Michael Kerr, Founder and Managing Director of Blue Valley Foods is another entrepreneur steadily creating a household brand in Jamaica. Blue Valley Foods is a banana chips manufacturing company that was registered in July 2020.
Given the time that he had started the company, you can see that he really had a lot of guts to “set up shop”. This further adds to the old adage of entrepreneurs have to take risks, it’s not when and how you start but actually execution that matters in a market that has potential.
Mr. Kerr, also never knew anything about manufacturing before he opted to create Blue Valley Foods, he basically looked at the market during the Covid-19 period. Realized that the food business is an “evergreen” business, it will never go bust, of course, restaurants and businesses go bust, but the fundamentals never change.
That is exactly what he took advantage of, additionally, he realized how much potential was in the food manufacturing business.
For example, while he was in England, pursuing his career in Information Technology, he realized that a lot of Jamaican branded products he found on the shelves, weren’t really made in Jamaica, they were made elsewhere and are distributed on the local Jamaican market to make it seem like it was a made here.
This initial insight further adds to his drive to start something up on the local market so that possibly in the future, foreigners like him being in another country can still taste authentic Jamaican chips.
During the initial phases of the company, Mr. Kerr, scoured the island to find a space to start his manufacturing company. It wasn’t an easy process, but he managed to find a 5,000-square-foot manufacturing plant near his hometown in St. Catherine.
Another major problem he faced was acquiring the necessary machinery to get the job done. Luckily, he was able to get a reasonably priced manufacturing production line from China which gave him a Covid-19 discount.
To get the initial chips rolling off the production line, he also needed someone who has expertise in the area of recipe development and understands the different combinations to get your taste buds addicted, he leveraged his contacts from The University of West Indies, Mona, and got an important colleague on board.
Once everything was put together, he was ready to start creating chips to distribute on the local market. Initially, the idea was to create all sorts of chips of different sorts so that the company can serve different customers, but due to supply chain issues locally with foods such as cassava, he decided to just focus on banana chips for now which still remains challenging but manageable.
Despite the challenges and the fact, that the business is just over two years old since registration, it has managed to acquire three delivery vans and has a client base of over 600 supermarkets and counting.
One of the advantages that Mr. Kerr has banked on is the fact he is able to sell his products at a much cheaper rate than competitors which is a huge plus for supermarkets and less burden on the pockets of an average Jamaican who might want a snack without thinking too much into it.
Blue Valley Foods continues to steamroll and Mr. Kerr is hoping that the entire company will be profitable within five years.
One important thing that stood out with Michael Kerr’s story, is the fact he spends a lot of time in research but balances it with execution. He researches everything and it has paid off and reduced the cost of relying on expensive experts who will probably eat into the costs of the business in the early stages.
In summary, Blue Valley Foods is a plus for the Jamaican market; hopefully, this can inspire other entrepreneurs to bring manufacturing into the Jamaican market so that we don’t have to rely heavily on foreign goods.
