>From Soap to Nuts
ACTRESS SUSAN BATTEN is best known for her role as Luna Moody Holden on the soap opera “One Life to Live.” But she’s recently taken on a new role-catalog founder and entrepreneur.
After moving to New York 10 years ago, Batten missed many of the homemade Southern delicacies she grew up enjoying in Clayton, North Carolina. The Southern Food Company was created, she says, to help recapture “a sense of home.”
Southern Food’s products-including Grandmother’s chocolate-dipped peanut brittle, Mrs. Jackson’s blue ribbon pickles, Chattahoochee River praline pecans and North Carolina golden fried peanuts-are all packaged especially for the catalog. Batten wrote the copy herself, using a self-proclaimed love of storytelling to relate the vendors’ origins of the recipes. Batten’s friend Alexander Isley designed the 12-page catalog, after her idea to recreate the feel of an old Kentucky map that used a variety of typefaces.
The first Southern Food catalog was mailed in May to 5,000 names culled from Batten’s and actress Erika Slezak’s “One Life to Live” fan bases, names from her hometown of Clayton, and names supplied by family and friends. No rented files were used, she says, because the catalog felt so “personal” that she didn’t want to mail to people who might not have an affinity with the South.
The response rate was an encouraging 5%, and the average order was $65. Numerous catalog requests-usually about 400 to 500 a week since May-have been received in response to magazine and newspaper articles.
About 20 to 30 visitors sign the guest book daily at the Web site (www.southernfoodcompany.com). A record 759 visitors signed in two hours after a link was posted on ABC’s Web site (www.abc.com). Orders can be placed online, but she says most customers have used the 800 number instead. The site also features recipes, many of which will likely be incorporated into a cookbook she’s writing.
The next mailing, slated for October, will likely be in the 8,000- to 10,000-copy range. Again, no rented files will be used.
Batten and her four-person staff operate the catalog out of Connecticut and North Carolina offices. She spent approximately $125,000 launching the catalog (“Enough to put a few extra gray hairs on my head”).
For those who are fans of Batten’s other career, the next place you might see her is a 30-minute short film she is producing on the stories behind some of the people she has met during her travels to find the catalog’s products. She hopes it will turn into a documentary or series pilot.
“I’m blending what I love with what I used to do to create a new recipe,” Batten says.
