Lori Arndt of Lenexa, a teacher who works with disabled children by day, has a part-time job making, selling and promoting two prepared mustards. Her first success, GG's Sweet & Spicy Mustard, began with her grandmother's recipe.
"It was my late grandmother Lila's recipe for a sweet and spicy mustard," Arndt says. "The name of the company, GG's, is what my children called her, short for great-grandmother."
Arndt started giving homemade jars of the mustard as gifts to friends and the teachers in the elementary schools where her twin sons, now age 14, were students. When she began getting requests for more jars of mustard -- particularly around holiday time -- she decided to take a plunge and manufacture her first 30 cases of the mustard in February 2009.
"Thirty cases seemed like a lot of mustard," Arndt recalls.
But Lori got out and hustled the GG's mustard and today has her two products -- a raspberry mustard made with fresh raspberries, seeds and all, was introduced earlier this year -- in 25 local stores, including Dean & DeLuca, the Better Cheddar and Cosentino Markets. Her neighborhood supermarket, the Hy-Vee at 87th and Pflumm in Lenexa has sold, she says, "a ton of the mustard" and will be hosting Lori Arndt giving in-store demonstrations and samples this Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
"We're not raking in the money yet," says Arndt, who operates the business with her husband, Dave, "but what we do make, we put back into the business. We want to introduce a new product next year."
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