From the Farmers Market: Jenny's Wild Bean Dip All About Buying Local

When Jenny Sheridan arrives at the at 8 a.m. Sundays, it takes her around 20 minutes to set up her business, Jenny’s Wild Bean Dip. When the market opens, customers immediately begin clustering around her booth.

“My bean dip goes with eggs, grilled cheese sandwiches, potatoes, hamburgers and salads,” Sheridan said. “I put it on a hot dog with mustard and onion for the Woodward Dream Cruise. People swore there was meat in there because it was so hearty.”

Sheridan’s dip — made of black beans, cilantro, salsa, onions, jalapeno peppers, seasoning, cream cheese and three kinds of hot sauce — is a labor of love, and bringing the final product to the Birmingham Farmers Market represents two years of hard work in and out of the kitchen.

All about the ingredients

Sheridan offers her Jenny's Wild Bean Dip in mild and medium varieties, though she plans to create a “fire” version using chili and cayenne pepper and a Tuscan version using white northern beans, basil and goat cheese.

All of those ingredients come from Michigan, Sheridan said. She’s passionate about using Michigan vendors and products in her dip. What ingredients she doesn’t purchase from Warren-based food distributor Lipari Foods, she makes herself or finds elsewhere. She buys her salsa from Garden Fresh, which started in Ferndale, and from Asmus Seasoning, based in Sterling Heights.

“I’m reading a book, Animal Vegetable Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver,” Sheridan said. “Over 300 local family organic farms a week have been going out of business due to industrialized farming.

“Industrialized farms make $40 per acre because they use bigger equipment, pesticides and workers," Sheridan said. "Local family farms make $1,400 per acre. It’s better for the economy to support the local farmer because that’s $1,400 for his kid’s education. Give that money to the local farms, you are pushing the economy. Give that money to industrialized farms, you’re pushing a bigger gap between the wealthy and the poor.”

Taking advantage of luck and overcoming pitfalls

Sheridan began selling Jenny’s Wild Bean Dip in 2009, but she’s been making variations of the dip since 2004. At the time, she was teaching English in Korea, and bean dip wasn’t readily available in Korean grocery stores.

When she came back to the United States in 2007, friends and family constantly asked her to make it, and based on those early reactions, Sheridan decided to go into business for herself.

Forging the relationship with Lipari was equally as fortuitous.

“I got to a jazz club in Detroit and sit next to this couple,” she said. “I told them about my bean dip, and the lady pulls out her card and says, ‘My dad own Lipari’ — 1.5 million people in Detroit, and you don’t think I was supposed to meet her? My thoughts are so positive and so big. God is just opening doors.”

Finding her other partners has a bit more difficult, Sheridan said. She tried out four companies before forging a relationship with Steve’s Backroom in Harper Woods, a Mediterranean restaurant and grocery with whom she contracts to mass produce the dip.

Sheridan also lost a van full of dip meant for the Woodward Dream Cruise in August 2010 when the van she rented malfunctioned. Turning off the vehicle turned off the refrigeration system and ultimately spoiled the bean dip. Although she tried to save large crates of bean dip, Sheridan lost too much product and was forced to cancel her booth at the Arts, Beats & Eats festival in Royal Oak in September.

“It was $12,000 worth of product,” Sheridan said. “I sold $40. I had lost everything. I thought God has a weird way of working through people, and I thought maybe I need to take these nine months to regroup and figure out my next move.”

Sheridan’s next move is to purchase a food truck and start a home party circuit, as well as to distribute the dip at local supermarkets including Hollywood Market, Holiday Market, Plum Market and Hiller's.

“I want people to know you can only get my dip at local supermarkets, where the guy that owns that supermarket lives down the street from you,” she said. “Change starts on the local level.”