Published: December 05, 2007 10:45 am            

Sales of company's peanut products soar

TIFTON, Ga. — J.C. Bell, who owns and operates Bell Plantation, a local agricultural research company, is the first to admit he likes to think outside the box — way outside the box. Bell’s unconventional thinking is proving to be the foundation for his company’s soaring success.

Bell could have just made another good peanut butter, but that’s not his style. “If we had decided to sell a roasted peanut butter we would have had to compete against Jiff and Planters and Skippy,” Bell said. He put his two hands together and flattened them out. “They would have squashed us like a bug.”

Instead, Bell invented PB2, a powdered peanut butter. “This, nobody has!” he said as he held up a jar of PB2.

The wonder of PB2 is that by adding one tablespoon of water to two tablespoons of PB2, you create a creamy peanut butter with all the taste and consistency of regular peanut butter with 75 percent less fat. Whereas regular peanut butter has 200 calories per serving, PB2 has only 54 calories.

PB2 was just the first of Bell’s products to be marketed. All the oil that was removed from the peanuts to make PB2 did not go to waste. “We have no waste,” Bell said. Roasted Peanut Oil, Extra Virgin was his second product to go to market. The clear, golden oil has the unmistakable rich flavor and aroma of peanuts. One of its pluses is that it has a higher smoke point than olive or vegetable oil.

What’s the difference between Bell’s peanut oil and other cooking oils? “There’s a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig difference!” he said. He said they use products that are “not for human consumption,” while his oil is made from high quality peanuts.

So far Bell has developed approximately 20 peanut-based products. His next products to market will be “super-healthy peanut snack” products. He called them the straw, the pillow, the crunchies and the thins. He has also developed 40 other products that are not peanut based.

Bell said he has gotten 45,000 new customers for his PB2 and Roasted Peanut Oil since beginning to market them in January. Although the majority of his orders come over the Internet (www.bellplantation.com), he also has his products in grocery stores in the Midwest. Locally, they can be purchased at The Medicine Man’s Corner of Tifton and at Yogurt You’ll Love.

“Our goal is to create a demand for things that we grow down here,” Bell said. He said of his ability to think outside the box, “We can get really weird.”

He didn’t start with peanut butter. He founded the company in 1991 and started with cattle, chicken and pecans. “We had a 200-acre pecan grove and a 900-acre pasture,” he said. “

“Georgia has a lot of chicken farms,” he said. The problem with chickens was they were so fragile, so susceptible to disease. He decided to figure a way to raise chickens without the chicken houses. “Everybody likes free-range chickens,” Bell said, so he put the chickens out in the pecan grove and the pasture.

He made an observation about chickens: “They don’t herd well.” Bell invented the Caterpillar, a solar-powered chicken coop made of shade cloth that sanitized the “coop” as it moved across the pasture and pecan grove.

“The chickens were always on grass with fresh air and the sun, and we had almost no mortality,” Bell said.

He made another observation about chickens: “Chickens love pecans. They will fight over pecans!”

Presently Bell has 26 employees. His manufacturing and distribution plant is relocating from Fitzgerald to Tifton. He will soon be adding another 40 employees and anticipates another 70 employees when his full-scale cracker bakery is built.

Bell plans to build the plants to manufacture all of his products. “Our business will funnel more and more money into the rural economy,” he said.

Bell and his wife, Jo, moved to Tifton via a circuitous route. “We chose Tifton,” Bell said proudly. Natives of north Georgia, they moved to Colorado and lived in a ski resort. “You can only take the snow so long,” Bell said. They decided to move back to the South and only knew they didn’t want to live in Atlanta any longer.

“We drove all over Georgia,” he said. “We were coming back from Florida and stopped in Tifton and stayed at the Courtyard by Marriott.” Bell said he asked for directions to where they could get a good steak and he was sent to Charlotte’s restaurant. He said the whole time he was there Charlotte Marchant was “praising Tifton.” They came back several times and decided to move to Tifton. Bell said Marchant put them in touch with Charles Kent who helped them find a house.

“We are where we were meant to be,” Bell said. He said he particularly likes Tifton’s rush hour “that lasts from 5 to 5:01 (p.m.).”

On Friday, while Gazette staff members were at his office headquarters on Central Avenue, long rolls of tape were spewing from a label machine. “That’s today’s orders,” Bell said.

In less than a year, sales of his peanut butter and oil have exceeded $600,000.



Jana Cone writes for TheTifton (Ga.) Gazette.

        

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