jake meister - Honey Acres

Editor’s Note
Day by day we are creeping closer to
the holiday season and that means it’s
time to shift gears a bit and be thinking
of more late fall and winter activities.
And we have any number of options for you in this edition of Family
& Friends, our quarterly publication
that features local and area people
that are truly your kind of people.
There are so many unique and
interesting activities going on here in
this beautiful area that it seems like
we’ll never run out of stories to tell.
We are overwhelmed by the many
positive comments we receive from our
readers when the new edition is distributed and I’m sure this one will meet
with your strong approval as well.
Enjoy the magazine, make the most
of the coming weeks as we move into
the Thanksgiving and Christmas season,
and as always make your family and
friends an important part of your life.
Tom Schultz, Editor
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Family & Friends 7
Continued
from page 6
T
he great growth came on the
strength of a gift container called
the muth jar.
“In 1977 there were 100,000 muth jars produced
and sold to catalog houses,” said Walter Diehnelt’s
nephew Eugene Brueggeman, who is now the vice
president of Honey Acres.
“They all went as gifts,” Brueggeman said. “They
weren’t sold because of the honey inside, they were
sold because they were cute. We sold to every major
department store in the country.”
In 1979, 500,000 smaller muth jars were sold out in
two months. Even today the unique jars have a cult following, with many collectors purchasing the glass off
of sites like eBay for hefty amounts.
Because of the great success of the jars, the business
expanded to the point where a newer, larger building
was a necessity.
With a strong desire to stay close to the company’s
home of 50 years, Diehnelt approached the village of
Menomonee Falls, asking to build a 10,000-square-foot
warehouse behind the current building. The village
scoffed at the idea and the board suggested the business move to an industrial park.
Diehnelt refused to budge, so he decided to move to
a plot of land along Highway 67 in rural Ashippun that
still houses the business today.
“We built this current building for the muth jar,”
Brueggeman said.
One of the first luxuries afforded to Honey Acres
because of the new building was the ability to create a
museum based on honey and the history of beekeeping in the Diehnelt family.
A live beehive is displayed behind
glass for visitors to view at the
Honey Acres museum.
JAKE MEISTER/Family & Friends
Built in 1979, the museum was the brain child of
Walter Diehnelt. Diehnelt got his inspiration for the
unique promotion opportunity after visiting Ocean
Spray’s Cranberry World Museum in Boston, Mass., in
1982.
In addition to being a promotional opportunity,
the museum would also serve as a convenience to
Diehnelt.
Prior to the museum, there was sort of a road show
given to civic groups, schools and churches by Walter
Diehnelt, according to Brueggeman.
“My uncle used the show to explain beekeeping and
the business,” Diehnelt said. “Shortly after moving to
the new location, it was decided that it was too much.”
With the help of an employee from the Milwaukee
County museum, the Honey Acres museum was built
in only six months.
At left: The versatility of beeswax is demonstrated at the Honey Acres museum.
JAKE MEISTER/Family & Friends
8 Family & Friends
H
oney Acres opened its own educational
venue in 1983. According to Brueggeman,
the museum became a great success.
“At its height, we were probably getting
somewhere between 8,000 to 10,000 visitors during a year,” Brueggeman said. “It’d be
nothing to get four to five busloads per day in
the 1980s. In those days we could also take
people into the factory but the laws have
changed.”
Brueggeman said the museum also got national notoriety during the time when “Good
Morning America” stopped by to profile the
unique concept.
While the number of visitors has gone
down, the museum still attracts student
groups almost every day. Brueggeman said
the numbers dwindled, in part, because fewer
groups from public schools are able to come
due to budget cutbacks. Brueggeman added
that the attendance of private school students is still solid.
Today, Honey Acres is in the process of upgrading the museum. The
process will be overseen by Honey Acres employee and sixth generation beekeeper Narek Garbrielian. Garbrielian’s father, John, co-owns
the business with Brueggeman.
“We could do a lot to upgrade,” Brueggeman said. “There could be
pumpkins spread out all across the front. I don’t know. Just something
to bring people here.”
At a time when the museum was bringing customers in droves in the
1980s, business was never better for Honey Acres as the company’s
reach spanned new heights.
“We were a small company and were dealing with some of the largest dealers in the country,” Brueggeman said. “In the early 1980s every
major city had a major department store. Milwaukee had Gimbels,
Detroit had Hudson’s, Minneapolis had Dayton’s. All of these major
department stores had their own gourmet food departments and that’s
where we sold our product and we sold it in a short window. It was a
September to November business and we were done.”
Gift items provided the greatest spark for Honey Acres as they
enjoyed a boom time from the late 1970s through the 1990s. The last
major gift order was to Target in 2004.
With the turn of the new millennium, the market changed, sending
the gifting business into a frenzy.
“The retailing and marketing of where you could sell your product
changed,” Brueggeman said. “Hickory Farms had close to a 1,000 retail
outlets near to the holidays when we started to sell our muth jars.
Those all went away. We were doing half a million to three quarters of
a million just with Hickory Farms and that’s no longer there.
“We were on this incredible high with gifts and it went
Continued
away faster than we anticipated. Demands got higher.
on page 10
Michael Moritz (background) and Andrew Kunz
(front) prepare Honey Acres Dark Chocolate Honey
Mints. The mints are Honey Acres’ most popular
product.
JAKE MEISTER/Family & Friends
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Family & Friends 9
Continued
from page 9
You had to promise your sales. You had to produce product
by August and not get paid until January. It was a myriad of
things that a company our size just couldn’t compete with.”
W
ith the change, Honey Acres was forced to turn to other
markets in hopes of maintaining sales.
“We had to try to get into the grocery business but it was difficult because
they were buying products from places
like China with prices too low for us to
compete with,” Brueggeman said. “The
grocery honey business has become a
commodity business purely based on
price. We just couldn’t compete against
the larger national honey companies
for the space on the shelf.”
A 36,000-square-foot building on a
40-acre plot of land, Honey Acres was
quickly looking for answers to stay
afloat.
Starting in 2010, they turned to
honey mints to revive the business.
“It was something my uncle had
invented and it was well-liked but was
never marketed,” Brueggeman said.
“Just as our market for gifts went one
way, the market for the honey mints
came to us. It’s allowed us to grow the
business over the last three to four
years and it’s what is going to allow us
to grow the business.”
That market is one powered by
individuals in their mid 20s to early 30s
who are particularly health conscious
and as a result, more cognizant of the
health benefits or lack thereof in a food
item.
“This is the crowd that looks at labels,
wants to think they’re going to live to
be 150, wants to eat like they think they
should,” Brueggeman said. “Our honey
mint has three ingredients in it. The
peppermint pattie from York has 27 ingredients in it. That’s what we started to
sell. All natural, simple, nothing added.”
When the health conscious customers became concerned with allergens,
gluten and dairy issues, the dairy-free, gluten-free mint added dramatically to
the business.
“We’re one of the few candies that’s a pure cocoa candy that doesn’t have
sugar or milk in it,” Brueggeman said. “There are lactose-free chocolates out
there but they’re made with weird stuff.”
Right now Honey Acres sells its candies nationally through two national dis-
10 Family & Friends
Above: Shirley Weiss empties Honey
Mints out of a mold.
Following page: The gift shop near
the entrance of Honey Acres provides
several honey enhanced products.
JAKE MEISTER/Family & Friends
tributors and employs around 20-25 people.
ven with the newfound stability, Honey Acres
plans to stay aggressive.
“We’re also looking at a two-ingredient
chocolate that will just be made of honey and
chocolate,” Brueggeman said. “It’s a great item.
That’s where we’re going to go and that’s where
the business is. Now I also don’t have to explain
why my honey costs more than double what
the next person’s honey costs. We’re selling a
value-added, unique item. It allows us to sell on a
national basis.”
Through its existence, Honey Acres has gone
from a honey company to a honey gifting
company, back to a honey company and now a
honey candy company. While the candy chocolates will be the company’s main fixture for the
E
foreseeable future, they will continue to push
their other products.
“We still do a line of varietal honeys which include basswood, wildflower, buckwheat, orange
blossom and clover,” Narek Gabrielian said. “We
also produce raspberry, lemon and cinnamon
creams and two mustards.”
According to Gabrielian, honey differs depending on what nectar is used to produce the honey.
For example, basswood honey is produced when
the bees congregate around that type of tree.
The fact that honey is derived from a wide
variety of honeys gives it a taste that sometimes
cannot be differentiated unless closely compared.
“If you give someone a taste of basswood it’s
just going to taste like honey and when you give
them a taste of clover it’s just going to taste like
honey,” Gabrielian said. “But when you put them
next to each other and taste them, you can tell
the difference.”
“Buckwheat stands out though because it’s a
polar opposite of that,” Gabrielian said. “It’s black
and tastes like molasses. You either love it or you
don’t. It has sort of a cult following.”
Honey Acres’ proven ability to change with the
market while maintaining an identity will allow
the company to continue to grow. According to
Gabrielian, the business is set up to do just that.
“We are going to maintain the vibe that we are
your local honey store, but that doesn’t mean we
won’t continue to grow nationwide,” Gabrielian
said.
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Family & Friends 11