Winand Products brings Brazilian spices to area kitchens

AUBURN — Pandemic cooking and memories of her mother’s kitchen in Brazil inspired Patricia Winand Springer to fulfill her lifelong dream of becoming an entrepreneur with her own business. She launched Winand Products, Inc., which produces her Perfeito seasoning brand, in December 2021.

Springer moved from Boston to the Auburn area in March 2020, the day before the state shut down and sent everyone to work from home during the early days of the pandemic, she recalls. With restaurants closed, she had no choice but to return to cooking, just like she used to do as a child with her mother. That evoked memories of the seasoning blend her mother mixes up in big batches and uses in her cooking. She reached out to her mother for the recipe and began cooking with the seasoning, much to her husband’s delight. “He asked me to make it for his family members,” Springer recalls. The seasoning was so popular among their family and friends, that she began thinking maybe this was her opportunity to finally open her own business — after more than two decades of working for others in roles including sales and marketing. Springer whipped up some sample batches they began handing out to gauge interest, and things just kept rolling from there, she recalls. Her husband owned an empty warehouse she thought would make a perfect location for her business and Winand Products was born. However, Springer still had a lot to learn about running a business, particularly a food-based business. That’s where the Cornell Food Venture Center and the New York State Center of Excellence for Food and Agriculture at Cornell University lend a hand. “I had no idea how to even create a label,” Springer says. She Googled for help and that’s how she discovered the assistance for entrepreneurs, such as herself, available at Cornell. “They literally held my hand and walked me through step by step,” she says. That includes helping her through her biggest hurdle of figuring out a way to make the product, which uses fresh garlic, without having to add preservatives. Advisors at Cornell were able to guide her through the process of conducting challenge and shelf-life studies, which resulted in her receiving a designation that her product is shelf-stable for two years. They even helped her scale up her mom’s recipe so that larger batches all have the same flavor and walked her through how to operate the packing equipment she purchased. “I have no words to describe the amount of help I had,” Springer says. Services include business mentoring, connecting entrepreneurs with other organizations and agencies, pairing entrepreneurs and suppliers, and even offering up a test kitchen for recipe perfecting, Derek Simmonds, business-development specialist at the NYS Center of Excellence for Food and Agriculture, Cornell AgriTech, says. This year, center officials will also take Springer with them to the Fancy Food Show in New York City, where she can showcase her product to even more people. With her sales background, Springer has been busy promoting her Perfeito products all over, even landing Wegman’s as a customer. She has some potential bigger chains in the pipeline and is looking ahead to exporting as her next sales avenue. Springer is also working on getting the product certified as organic, non-GMO, and gluten-free. Perfeito also offers a lower cost non-organic product that is finding a niche with other retailers. Winand Products has one full-time employee, one part-time employee, and a number of contract workers used to fulfill orders.