Corporate Chef makes sure Blount products, made in Fall River, are just so
By Robert Higgins, Standard-Times correspondent
Soup's on. And we don't mean a pot of Mom's clam chowder simmering on the back burner.
We're at Blount Seafood Corp., a 65,000- square-foot, state-of-the-art soup and sauce processing facility located in Fall River's Industrial Park.
Blount is a major player in the soup and sauce production business — which, to say the least, is highly competitive. Blount's chief competitor is Boston's giant Kettle Cuisine.
And to stay up with the competition, Blount always has an ear and eye out for ripples of customer dissatisfaction.
As an example, let's say you're John Doe and you own a batch of upscale restaurants in seaside locations. You're getting vibrations from customers that they're less than delighted with the lobster bisque that Blount's been supplying. Something's got to be done.
So you get on the telephone with Blount.
You register your complaint. In no time, the matter is turned over to the company's corporate chef, 30-year-old Jeff Wirtz.
Working with Blount's William Bigelow, the company's director of research and development, and Culinary Assistant Charlotte Mackillop, it's up to Chef Wirtz to find out what's ailing the bisque.
"If our product doesn't taste just right to a customer, my job is to correct it," says Chef Wirtz.
He usually doesn't have a recipe to work from. So how does he go about changing the bisque?
"Mostly, I go on taste," he replies.
The corrective process can take time, according to Chef Wirtz. But thanks to what must be his million-dollar taste buds, he eventually hits upon a solution to the bisque's problem. John Doe, after tasting the amended results, agrees.
Voila! Future deliveries of the lobster bisque will reflect Chef Wirtz's amendments and everybody's happy.
Suited up in crisp white and seated at a granite-topped serving station in the company's spick-and-span test kitchen, Chef Wirtz talks about another of his job requirements.
That's coming up with additional Blount soups for the company's private-label clients. Private-label customers include supermarkets and restaurants (such as John Doe's). Chef Wirtz also has to develop new soups and sauces for the company's own product line.
This job's no cinch. A recipe that was meant to serve 10 has to be stretched to feed 100, 200 — all the while not losing its taste even after its been frozen and reheated.
"We just developed a shrimp soup for a large customer with 200 restaurants and it took 15 tries," says Chef Wirtz, who earned his bachelor of arts in culinary arts at Johnson & Wales University.
The native of Norfolk, Mass., got his first taste of cooking by preparing meals for his parents, who both worked, and a sister. As a teen, was he a good cook? "No, not really," he replies.
After gaining cooking experience in a nursing home where his mother was a nurse, he cooked in Providence soup kitchens and in a few restaurants while a J&W student.
He joined Blount Seafood in Warren, R.I., in 2003, working in a company kitchen that was "cozy" but small. He started in Fall River about nine months ago, but still visits the Warren plant to help employees tweak clam products.
Compared to the Warren facility, the scope of the Fall River operation must have been mind-bending to Chef Wirtz.
"When we make a soup here, we make 2,000 pounds of it," he says.
"You walk into a nice restaurant and you want a nice soup. You don't want it to be out of a can," says Will Roff, 35, an engineer, and manager of the company's sterile manufacturing plant. "You want a great-tasting soup. And that's where we come in."
And, more and more, diners expect healthful food.
"People want to eat healthy," says Mr. Roff. "They don't want processed foods. They know it's not good for them. So we give them fresh, crisp ingredients cooked and frozen at their peak."
The soup, cooked at 170 degrees, is frozen as soon as possible to assure maximum flavor. One freezer alone can solidify 5,000 pounds an hour.
"Any 16-year-old kid who can boil water can make our soups" at home, says Mr. Roff.
Loners and couples needn't feel left out, however. Dinner-for-two-size soup and sauce packs may be purchased at Blount's factory store at 406 Water St. in Warren, R.I. (Call 401-245-1800.) Another store will soon open in Fall River.
Quiz a Blount employee about the exact number of soups the company makes and you're likely to get a blank look. "The last time I counted there were 180," Mr. Roff says, "but no one here takes the time to sit down and count them."
It's a wide span of varieties, ranging from soups like hearty vegetable to beefsteak and cheese (thank Philly for that one). A few of the sauces prepared at the plant are Alfredo, tomato, white and red clam. There's also a rich tomato sauce for chicken cacciatore and a roux for Bourbon Street gumbo.
Blount is also into specialty seafood foods like frozen clam cakes, fried clams and breaded scallops. These products are turned out in the company's Warren facility.
"Chopped clam meat and broth for flavoring is also produced in Warren," says Steve Blount, 53, vice president of operations. "Campbell's is one of our primary buyers."
Mr. Blount says his family's involvement in the seafood industry began in the 1880s. That was when Eddie B. Blount got involved in one of the many oyster businesses which harvested their crop from Narragansett Bay.
"Eddie Blount's oyster beds were destroyed in the 1938 hurricane," Mr. Blount says.
Through the years, however the Blount seafood business grew and prospered. In time, Blount moved its corporate offices along with its soup and sauce operations to Fall River. There, because of product demand, the plant, opened in December 2004, runs two shifts a day, 40 people a shift.
And things will probably just get bigger and better for Blount Seafood.
"We built what we have here for growth," says Mr. Roff. "In 10 years, we're hoping to outgrow this."
Date of Publication: February 08, 2006 on Page B01
