Doreen Humason is the owner of The Chef in Black, a company that produces a variety of salad dressings. The dressings are packed in bottles and seasoning packets. All the dressings are natural and free from gluten. The salad can be used as a sauce or for frying.
She has an experience of more than 18 years in accounting and marketing in both foodservice markets and retails. She also has eight-year experience in buying perishable food lines for Deli Perishable Distributors.
Doreen Humason also worked as a director of perishable goods at horizon specialties. Her responsibilities there were to direct other representatives, control members of the marketing department, and manage all perishable lines.
She served at the SCW Food Brokerage, where she implemented new sales to the distributors and increased new business sales. She was also the foodservice sales vice president at Food for Thought, an account manager at Food Sales West. and she began her career as a buyer at Tony’s Fine Foods.
Doreen Humason, worked in shifts that were exhausting and stressful. One day, after working long and exhausting shifts, she saw that she was not worth it. She decided to gather her skills and create her own company, salad dressings.
Humason aimed on making something that is gluten-free and natural. She started making a delicious dressing which she knew people would love. The work took her time, but after trying out various mixtures of dressings, she developed a perfect dressing. Humason was ready to introduce the full product named Jaden to the world. It was named after the Chinese gemstone called jade. She left her work and went to start dressing Jaden and Chef in Black Company.
The company was launched in 2008 and Humason was the manager since the company kicked off. As a manager, Humason is held responsible for signing in and managing employees and also managing and hiring brokers in different parts of the world. The dressing “Jaden” secured placement in more than 1000 grocery stores within the first year of business.
In the year 2010, Humason appeared on Shark Tank, where she asked for $50,000 for 10% equity in her dressing company. She said that the dressing made it into 400 stores and managed to make $78,000 during the first year. In the second year, the company had packaging issues which caused a profit loss. Due to the issue, the company only managed to make $41,000. While on Shark Tank, she had already invested $300,000 from her own pocket.
At the Shark Tank show, none of the panelists was willing to invest in the idea, but all of them liked the taste of the dressing. One of the Sharks, Barbara, offered $50,000 for 40% of Chefs in Black with a contingency that the company would focus on the dried seasoning packet. Humason decided to take $50,000 for 35% equity. Barbara agreed and they made a deal.
However, the deal failed even before it was implemented. Barbara did not want to let go of her idea that the focus should be on the dried seasoning packet. Humason did not agree with the idea so she decided to turn down the deal and stick with her gut.
She decided to change the name of her dressing from Jade to The Chef in Black California Asian Fusion Dressing to keep the branding consistent. The dressing secured a place in 2000 stores and it was also available on Amazon and Walmart.
Even though the Chef in Black company had its success without involving Barbara, the dressing did not take off as Humason expected. The company’s website is no longer active and also the dressing is not available on Amazon and Walmart. The company was out of business as of September 2016. However, there have been rumors that Doreen is willing to bring it back.
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