough said 🙂
==========================================================
Here's the story within this thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showth...age=1&pp=50
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Bacon Salt: because everything should taste like bacon
Zero fat, zero calories, bacon flavor. Hot new Seattle condiment is causing a stir
By RODGER NICHOLS
of The Chronicle
It's a classic American story. A couple of guys have a dream, tinker in their spare time, get a key lucky break, persevere, and invent/discover/perfect the Next Big Thing.
The two guys in this case are Dave Lefkow, 34, and Justin Esch, 29, both of Seattle, and the next big thing is... Bacon Salt.
Yes, a seasoning that imparts bacon flavor. Really, really good bacon flavor, according to dozens of online testimonials. And Bacon Salt has zero calories, zero fat, zero carbs, and zero meat content, so vegetarians can indulge.
What's more, is it has less than half the sodium (150mg per gram) than standard salt (393mg) or even Morton Lite Salt (207mg.)
It's even kosher, which offers Jews and Muslims a whole new taste.
It's a classic why-didn't-I-think-of-that? product that's been on the market by word of mouth (and blog and message board) less than two weeks and sold more than 1,000 bottles.
And none of that would have been possible without the help of Lefkow's three-year-old, Dean. The family recorded a video of the boy hitting a T-ball into his dad's face. That video was picked in a random drawing from America's Funniest Home Videos, winning $5,000.
"That was the seed money for Bacon Salt," Lefkow said in a phone interview Tuesday. "I still owe Dean several thousand dollars for that."
Lefkow credits Justin Esch, a co-worker at a Seattle software company, with the idea.
"When I heard it, I said 'We've got to get on this and get it going right away.'"
That was in mid-January. By February the two were deep in research, and Bacon Salt, in three varieties â regular, pepper, and hickory â was trademarked and ready to roll out in mid-July.
Advertising was by word-of-mouth and on the company website, www.baconsalt.com.
From there, it was picked up by a poster on the Straight Dope Message Board, a lively discussion board based on the Straight Dope syndicated column from the Chicago Reader. (Motto: Fighting ignorance since 1973. It's taking longer than we thought.)
"I learned about this five minutes ago," wrote a poster known as Asimovian. "Four minutes and thirty seconds ago, I placed my first order."
The thread has generated, as of Wednesday morning, more than 333 responses, and has been viewed by more than 13,0000 people, most of whom have been wildly enthusiastic.
"Exactly why wasn't this on the national news?" one poster asked.
And when one doubter asked why people would want everything to taste like bacon, the poster known as Cervaise replied, "Okay, let me see if I can explain it to you. You can make food... that is not bacon... taste like... bacon. I hope that clears things up."
Cervaise, who lives in Seattle, was also one of the first to acquire a supply of Bacon Salt, conduct cooking tests, and review the product.
"Bacon Salt is far better than any artificial bacon bit product I've ever had," he wrote. "There's a care to the flavor balances I don't get from the ordinary fake stuff. If this is nothing but an artificial bacon bit, it's the best artificial bacon bit I've ever had. This stuff has punch and character. There's real personality here."
The response has been huge, according to Lefkow. "We've gotten tons of orders from the Straight Dope," he said. "I came from the social media phase and understand the power and potential of those types of sites and what they can do for companies. I think it makes it easier for people to tell a good product like this instead of something that's just a bunch of hype and fluff."
Lefkow acknowledges that Bacon Salt is an underdog in the world of spice marketing.
"The big spice companies, they come out with something, they've got a $20 to $30 million marketing budget behind it. We've got 5,000 bucks from America's Funniest Home Videos."
But Lefkow also noted the Internet offers more chances for startups. "If the software world has shown anything," he said, "it's that the rules of business have changed, you can be scrappy and do things in a guerrilla type of way versus the way everybody else thinks it needs to be done.
"I can think we can make a really good run at it."
The following is the full version of an e-mail question and answer exchange conducted Tuesday, July 31 with Dave Lefkov of Bacon Salt.
Q: In "our story" on your website, you talk about working for a small technology company. I'm assuming that does't mean a food technology company. Did either of you have a background as either a chef or chemist?
A: We both love food, but we've never done anything remotely like this in our lives. Some people thought we were crazy (and many still do), but we knew that there was an army of bacon lovers out there who were ready for this.
Q: Did you hire our the concocting or do it yourself?
A:Bacon Salt was not built in a day. We've had lots of help with everything we've done.
Q: Is there a Secret Ingredient™?
A: Love (of bacon) is the secret ingredient.
Q: What was it like getting kosher approval? Were the rabbis shocked,
amused, sympathetic?
A: Rabbi Londinski and Bacon Salt are cool. We think he was actually pretty amused by the whole thing. Other people we've talked to in the kosher food industry have said that they love it and can't wait to carry it, so this is actually a big market for us.
Q: Which was the hardest part to get? The real bacon flavor, the zero calories, or something else?
A: We actually didn't go into this trying for a zero calorie, zero fat, vegetarian and kosher-certified gourmet seasoning - we just wanted to create a seasoning that tasted "like the smell of delicious bacon frying on a Sunday morning" (exactly how we phrased it in our original business plan). That taste is the hardest thing to replicate, as you need the right mix of savory, smoky and a little bit spicy to make it really taste like great bacon. The zero calorie and zero fat aspect just sort of happened, so we ran with it!
We definitely had our share of misses in the beginning. For example, we started with three flavors, Original, Hickory and Maple. The maple flavor really tasted too sweet for our taste, although we get requests for it every now and then so maybe it will be a seasonal thing. So we decided to develop a Peppered flavor instead, and that's been a really big hit.
Q: Have you quit your day jobs yet?
A: Dave still does some consulting work, although he's scaled back dramatically and recently had to turn a big Fortune 500 company away because "I launched this Bacon Salt thing that's taking over the world." Justin still works at the technology company we hatched this whole scheme at.
Q: Which foods have customers found to add Bacon Salt to that you never imagined?
A: Bacon Salt is outstanding on grilled meats, fish, vegetables, salads and a wide variety of everyday food items. Everything really should taste like bacon.
One guy recently sent us a picture of Bacon Salt on watermelon, which he said was "amazing" and had a similar appeal as Mexican candy, sweet and spicy. Dave's father in law likes it on ice cream, although Dave definitely doesn't care for that. Justin likes it with his tequila shots and bloody marys. In terms of pleasant surprises, corn on the cob with Hickory Bacon Salt was a revelation for us, as were mashed potatoes. J&D's Bacon Salt on bacon itself (initially tried as a joke at a tasting party) was described by a local Seattle chef as delicious and like "bacon on steroids."
Q: What's been the biggest surprise so far?
A: "Soft launching" Bacon Salt to a group of about 200 family and friends and getting over 1,000 orders in 2 weeks from all over the place. We thought we'd get 40 or 50 orders in our first week, and we ended up with over 600 of them. And we've gotten orders from all over the world - the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland and Norway.
Q: New York Magazine food critic Josh Ozersky (known in other circles as Mr. Cutlet) said that, after hundreds of years of delicious history, bacon has now "jumped the shark." What about Bacon Salt did Mr. Ozersky fail to understand? Do you have a message for him?
A: We love Mr. Cutlets. Like us, he also loves meat products and the taste of great bacon. He's written extensively on the subject. If he loves meat as much as he says he does, we think he'll come around and realize that we can all use a little Bacon Salt in our lives. He has samples now and has agreed to try it out on a bunch of things.
Q: Will success spoil you, and will you have to seek refuge from the paparazzi?
A: We don't know of many pork industry titans that are stalked by the paparazzi, so we think we're pretty safe there.
Q: Is there any question are you are dying to have us ask?
A: Our top 5 favorite foods with Bacon Salt are:
1. Everything.
2. Everything.
3. Everything.
4. Everything.
5. Everything.
You really can't go wrong.
Q: It looks as if the news about Bacon Salt has gone viral. Are you going
to be able to ramp up production for the demand?
A: We knew this could be big, so we have suppliers lined up that can hit any capacity imaginable. We're doing a run of 100,000 containers at the end of this month, and have the ability to do millions a month when people are ready to fully embrace their inner bacon-lovers.
Q: Any famous chefs signed on yet? How about famous chefs who are secretly
using Bacon Salt?
A: A close personal friend of ours named Beau Guthrie is a respected gourmet chef in the San Francisco area, and he donated several of his favorite Bacon Salt recipes to our website. We can't tell you the name of the restaurant, but if you went there, you'd think everything was delicious.
Our first Seattle area restaurant is going to launch in the next month - they're unbelievably excited about putting Bacon Salt on the menu, and the chef is going to do some amazing things with it. We'll have more on that soon!
Q: Any grooming tips for your fans?
A: Wear some Bacon Salt merchandise! It's a hip and fashionable way to display your love of pork-flavored products, and for sale on our website - with all of our proceeds going to Mercy Corps, a charitable organization that helps alleviate suffering worldwide.