Between high school and college Julie Jeremy worked in a kibbutz bakery in Israel. Little did she know at the time that eventually she would use the knowledge that she gained there in her own artisanal food business.
In San Diego for college, she enjoyed the bounty of the Mexican foods available--yet another building block for her later business. After interning at San Diego Magazine, she went “back east” to attend the Rhode Island School of Design, studying typography during a summer and then went to New York to work for a couple of magazines owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News America.
“I loved New York and publishing, and I was good at what I did, but I missed California,” Julie says. ”I wanted to work to live, rather than live to work. So I moved back to San Francisco.”
A compliment on a scarf of her own creation, prompted Julie to put her design training to use in a different medium: designing clothing. “I loved it, but at the same time it wasn’t who I am. It wasn’t my passion.”
Inspired by foods she bought at Farmers Markets and Mexican restaurants in San Francisco’s Mission District, she started experimenting. “There was a particular taqueria in the Mission that would give us their left-over salsa at the end of the night, if we brought our own containers,” she laughs. Putting her own twist on ones she liked, she developed entirely new salsas.
“We fire-roasted the tomatoes in our red salsa and added corn to our black bean salsa that we were selling at the Farmers Market. Our customers requested guacamole, so we added jicama and mango to ours. Another variation uses cucumber for the crunch. We don’t use a lot of seasonings. We let the flavors of the ingredients shine through.”
At first Julie was only making chips for the Farmers Market, but the demand encouraged her to add them to her line. Recently, to expand her portfolio of products even further and reach an entirely new audience, she developed shelf-stable cooking sauces, salsas and hummus.
“I understand the need for pantry items more now that I have kids,” she says. “I want something tasty, made with fresh, good ingredients, that I can use to make a quick meal. It helps with life’s little unpredictabilities.”
“I love what I’m doing,” Julie says. “I believe in my own products, and I eat this food. It’s so much more to me than being good at it. I have an attachment to it. It may not be as lucrative as something else, but it’s honest. That’s an example I want to set for my kids.”
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