Marketing effort targets cuisine unique to eastern Missouri

STE. GENEVIEVE, Mo. -- A new concept to market eastern Missouri foods and dining establishments is ready to move into a new organizational phase.

A meeting was held Friday in Ste. Genevieve to discuss progress on the Mississippi River Hills pilot site for the Missouri Regional Cuisines project. The project was started in 2003 by the University of Missouri Extension as a way to market and label food products with a regional identity, with the idea that the labeling and marketing will increase the quality and economic viability of locally produced food products.

The Mississippi River Hills region covers parts of six counties: Jefferson, St. Francois, Ste. Genevieve, Cape Girardeau, Perry and Scott. Organizers of the project say the products produced in the region -- meats, cheeses, wines and others -- can be marketed in a way that uses geographic location to increase appeal to outsiders.

By banding together, those involved with the project hope local producers can more effectively market their products.

"We're trying to look past our traditional boundaries -- our political boundaries," said Tish Johnson, a community development specialist with the University of Missouri Extension in Ste. Genevieve.

About 40 producers, business people, government officials, researchers and business development personnel attended the meeting Friday, where they listened to presentations of gathering data that can be used for marketing and were updated on the progress of the project.

Ready to organize

With $72,000 in funding awarded through the University of Missouri Community Enterprise and Entrepreneurial Development program last fall, the Mississippi River Hills Region is now ready to organize. Funding was received for one year, but the project is eligible for two.

Over the next two years the project's goal is to form a not-for-profit corporation to manage the project, hire a part-time regional coordinator, provide educational programs for business, develop and implement a marketing plan, develop standards of quality and a regional label of origin and collecting data on the region's economics and demographics.

Connie Scharenborg, an all-natural beef producer and grower of hydroponic greens and herbs based northeast of Cape Girardeau, said she is excited about the increased marketing power the project could bring.

"I see that this is going to open up new marketplaces and bring in more income," said Scharenborg. "The problem we run into now is that we're too far from St. Louis."

Rural appeal

The Mississippi River Hills region hopes to use its rural, natural appeal to bring in extra customers from urban markets. To accomplish that goal the organization hopes to use Internet marketing and maps distributed in both the Mississippi River Hills region and urban centers.

With a farm economy hit hard by rising energy costs, Scharenborg said adding to her customer base through new marketing approaches is increasingly important.

A key aspect of that marketing will be to create regional labeling of locally produced products -- a strategy employed by some regions in Europe.

Dr. Beth Barham at the University of Missouri-Extension, one of the Regional Cuisines project's key organizers, said without legal protection that regional brand would be of little use. Barham is currently working with the National Agricultural Law Center in Little Rock, Ark., to draft legislation to submit to the Missouri Legislature during the next legislative session.

The legislation would create legal protections for Mississippi River Hills products and allow the state to prosecute companies from outside the region who use the label.

The next meeting will be held in Perry County in March to discuss formation of a regional roundtable to organize the project and ways to collect data on and market the region.

msanders@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182