From his base in North Hatfield, Mass., population 3,500, Ron Widelo is making international connections when it comes to fresh-cut butternut squash.
Widelo was operating his own business, Ronny’s Welding Service, and working as a welder-mechanic in heavy construction while doing some side jobs after work at some of the farms nearby. In 2000, one of the growers was hand-peeling butternut squash to produce packages of raw fresh cubed product for a local supermarket chain and asked Widelo if he could devise a machine that would mechanize the peeling for them.
“It was a big challenge,” he said. “I made myself a mission statement … to, one, sell a very high-quality, affordable and safe peeling machine. The second was to sell an operator-friendly machine. The third was to sell a dependable machine that peels squash.”
He succeeded, and was pleased with the results. Made of stainless steel, his patented design peels squash from 4.5 to 22 inches in length and requires no air or water to operate.
“It’s hard to tell the skin has been removed,” he said. “It peels it so smooth, so there’s less waste.”
Widelo and his wife, Sandra, ate a lot of squash along the way. It’s paid off, as sales have not only taken off in the U.S., but as his RJW brand butternut squash peeler is creating a stir in other parts of the world.
First, by 2009, he had sold 65 of the units in America and Canada via a website and from advertising. He built the first five himself, then realized that for consistency’s sake, he would need to “farm them out” to be fabricated.
Then came Hanrow Ltd. in the United Kingdom. Hanrow supplies equipment to vegetable processors in the UK and Ireland, selling into other parts of the world as well.
“We occasionally get inquiries for unusual things and one of the things we started getting inquiries for was something to peel butternut squash – there was nothing on the UK market that does that job,” said Hanrow Sales Manager Greg Cooper. “Historically, butternut squash has not been a massive selling product in the UK, but it has been becoming, in the last five or six years, a more widely used product.
“If you go into a UK supermarket, whole unpeeled butternut squash is not seen as an attractive product, whereas if it’s already peeled, the consumer can see doing something with it without too much effort, and it’s becoming a much bigger seller.”
When Hanrow found Widelo, they weren’t sure his machine would play in the UK. Taking a leap of faith, Widelo sent one over to let them try it.
“We trialed it with all of the major UK butternut squash processors,” Cooper said. “We’re not talking hundreds, we’re talking tens. But it’s a job that large processors are increasingly doing in small volumes.
“We thought if we could find a machine that had a fairly quick payback time, it could sell.”
Everyone loved the machine, Cooper said, but some of its features weren’t suitable to get it certified for the UK market. Hanrow, which also builds machines, tinkered with it and visited Widelo in Massachusetts last March. They all agreed to Hanrow’s changes, and now Hanrow is marketing the revamped design worldwide under both of their names.
“The new one is altogether different, but it’s the same principle,” Widelo said. “I have already sold four of them – two into Canada and two into Indiana.”
Hanrow, in the meantime, has sold some of Widelo’s peelers in South Africa and Russia.
“We work with a lot of different producers around the world and it’s really nice when you find a company like RJW and Ron who’s keen to work with us,” Cooper said. “You get a lot of manufacturers who believe they have the best machine and don’t believe they have to change for different world markets.
“It’s been a really good marriage of two companies. We have the experience of the processors in the UK and he had the principle of the machine that suited our processors.”
And the Widelos are taking it all in stride.
“Our business is ma and pa – my wife and I,” Widelo said. “I only thought I’d be selling them local – in this small area around my place where there is a lot of farms.