Lardo & Logo

Besides making our own lardo, we've been selling fatback to four different companies lately. The ones you might have heard about include Salumerie Biellese, La Quercia and Knight Salumi.

They are all very different people. G, Marc, Herb and Rey couldn't be more different. But they all appreciate the Mangalitsa fatback.

It will be interesting to see how they go about marketing the lardo. They all have the hard task of marketing a novel fatty luxury food to Americans. Once they bought the fatback, they committed themselves to the task of marketing the stuff - which is good for Heath Putnam Farms, because in the end, it will create more demand for Mangalitsa pork. By selling to multiple processors, we've ensured that Mangalitsa lardo is going to get marketed to many people very quickly.

I've heard that Salumerie Biellese's stuff is available at Eataly - that includes the lardo, the guanciale and the pancetta. I've read about it on twitter. Eataly is such a high-profile retail location, I have to figure Marc Buzzio is going to attract major attention.

At the same time, Herb Eckhouse (La Quercia) gets amazing press. It will shock me if Herb doesn't get some press soon about his Mangalitsa lardo.

Whoever gets the big press first is not only going to have an easy time selling his stuff - he'll also make it easier for the other guys to sell their stuff.

I spent much of yesterday getting stickers made with our new logo, so that customers like Salumeria Biellese can attach the stickers their products, letting the ultimate customers know which company is producing the pork that goes into the product.

When I knew we needed a logo ready for "prime time", I figured I needed to do it right. At the same time, it needed to have some continuity with our previous logo. So I called up my artist friend and asked him to make an R. Crumb-like line drawing of the pig.*

I try to put things like this off as long as possible, until I can do a good job of it, and make it pay.

Although our logo on our fresh meat has been irritating me for months, it just hasn't been necessary or feasible to fix it. But now that there's product in a retail environment, we need to increase brand awareness.

The idea of having a well-drawn image of the pig is to get people to stop and pay attention. If you click on the image above, you'll see it is a nice drawing.**

If I saw the sticker on a product, I'd ask what sort of pig it was. That would allow the salesperson to explain, "that's a Mangalitsa pig, the best-tasting pig known to man." At which point I would try the stuff, and buy it.

After that, I'd know to look for the Swallow-belly Mangalitsa on the Habsburg yellow background. After eating a bunch of that stuff, I would learn to look for that logo, and buy the stuff. I would expect it to cost a lot, but I'd know that it would be the best.

* I would have tried having R. Crumb do it, had I thought I could get it done cheaply enough.

** Now that the logo is nice, it will pay to get some T-shirts made. It is going to be fun to give those out to our customers.