ABOUT US
The Birth of Dick Stevens
A tale of discovery, blind faith & hard work
Founder Jeff Eckert grew up in the food business. He worked for his dad, a food broker, doing mostly commodities for many years before leaving to work on his own doing commodity trading and some comanufacturing. He was happy that his family was able to live comfortably, but grew bored with the mundaneness and bothered that he was not building anything with long-term equity.
Oh, the Smell!
At one point, he ventured into “Corporate America,” working for a large food broker (that ironically has Dick Stevens as a client now), representing a jerky manufacturer in the convenience stores. At that point, Jeff had never tried jerky before. On his first day he tentatively opened the free bag at his desk. The first thing he noticed: the unbearable smell. He pulled a piece out, looked at it, pulled some apart and read the label. He was just in awe that people actually ate that kind of snack. So turned off, he
The “Smell” Tester
Still without having any idea what jerky tasted like, Jeff began working with a company outside Chicago to develop the product. So scarred by his previous experience, he would never try the test samples. Enter the key taste tester: Jeff’s wife, Christine. For nearly a year he passed along the critiques from his wife – “too sweet, too salty, too peppery, too this, too that …”
Reigning Trail Mix in from the Dark Side
“Why jerky and nuts?” people often asked. Why not? Trail mix has taken a terrible turn to the dark side in the last 10 years. What started out as a healthy snack of raw nuts, berries and seeds has turned into a salty, candy-laden, raisin and peanut blend that is, for the most part, unhealthy. And jerky wasn’t much better: high in sodium, nitrites, nitrates, etc.
Who is Dick Stevens?
From the start, the snack was built to fuel activities and inspire adventures, and so it was given a personality instead of just a word to reflect that. The Australian outback hat in the logo is a nod to that lifestyle. The name itself was inspired by a less complicated time when kids’ names were simple and straightforward – like John, Sally and Mike, instead of today’s slicker names such as Kyler, Braden and Rylan. The name Dick Stevens ultimately resembles its contents: simple and uncomplicated. Just back to the basics.
Dick Stevens Fact Sheet