Mom Dips Into Business World

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January 18, 2007 by Rich Whittle | 2 Comments

SeacoastOnline.com:

Christine Hanisco is always in a hurry these days.

“You’re my second interview today,” she says as she opens the door of the Kingston ranch home where she creates and sells “Dippy Chick” dip mixes. “I just finished a radio interview for the Start-Up Nation radio program.”

While many mom-and-pop businesses begin with mom making a product and pop saying she ought to sell it, Hanisco’s story is a little different.

Though she has always cooked, she says it wasn’t a “huge hobby” of hers.

She’d never given dips one thought over another until she started going to craft fairs and noticing how many people sold homemade dip mixes.

Hanisco knew it was something she could produce with a relatively small start-up cost, and she’d been looking for something to do out of her home since she became pregnant with Angus. She concocted a spinach dip and a garlic dip first, trying them on friends and family, and then branched out.

“I think I created my entire product line in one week,” she recalls. Her husband remodeled part of the basement for her to create and package dips.

Hanisco now produces 15 dip mixes, with names like Kamikaze Wasabi and Battlestar Garlic-tica. The dips are appropriate for special diets, she says. All her ingredients are natural, some are organic, and all are gluten-free, as she and the boys have celiac disease.

Hanisco has never taken a business course. “I read a lot,” she says. “When I want to learn something, I grab a book and read it, or go on-line.” As her business continues to grow, she’ll be doing more reading. “There’s so much I want to do,” she says, “and it seems slow in accomplishing it.”

Photo by Dippy Chick.