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Glory Foods

When the founders of Glory Foods decided to target an untapped market with a product unlike any other on grocery store shelves, they turned to Ohio State University's Food Industries Center for help.

Today, the Columbus company's products are available in grocery stores nationwide, offering a full line of more than 50 Southern-style, heat-and-serve products as well as fresh produce and frozen vegetables and entrees.

"You could say that Glory Foods was born at Ohio State," said Jeff Hollenback, director of research and development for Glory Foods, which introduced its products to market in 1992. Glory Foods specializes in greens, beans and other products that can be heated and served directly from the can. They are pre-seasoned in the tradition of the South, offering consumers home-cooked flavor without the hours of preparation time.

"We're very different as far as the canned goods industry goes," Hollenback said. "Usually, canned food starts with a fresh food product, which is canned with salt water and maybe some calcium chloride for firmness. Our products are completely ready-to-eat. And if you've ever made homemade greens, you'll understand the enormous convenience our products offer."

Fresh greens generally need to be washed three times before being trimmed, then cooked for two to four hours. "Most people don't have that much time any more," Hollenback said. "Our greens are cut in large pieces, with hardly any stems, and they're fully seasoned. You can pop the top and have it ready to eat in five minutes."

Lots of legwork was done at Ohio State in preparation before the product launch, Hollenback said, including initial development work, use of the pilot plant to prepare canned product for both thermal testing and sensory analysis.

"Ohio State was definitely instrumental in helping us get through the initial push," Hollenback said. And, the company has continued its relationship with the Food Industries Center, which proved fortunate as the company developed a new "Sensibly Seasoned" product line introduced in 2006. Sensibly Seasoned products resulted from Glory's customers calling for meatless products with lower sodium and fat. "Those have really taken off," Hollenback said.

Today, Glory Foods supports the Food Industry Center via a monthly stipend to be able to use its facilities when needed. In addition, it has donated equipment -- which Hollenback helps maintain.

"For a smaller food company like us, we don't need a pilot plant very often, but, it's essential when we want to scale up a home or restaurant recipe to the manufacturing level," Hollenback said. If Ohio State's Food Industries Center hadn't been available, Glory would have had to seek out a similar facility at Purdue, Penn State or Cornell universities, "or build a very expensive pilot plant ourselves," he said. "For us to be able to use the facilities at Ohio State has made all the difference."

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Created: 2007-04-11, Updated: 2008-05-07