Sisters carry on family tradition with cheese spread

There undoubtedly have been Irish eyes smiling down as Vickie Elgersma and Tama King advance their grandparents’ legacy with their own new business venture, Guinn Special Recipes.

Seventy-one years after Floyd and Vida Guinn founded the Shamrock Inn in Cordova, Ill., the homemade cheese spreads their supper club was famous for are being brought back to life, thanks to their granddaughters’ entrepreneurship.

The sisters have been working for more than a year to turn their sought-after family recipes into a product for the grocery shelves. With their first production batch completed and distribution beginning across the Hy-Vee Food Store chain, Elgersma and King are eagerly awaiting customer response to Guinn Special Recipes’ cheese spreads.

Elgersma said the recipes are based on her grandparents’ original garlic cheese spread, but the sisters have added cheddar and chipotle cheese versions. “Shamrock customers will remember the garlic cheese spread,” she said with certainty.

Longtime patrons also will understand the significance of the label’s green shamrock and the words “Floyd and Vida’s Original Shamrock Inn Recipes” printed prominently on every plastic tub of the specialty cheeses.

For generations and through many owners and name changes, the Shamrock Inn has been a mainstay in the little river town in upper Rock Island County. Today, the restaurant/bar is known as the Blu Shamrock.

“My grandparents were the original owners,” Elgersma said, recalling how they got their start selling beer, fried chicken and other food out of a streetcar in 1941. “About a year later, they built the building.”

She said the original building still stands but has undergone expansion and remodeling. It also was rebuilt after an electrical fire on March 29, 1990, when the sisters’ parents, Doyle and Pat Guinn, owned it. The grandparents retired and had sold it in 1974 to another owner before the next generation of Guinns bought it back in 1988 and operated it until they retired in 1995.

The sisters have fond memories of working for their parents — staffing the coat check room, stocking the salad bar and busing tables. “I loved working there,” King said.

In fact, King first tried to convince her father to sell the cheese spreads commercially around 1980. But bar codes on retail products were just beginning to come into being “and that was just too new to him,” she said.

Even after the Guinn family left the business, the sisters continued to make the cheese spreads at home — giving it as gifts at Christmas and other occasions to friends, family and neighbors. “People kept telling us ‘We love it and you should market this,’ ” Elgersma said.

But the women had busy lives with their families and careers. Elgersma, of Cordova, was working for a law firm, and King, of East Moline, was working as a hairdresser. Still, King never lost sight of the idea of them owning their own business.

“I’ve probably been working on it for four years — getting information and ideas. But the idea got real strong when Vickie retired,” she said, admitting “I had to pull her in. I just kept bugging her to do it.”

“I thought this would be something fun to do,” said King, who plans to continue doing hair one day a week at Generations in East Moline.

When the sisters got serious about starting a business, their first visit was to a lawyer. Then King’s husband, Paul, suggested they visit SCORE, which provides free business counseling to startups and other companies.

As luck — make that Irish luck — would have it, they were partnered volunteer counselor Rick Lampkin, a retired Hy-Vee store director with 34 years of experience with the grocery chain.

“We decided SCORE could help and I knew that Hy-Vee likes to get in on some of these startups and help if they can,” said Lampkin, who retired from Hy-Vee’s store on Avenue of the Cities, Moline.

“He’s been with us every minute; we’re unbelievably lucky to have him,” King said.

He and the sisters worked for months over the winter as they dealt with copyrights, trademarks and labeling, as well as the recipes and distribution. Bel Brands Inc. — the maker of cheese products under Kaukauna, Babybel and The Laughing Cow brands — agreed to manufacture their product.

“They had never taken on a startup company like us,” King said, adding that because of their personal drive and the product itself “they are backing us.”

In mid-May, the sisters and their husbands, Jake Elgersma and Paul King, were on hand in Little Chute, Wis., as Bel Brands produced the first batch of Guinn Special Recipes.

That was the day the business began to feel real, Elgersma said. “But it will feel really real when we see it on the shelves. Everything gets more and more exciting by the day.”

Lampkin’s Hy-Vee connection proved invaluable as it led the new business owners to their distributor, Lomar Distributing Inc., Des Moines. Lomar, which is a Hy-Vee company, distributes not only to the 230 stores Hy-Vee has in eight states but also to other grocery store chains.

Lampkin said the Lomar sales representatives will begin working to place Guinn Special Recipes in the Hy-Vee chain. “But our hope is it will be requested in another chain because that’s how they will grow.”

He expects the Quad-City Hy-Vees to be the first to jump on board because they will recognize the Shamrock Inn connection their customers may have.

In fact, Tony Fuhrmeister, the Silvis Hy-Vee store director, recently got his first delivery of the product. “We try to support our local community,” he said, adding that cheeses are an unusual product to come from a local company, but he has had requests from makers of barbeque sauces and salsas to place products in his store.

He also has a family connection to the operation — King’s daughter, Jordan, works at the Silvis store and her son, Joey, is a former Hy-Vee employee.

Though the sisters share a lot of the credit with Lampkin for helping them make Guinn Special Recipes a reality, he said, “Those girls have worked their tails off. They knew what they wanted to do but they didn’t know how to get it done.

“This is a perfect example of what SCORE want to get accomplished,” said Lampkin, who has been a SCORE volunteer for four years. “People come in with a great idea and, with SCORE’s knowledge, they can get it accomplished.”

Elgersma said they already have ideas for three more flavors, but are taking it slow.

But as soon as the venture is paying its way and they are seeing profits, she said they plan to begin giving some of the proceeds to the Alzheimer’s Association in memory of their mother, Pat, who died in 2003 at age 67.

“My goal is to be nationwide in a year or less,” King said, adding she is enjoying “the time with my sister.”

Elgersma said their road to business ownership has not been without hurdles. “But we have been having a ball. It’s been work, but it’s been fun work.”

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