FORT COLLINS - There's a new food place in Fort Collins that might have sprung full blown from the head of San Pasqual, patron saint of cooks and kitchens.

Jay and Danielle Gilbert Iglehart  one day decided that instead of continuing to make up their Gilberto's Gourmet Goodness sauces for local stores and farmers markets by hand, they would go full on: cooking 40 gallons at a time in their own commissary kitchen. Not only could they cook there, but the Colorado State University graduates were also sure that they could rent the space to other cooks with great recipes.

"In college we started cooking up our salsa in our kitchen for family and friends," said Jay Iglehart. "We started it all as a hobby. I had an interior/exterior painting business that was doing well and paid the bills."

Gilberto's line of goodness encompasses five different salsas, two hot sauces and a marinara sauce. Iglehart explained that it was Danielle, of Sicilian descent, who inspired the idea for turning their hobby into a business.

"She got her recipes from her Nanna, her grandmother," Iglehart said. "She also had a nickname - Gilberto - from her days of playing lacrosse and rugby. It's a play on her family name Gilbert. It was a lot easier to get to a salsa-appropriate name from Gilbert than from Iglehart."

While the line of sauces held potential for building a small business, Iglehart wanted to apply his degree in business consulting to something with more entrepreneurial zip to it. That's when the idea of creating a commissary kitchen took shape.

"It's hard to find a kitchen to work in if what you want to do is create handcrafted products on a fairly small scale," Iglehart said. "So we teamed up with my brother and his wife to create Brown Dog Family Kitchen. My brother works for Level 3 Communications and my sister-in-law works for Primeflex Custom Labeling, both in Denver, so they bring a lot of expertise to this company. We brought the first client: Gilberto's."

Brown Dog Family Kitchen leased the space at 3512 S. Mason St. that was once the long-running Pelican Fish Co. - and the short-running Crab Shack - in early September. By Oct. 1 the company had passed its health inspection and was already getting inquiries from cooks in search of kitchen space.



Kitchen with side of consulting

Iglehart explained that the kitchen has everything a cook needs.

"We have two 40-gallon cooking vats, a large custom filler pot, a double oven with a 10-burner top, two walk-in refrigerators, dry storage, a dishwasher and a labeling machine," he said. "We also offer free consulting to our clients. We guide food newbies through all the health hoops and get them connected with suppliers so they don't have to buy retail. The margins in this business are slim, so any savings helps."

He pointed out that a jar of salsa or marinara sauce that costs somewhere between $4.49 and $4.99 retail requires about 64 cents in packaging alone: 55 cents for the jar and lid and 8.5 cents for the label. That doesn't even count the ingredients and the labor.

The health requirements might be even more daunting than the upfront costs. Iglehart shows his renters how to work with the health department, how to get permits and where to go for product testing.

"Lots of people don't think about the fact that you have to display a nutritional breakdown on the label and get equilibrium Ph testing," he said. "You can get those tests done at the Food Science lab at CSU for very reasonable fees. It's useful to have a helping hand, but if you don't cook here, you pay for it."

Iglehart acknowledges that the resources he draws from, his own helping hands, are many. In Fort Collins, he points to Hill Grimmet, founder of the Northern Colorado Food Incubator, as having been enormously helpful in getting the company integrated into the community and involved with the Winter Markets at the Opera Galleria in Old Town. Between Nov. 14 and the end of March, vendors can sell their late-season produce, grass-fed meats, eggs, mushrooms, cheese, wine, salsas and sauces, baked goods, sweets and locally made handcrafts indoors.



Extending gourmet reach

And then there is Iglehart's dad who comes with a lifetime of corporate experience with Frito-Lay.

"It's probably no accident that my folks retired right when I graduated in 2006," Iglehart said. "Dad calls a couple of times a week to check in. I have the experience of running a small business. He and my brother have the corporate knowledge. Dad knows how to deal with vendors and suppliers. So we have a lot covered."

Using the kitchen in Fort Collins as a model, the Igleharts will shape their plans to extend the company's reach. They already market their salsas in five states - Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Kansas and Utah - and fans can find them in most local grocery stores except for Safeway and Wal-mart, where the fees and demands seemed high to Iglehart.

"In addition to making our own salsas, we are also a licensed co-packer," Iglehart said. "If someone has a recipe, but doesn't want to do the cooking, we can do it for them."

The steady success of Gilberto's and the good start for Brown Dog Family kitchen lend support to making plans for growth.

"Three years ago I wouldn't have guessed we would have this facility," Iglehart said. "But now we are making more money from our salsas than we are from painting houses. Our next target is Atlanta, where I grew up. Then the goal is to have production facilities like the one here all over the U.S. It just makes sense."

For more information on the Brown Dog Family Kitchen, go to www.gilber

tosgourmetgoodness.com.