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PASCO Twenty-two years ago, Alice Jones of Kennewick was an unemployed bookkeeper.
Today, she's president of AJ's Edible Arts of Pasco, which manufactures eight mustards, salsa, cheese ball and salad dressing mixes and a plum-based ketchup.
The transition from bookkeeping, which she left by choice, wasn't easy.
"I was a bookkeeper for 20 years, but I burned out. I was 55 and keeping the books for seven businesses, including my husband's. I hated to go to work," she said.
One evening she took her husband, John, for a walk and gave him her two-week notice.
His first reaction was, "What do you think you're going to do?"
Jones put a rsum together and began searching for a job, but was unsuccessful.
"I began catering out of desperation," she said. "That was in 1988."
Without a commercial kitchen, she bounced around the Tri-Cities using kitchens at churches, grange halls and -- when she landed the job supplying hors d'oeuvres for the first Wearable Arts fashion show -- at Battelle.
For her catering, Jones created Dilly Ranch Salad Dressing and a sweet-hot mustard. Soon people began asking for jars of her condiments, so she began making them up and selling them.
"I thought it would be a nice sideline to my catering business," she said.
In the early 1990s, she began manufacturing condiments in earnest. She turned her salad dressing into a dry mix and began bottling mustard. By 1992, she had five mustards, each based on an original recipe, including her signature Walla Walla Sweet Mustard.
For the Christmas rush, one of her daughters, Juli Massingale, a meat wrapper by trade, joined Jones in the kitchen.
"We sold mustards at holiday gift shows and bazaars, anywhere we could," Massingale said.
For eight years, Jones rented space at the Pasco Farmers Market.
"I was one of the first vendors," she said.
Massingale soon quit her job and joined her mother. They found a commercial kitchen to rent on Lewis Street in Pasco, and a few years later moved to their present location on Fourth Avenue in Pasco, just blocks from the Farmers Market site.
For years, the enterprising duo have shared the building with Total Service, owned by John Jones, Alice's husband and Juli's father. But he's moving his restaurant equipment supply and repair shop to another Pasco location.
"Which is great for us," Jones said. "We desperately need more elbow room and storage space."
Since those early years, both their product line and customer base have expanded. Jones and Massingale have a small retail shop at AJ's, but most of their customers shop for AJ's products in Made in Washington stores and catalogs.
They're also sold by the Fort Walla Walla gift shop, Knutzen's Meats in Pasco, Gadgets & Goodies and Templeman's Market in Kennewick, all three Tri-City Yoke's Fresh Market stores, Barnard Griffin Winery in Richland, Florentyna's Restaurant in Pasco and the Country Mercantile on Highway 395 north of Pasco.
And if you buy a hot dog while watching a Dust Devils game in Pasco, the mustard you squirt on it is AJ's original recipe.
In March, Jones and Massingale landed a contract with Pacific Northwest Whole Foods Markets, which has 13 stores stretching from Seattle to Bend, Ore.
"We sent out our first Whole Foods order in March, and this week we're sending them a second, which they doubled from the first," Massingale said.
To put their mustards in Whole Foods, Jones and Massingale had to rework their original recipe a bit.
"It has to be an all-natural product. They allow no artificial ingredients at all," Massingale. "You won't find a diet soda at Whole Foods."
Jones and Massingale are also making and packaging private-label mustards for Preston Premium Wines in Pasco, Thurston Wolfe winery in Prosser and Ice Harbor Brewing in Kennewick. In Ice Harbor's Run Away Red, they use the brewery's red ale, and for the wineries, Preston's merlot and riesling wines and Thurston Wolfe's PGV wine.
It's using pure Walla Walla sweet onions that sets AJ's mustards apart, Jones said. Which is why AJ's mustards are allowed to sport the coveted red, white and green "Genuine" label of the Walla Walla Sweet Onion Marketing Committee.
"Even in Walla Walla, there's no one making a product with just the Sweets," Jones said. "In every other product, even if they use Walla Walla Sweets, they're blended with other onions."
Sales just 10 years ago were about $30,000. Now, with the Whole Foods orders, they'll bring in about $170,000.
"We haven't quite broken $200,000 yet, but we're close." Massingale said.
For more information, go to www.ajsediblearts.com or call 547-3440.
