Made in Louisiana: The Growth of Hanley's Foods
By Jonah Meadows
The first batch of Kate and Richard Hanley’s salad dressing — about two dozen bottles mixed by hand at their kitchen table — sold out in just a few hours at the Red Stick Farmers Market in Baton Rouge.
So did the Hanleys’ second batch of dressing, even though they made twice as much. By the next month, Richard Hanley had quit his job at a New Orleans advertising firm and started making salad dressing full time.
“Moved in with my mom,” Hanley said, “and went all in on this idea of making a salad dressing brand.”
Their two young daughters even got in on the act, inspired by the promise of a $1-per-bottle commission.
“They just kind of went from being these kids that would play with their toys behind the booth to stopping people in their tracks, saying, ‘Hey, have you tried this salad dressing? It's the greatest!’” he said.
Now, 14 years later, Hanley’s Foods holds the U.S. trademark on Sensation dressing, the garlic-and-Romano dressing that’s been a Baton Rouge favorite since the 1950s. It sells its dressing — about 15,000 bottles and 1,000 food service pouches a month — in about 2,000 grocery stores, including Rouses Markets and Walmart, and supplies dozens of hospitals with custom olive oil dressings.
And it continues to chip away at Richard Hanley's goal of making Hanley's Sensation Salad dressing a national brand.
“Our thing is just trying to make Sensation the next ranch, the next Italian, the next big flavor out there,” Hanley said.
Labor of love
Sensation Salad is believed to have originated at Bob & Jake’s steakhouse in Baton Rouge's Mid City, later continuing at owner Jake Staple’s The Place until its closure. It's still a fixture on many menus across the capital region, though it remains an enigma in much of the rest of the country.
“I grew up thinking it was just a normal type of salad. You go to a restaurant and it's ranch, balsamic or Sensation,” he said. “I didn't realize it was just this local, regional thing.”
The Hanleys launched the business with a $1,000 loan, using their car as collateral. Early on, Richard Hanley would sometimes borrow money from wealthy acquaintances to fill orders, paying them back “beer money” as interest.
It didn't take long for the company to outgrow the family's home kitchen, so it moved its production line to a commercial kitchen — first, to a food incubator in Norco called Edible Enterprises, since shuttered, and then to the LSU Ag Center Food Incubator, which allowed Hanley’s to produce about 60 gallons at a time.
Louisiana is a unique ecosystem for food manufacturers, Richard Hanley said. Not only does the incubator support the growth of small companies, but local grocery chains favor local products far more than in other states.
“It’s like the perfect storm for a food company to start in southern Louisiana," he said, "because we don’t have those mass franchises all over the place."
While the incubator was a great resource, it didn't have the capacity to enable Hanley's to fill all the orders that were pouring in.
"We were bursting at the seams. We were literally filling truckloads at LSU, and it’s not designed for that,” Richard Hanley said. “We needed a full-on plant. Do we fork out $10 million to go build this plant? At the time, we just didn’t have any resources.”
These days, Hanley’s outsources production of its retail products to another manufacturer. Richard Hanley declined to name the company but said it is located within Louisiana and today produces dressing in 1,000-gallon kettles.
After the co-packer hired the majority of its retail employees, Hanley’s is down to three full-time staff members and a few more working on a part-time basis.
All natural
Hanley's Foods makes nine dressings, including the flagship Sensation. Some, like Strawberry, are seasonal. Some, like Pepper Jelly Vinaigrette and Sweet Creole Mustard, are rooted in regional cuisine. All of them are made from all-natural, Louisiana ingredients.
The company sources its ingredients from Peronne & Sons, a fourth-generation Metairie-based distributor that also brings the finished product to restaurants, grocery stores and other users of the dressing.
“They carry both our food service, which is those kind of big pouches that restaurants use, and then the retail bottles that are in Rouses and Dorignac’s and other retailers,” Richard Hanley said.
Getting products into grocery stores is only half the battle. Food shoppers are often set in their ways, and it can take decades to engrain a new brand into the minds of consumers.
Though Hanley's products are popular, it's a tough business. Sales this year will barely top $500,000.
“If we had $1 million to spend in marketing, I would probably put it all in demos — that's just having people handing out samples and grocery stores,” Richard Hanley said. “Because there's no better way for someone to know your story, what you're about, where you came from and what the product’s about than to try it.”
Retail sales now comprise about 80% of its business, with food service clients making up the remainder. Richard Hanley hopes to grow the food service side of the business until it comprises half of revenue.
The biggest lesson he’s picked up over more than a dozen years as a dressing manufacturer? The value of persistence.
“It always takes longer and it's always harder and it costs more than you think it's going to, and that's just how it is,” he said. “At the beginning, we were on the struggle bus for a while — not to say that we're off it — but we're doing a lot better now.”
