Dig into a pint of Gagas Original Lemon SherBetter and you'll have the inside scoop on one of the states coolest treats.
By Lydia Walshin Originally published in the Rhode Island Monthly magazine
July 2005.
©2005 Rhode Island Monthly
Communications, Inc.
www.rimonthly.com
IT’S TWENTY-FIVE BELOW ZERO in the freezer warehouse at Bliss Brothers Dairy in Attleboro, where thousands of pints of Gaga’s Original Lemon SherBetter wait to be shrinkwrapped and stacked on wooden pallets, ready for distribution to markets from Providence to the Mississippi. The shrinkwrap guy, wearing thermals and fleece under a dead-of-winter parka, is also Gaga’s president and CEO, Jim King.
The story of Gaga’s Original Lemon SherBetter starts with a bit of King family genealogy. In the beginning, there was Jessie McRae King, nicknamed Gaga by her grandson, and beloved by her family for her fabulous lemon sherbet. Jessie begot Jack, and Jack begot Jim. In 2003, a few months after Jack retired (he produced music for television news shows), Jim lost his job as a news anchor on WPRI Channel 12. And that’s where the tale of sherbetter really begins.
(Okay, that’s three times I’ve used the word sherbetter. You’re curious, right?)
Jim King grew up in a Boston suburb, majored in history in college, took a couple of broadcasting courses, and began to work his way up from television reporter to anchor, from one upstate New York station to another. When he had the chance to move to the Providence area, closer to home, he grabbed it. The family settled in Warwick. Then WPRI was sold, and Jim’s contract was bought out.
Faced with the prospect of finding yet another anchor slot with yet another three-year contract in yet another news market, Jim realized it was time to do something different. He landed a part-time weekend anchor gig with New England Cable News that afforded him more time with daughter Olivia, age 12, and son Mike, age 10. And he decided the time had come to scratch an entrepreneurial itch. He had a feeling his grandmother’s sherbet recipe could be a winner, and his father agreed.
Jim and Jack and Helen, Jim’s mom, began to test the recipe at home, zesting lemons on a cheese grater and freezing one tray at a time. Jim took a sample to Munroe Dairy, the East Providence home-delivery service, which placed an order for 500 pints. The Kings were excited, and terrified. All of a sudden Gaga’s was in business. Jim’s first idea was to borrow commercial kitchen space in a friend’s Chinese restaurant, in the middle of the night, and to make the sherbet in trays, just like Jessie used to do, but he knew there had to be a better way.
With no background in either food service or manufacturing, Jim relied on his experience as a journalist. “My reporting background taught me how to ask questions, how to get information, and how to be persistent,” Jim explains. He talked to the folks at Munroe, who put him on to Dave Bliss, who suggested the Kings purchase a 10-gallon batch freezer and set up shop in an unused room in Bliss Brothers’ Attleboro plant. “Like me,” says Jim, “Dave works with his dad. He’s been incredibly helpful and generous to us – a super coach.” With Jack’s $3,000 in their pockets, father and son went to their first IRS auction, where they nervously watched three batch freezers sell for nearly twice their budget. They got lucky and snagged the last one, a vintage 1974 Emery Thompson, for $2,800. A few hundred dollars’ worth of repairs later, the freezer was ready to go.
As any cook can tell you, multiplying a recipe is not a strictly arithmetical process. “A number of steps along the way changed Jessie’s original formula,” Jim admits. “There was lots of trial and error. I had a pint I’d made at home in the kitchen, and one made in the batch freezer, and I kept going back and forth, tasting and adjusting the texture, to get as close as possible to the homemade.”
At company headquarters in Warwick, Jim’s wife Michelle designed an exuberant web site, and the kids helped stick labels on hundreds of containers. Gaga’s Homemade Lemon Sherbet was ready for market, until the Rhode Island Department of Health insisted on a name change. The product couldn’t be called “homemade”, because it isn’t made at home. And it couldn’t be called sherbet, because it has too much butterfat. Technically, a sherbet has 2% butterfat or less, and ice cream has 10% or more. Gaga’s, at 5%, couldn’t be labeled either sherbet or ice cream, so the Kings coined the term sherbetter.
Customers went gaga for Gaga’s, and the first small batches flew off the store shelves, so it took a few months before Jim received his first complaint. “We’d never had a shelf-life issue, because our product never stayed on the shelf for more than a few weeks,” he explains. “Then one of our stores that hadn’t had such quick turnover called to say the Gaga’s had turned hard as rocks. I went to all of our retailers, bought back every pint, and pulled it off the shelf.” He asked Dave Bliss for advice. “Dave couldn’t believe we weren’t using stabilizers, but of course we didn’t know anything about stabilizers because we were still using my grandmother’s recipe, so that’s another mistake we made, and another thing we had to learn.” Today Gaga’s contains natural stabilizers, making it an all-natural, wheat- and gluten-free product with a shelf life.
By early 2004, with a bit of practice on the batch freezer, Jim, age 43, and Jack, age 74, could make 1,700 pints in an 8-hour day, one or two days a week. Thanks to some good “clothesline” (word of mouth), the Kings forecast that they’d have to increase their capacity. Earlier this year they turned production of Gaga’s over to Bliss Brothers, which can make and package 1,000 pints in just 45 minutes. Because the process is computerized, the product is more consistent, but I asked whether it’s still as good as Jessie’s. “Maybe this is blasphemy,” Jim replied, “but I honestly believe that if Gaga were here today, she would say this is better than hers!” Jack agreed, adding, “I think my mother would be absolutely amazed at all of this.”
The Kings bring their family approach to every aspect of the business. Jack works to build personal relationships with retailers, and with customers through in-store samplings. “My father is a chick magnet!” Jim jokes. Jack blushes, but admits he enjoys meeting their customers, who are thrilled to discover that he is the son of the original Gaga. Jack keeps a running tally of customers who tell him they have a Gaga in their family; at last count, it was 89 – including five males.
With a new distributor on board and a new flavor (raspberry) set to debut later this year, Jim has some definite goals. “I want to build the brand,” he tells me. “I want people to know the name and associate it with quality. I want to hold the price to under $4 a pint in Rhode Island. And I want to walk into a store and see Gaga’s on people’s shopping lists. The first time I see it, I’ll probably buy that list!”
Father and son, always close, talk several times a day. Every day is different, they say, and they’ve both learned to roll with the punches. The very best part is that they’re having fun working together, building their company one delicious pint at a time.
[For a list of retailers, visit www.gogagas.com. To reach
Lydia Walshin directly, email her at lydia@ninecooks.com.]
Originally published in the Rhode Island Monthly magazine July 2005.
©2005 Rhode Island Monthly
Communications, Inc.
www.rimonthly.com