We fell short of our Fall Fundraiser goal of 2,500 donations. Help us catch up ⏩ Give Now

It’s gourmet baby

Lisa Napoli Nov 23, 2006

TEXT OF STORY

SCOTT JAGOW: OK, so the family’s gathered at the table. Everybody can’t wait to sink their teeth into a great, big Turkey dinner. But what about the baby? What are they gonna eat? A jar of processed mush? Doesn’t have to be that way. From our Entrepreneurship Desk, Lisa Napoli reports on two couples who are reinventing baby food.


LISA NAPOLI: Tim Daulter is something of a modern day milkman.

Two nights a week, he and his delivery team hit the streets of Southern California with their hybrid cars and drop off orders into coolers customers have left on their doorsteps.

TIM DAULTER: Here’s somebody who ordered 8 jars of food for this week. This customer has a bigger baby so this is kind of our bigger baby food. This is actually a basil pesto pasta, but we use a mini-type pasta for the baby so he doesn’t have to chew too much. This is a quinoa with vegetables in it, and quinoa is a grain, it’s got a lot of protein and it’s a super healthy type thing.

“Super healthy type thing” is the premise behind the business Tim and his wife Anni started a year ago.

It’s called Bohemian Baby.

All natural, organic, hand-cooked twice a week under Tim’s supervision and tested on his daughter. It’s $3.50 a jar.

DAULTER: It is a shift in consciousness because people are used to paying 50 cents for a jar.

Now Teresa Kiene would have happily paid for homemade baby food when her three kids were young. Now she’s making it for total strangers.

In the tasting room of Kiene’s new business, Baby Allison is about to try out the peas.

[ Kiene: May I put this bib on you? Is it okay if I put this bib on you? . . . ]

A year ago Kiene and her husband quit their jobs in television to create Homemade Baby. Now they have 13 employees, including a chef who studied at the famous culinary school, Le Cordon Bleu.

Behind the tasting room is a commercial kitchen.

TERESA KIENE: After the food has been prepped, everything is hand-prepped, it goes into this kettle. And right now we’re cooking pears. Itcooks and it forms a bit of the reduction so you get intense flavor and sweetness of the pears-and you get a lot of fiber and a lot of nutrients.

Business is growing at a healthy clip: Whole Foods has even picked up the brand in some of its stores.

These rival baby food businesses have different strategies, but their goal is the same: To attract parents who want to start their kids off right in an age of junk food and obesity

DAULTER: We try and say babies are people too and so they deserve delicious food, even if they can’t clearly communicate that they want something a little bit different. And hoping that will set some habits for their lifetime of eating in addition to maybe raising the consciousness of the parents as far as how they eat and hopefully kind of shift everybody towards more organic fresh type foods.

And perhaps grow a healthy business, too.

In Los Angeles, I’m Lisa Napoli for Marketplace.

There’s a lot happening in the world.  Through it all, Marketplace is here for you. 

You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible. 

Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.