Drop It Like It's Hot
Lazy Point Farms has created two new products—the first of their kind—for New York State: a hot sauce and a sprinkle. Think garlicky, salty, spicy “Wow, what IS that?” extra special something for your pasta, pizza, seafood, and toasted sandwiches on a gorgeous summer evening. Through a very powerful collab with East End Food and Sue Wicks, we’ve pulled together the opportunity for Sue to sell her first commercial season of kelp in shelf-stable food products.
They’re really good, y’all.
(Get this. Sue — the kelp farmer whose kelp is in the products- drew the artwork on the label. That free-spirited, happy mermaid, though!)
This isn’t just any ‘new product’ launch, and we’re not even the ones selling them. If people simply purchase + consume them, we will have failed. There’s so much more to this project. Our mark of success will be when one hundred competitors line up selling spinoffs of these products - but improved. Our mark of success will be when we close up shop and no longer need to produce them because so many better local products have overshadowed ours.
For the past five years, we’ve worked within the microscopically tiny windows of opportunity during harvest season each April & May to produce several trial runs of various kelp products. We’ve been test-running, tasting, distributing small batches, gathering feedback, safe transport testing, researching, and thinking closely about what products people might want to see. Convincing people that this work is worth it. Convincing people to bring kelp on board. Convincing people that kelp is delicious. (These products will be the ticket for that.)
It’s difficult to explain just how new this work is for New York. Locally, no one else does this. Five years ago, the discussions in NYS were centered around whether NYS was going to categorize it as a ‘vegetable’ or a ‘seafood.’ It’s a protist- it behaves totally differently from typical New York produce. It's more plant-like than fish-like, but it's also very different from your average garden veggies.
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So if we aren’t trying to turn a profit on this stuff, why ARE we doing it?
Because we must illustrate what’s possible. These products aren’t a competitive entry into a new market. We don’t want to see just one kelp farmer succeed- this isn’t just for Sue. It’s an invitation for locals to get inspired. We want to see kelp in a thousand different products. With NYC and Long Island restaurants and businesses at their doorsteps, kelp farmers face a very unique opportunity.
Because seaweed needs to be in everything. Not just in food. These two food products are part of a much larger picture of opportunity that we are working to paint. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a more sustainable material to build, cook, and design with. Our land resources are depleted: conventional crops require fresh water, arable land, and chemicals. The time to turn to the sea for our solutions — food, clothing, building materials, and otherwise — is yesterday. This will take innovation, attention, and cooperation.
Because it’s important to take the risk out. Kelp is a seasonal product — kelp farmers are constantly turning their attention to their other business year-round (oysters, etc). The amount of elbow grease that went into turning these products into a reality was a full-time, year-round, multi-year effort. Few farmers can risk shouldering the costs, time, and unknowns of charting such Wild West territory. We dug in on behalf of all farmers who might find it useful to use the blueprint we’ve laid out: they now can explore the costs, timeline, and realities that we faced through this process and use it for themselves. We didn’t build this product so that it would be the best (although, in our humble opinions, these might just be the best-tasting kelp products on the market). We built these products so that others could see for themselves the way forward.
Learn more by clicking the link below. We’re fiercely proud of the community-driven initiative, bringing together the talent + infrastructure of East End Food and Sue’s beautiful, historic kelp. Want to get your hands on some of these incredible, nutritious toppers? You have 2 options: (1) you can choose to support our nonprofit work that made this project possible — by donating $100 or more, we’ll mail you a free product (2) you can click to connect directly with Sue, the grower herself, to purchase.