The business that Tinie Eilers started in her kitchen now generates more than $1 million in annual sales, but she refuses to be portrayed as an expert entrepreneur.
“Of course we run it like a business, but I am not a real business person,” says the owner of Bles-Wold Yogurt.
“It makes me uncomfortable when people say, ‘oh, you are so successful,’ because I have been very fortunate.”
She says it was her husband, Hennie Bos, who urged her to start the business and who still handles the finances. And in an unusual reversal of roles, it was the manager of the local Co-op store who asked her to supply his grocery.
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However, Eilers also brought things to the table that other farmers can learn from, especially if they’re de-veloping a new product or service or looking for ways to engage and retain employees.
The couple emigrated from Holland in 1994, bought an old dairy near Lacombe, Alta., and built a new barn for their 60 Holsteins. Eilers started making yogurt because their daughter, then 13, was diabetic and like many teens, a bit fussy.
“She needed to have a good breakfast to start the day. She liked yogurt, but didn’t like what was sold here so much.”
However, her daughter liked Eilers’ homemade yogurt, and so did friends and neighbours.
“I was making yogurt every day in a pail in the kitchen and giving it away,” says Eilers. “I was pleased people liked it, but it was my husband who said, ‘why don’t you get a little bit more commercial?’ ”
It was during her second summer selling at farmers markets that the Co-op manager approached her.
Selling to stores required a lot of work, including implementing food safety procedures and retrofitting an old barn as the production facility.
However, Eilers says she had one great advantage.
“We didn’t have to make a living off it. I think it would have been a lot more stressful if we needed to do that.”
The milk, of course, comes from Bles-Wold Dairy, which is now up to 270 cows, and conveyed by pipe right from the milking barn.
Eilers is uncompromising when it comes to making the best possible yogurt from that super fresh milk.
For example, Eilers and her staff started making fruit-flavoured varieties by using a plastic paddle the size and shape of a canoe paddle to mix the fruit.
However, while mixing thousands of litres manually certainly builds up the biceps, it’s also exhausting. So Eilers bought a commercial mixer, and then got rid of it.
“It was too rough on the yogurt,” she says.
“We are not using stabilizers and thickeners, so if you break down the culture, the yogurt will get runny and I don’t want to do that.”
This same “profits don’t come first” approach also applies to how she treats her staff.
The business, which has six em-ployees, offers “very good wages.” It’s partly to avoid turnover and continually training new staff, but Eilers also wants her workers “to feel ownership of the products and proud they are making Bles-Wold yogurt.”
She says this has had a major impact, citing efforts to create a drinkable yogurt as an example.
“Everybody was involved,” she says.
“They would take samples home, give them to their kids and then tell us what they learned. We took what they said very seriously, and our product manager would make new batches over and over and over again.”
She says there have been bumps along the way, but the approach has helped her create a great team, even though she is quick to add that she’s no expert in managing people.
However, it’s worth asking whether you would have made the same choices if you had been in her shoes.
Would you have ditched the new mixer or added just a bit of stabilizer, hoping no one would notice? Would you offer higher pay and involve staff in decision-making or complain that you just can’t get good help these days? Would you revamp a new recipe “over and over and over again” just because someone’s kid didn’t think it was yummy enough?
Of course, the bottom line matters, but sometimes short-term savings are short-sighted.
Entrepreneurs are always being told to put passion ahead of profits. Bles-Wold is an example of what that looks like in real life.
