B & B Specialty Foods, Inc.

Wholesale Brokers of  Fine Food Product Lines
Selling to Retail Stores, Gift Basket Designers, Food Service, and Corporate Gift Buyers

Our Personal Story . . .

B & B Specialty Foods was conceived in the fall of 1982 when friends, Nick and Liz Thomas, approached me about selling their new mustard, Chalif Hot n Sweet Mustard in Michigan. Nick and Liz had been making their wonderful mustard from a family recipe in their kitchen and decided to launch a business selling it nationwide.

As the result of an auto accident in 1978, my spinal column was severed at the waist. I could not envision myself wheeling around in a wheelchair with stacks of mustard cases on my lap trying to get into inaccessible gourmet shops to make sales. My first inclination was to say, "No, I cannot work with you."  But in a conversation with a good friend, Chris Lamarche, the idea of buying a pallet of mustard and taking it to a local holiday show, the Cranbrook-Kingswood Giftorama, and selling it there was hatched.

Chris approached the Giftorama staff and they accepted our offer to set up a booth. I had arranged to be with my parents that weekend, so Chris set up the booth and sold out of the mustard. The money from those sales provided the seed money to pay for that pallet of mustard and buy another, which we then sold to stores in Michigan store by store.

Very quickly it became evident that we were not going to make any money doing this. (Imagine two suburban housewives with a trunk full of mustard cases: the paraplegic as the driver, trekking around southeastern Michigan with Chris going into all the stores - most inaccessible in 1982 - and then joyfully going out to lunch and eating all our profits.)

We decided that the two of us could not continue making duel sales calls, so it was decided that Chris would be the salesperson and I would begin the effort of researching other food lines and convincing these manufacturers that we could sell their products in Michigan in a broker role. 

One of our early sales calls together was to the gourmet food purchasing agent at the old Hudson's Department Stores, when the corporate offices were located in downtown Detroit. While waiting to meet the purchasing agent on that day long ago, I noticed a magazine on the table called "Gourmet Retailer." It was filled with information about food product manufacturers, specialty shows and organizations, and on our way out of the office I put the magazine in my sales bag. That magazine and the information it provided us was the real start to our growing business.

That building has since been imploded and Hudson's, Dayton-Hudson's and Marshall Fields are now owned by Macy's, with all buying done out of New York City.

We learned that there was a gourmet food show in Washington, DC in just a few months. We registered for this show and attended. What an eye opener for us! We were hooked and soon after joined the association that sponsored this and other shows around the country --- The National Association of the Specialty Food Trade (NASFT).

 Today, all of us who sell for B & B attend the shows, work with our vendors, look for upcoming trends, and strive to stay on top of what is happening in the specialty food industry. 

Welcome to the B & B Specialty foods website. This business trek has been my passion and mission for over 20 years, and has given me much joy! Won't you join me?

Mary Ann Greenawalt, President
B & B Specialty Foods, Inc.