Freshwater Foods’ Szabos Offer Indigenous Gourmet Products
By Ryan Schlehuber

At left: Freshwater Foods’ Virg Foreman with new canned goods, scheduled to be available this spring. Mrs. Foreman prepares and cans all goods in Freshwater’s factory.

Cathy and Chris Szabo are giving Mackinac Island and St. Ignace something more to boast about with the expansion of their new “casual gourmet” business, Freshwater Foods. The Szabos of Mackinac Island have created food products with Michigan ingredients and, since February 10, prepare them in St. Ignace.

The company makes fudge toppings for ice cream, barbecue sauce, pizza sauce, and cocktail sauce, spreads, marinaras, and baking mixes such as scones, cookies, and muffins. Some of their unusual products include roasted cherry salsa, cinnamon apple butter, and Montreal steak seasoning.

“We wanted to create a product that is indigenous to the area, that doesn’t compete with the fudge industry, but complements it,” said Mr. Szabo.

Many of the products made by Freshwater Foods come from secret family recipes from both sides of the Szabo family and from their experience in the cooking and baking industry. Mrs. Szabo bakes all the pastries for her Country Cooking store on Mackinac Island and Mr. Szabo is a trained chef with experience at Island restaurants. They have both learned commercial processing at a school in Ohio.

Freshwater Foods began as a food label for Mrs. Szabo’s Country Cooking business on Mackinac Island more than a year ago, but will now take over as the primary business when Country Cooking is renamed Freshwater Foods this summer. The headquarters is now at 408 North State Street and the product factory is housed in the Varsity Building on the corner of Spring and Chambers streets, formerly the Knights of Columbus Hall. Virg Foreman of St. Ignace is in charge of the canning preparations at the factory, while Jeff Zinn manages retail and marketing at the St. Ignace headquarters. In addition to retail outlets in St. Ignace and on Mackinac Island, several area restaurants have incorporated Freshwater Foods products into their menus.

“Freshwater Foods gives people something a little more unique than the regular store-bought products,” Mr. Szabo said. “Our products offer high quality taste at a reasonable cost.”

The company stresses quality over quantity, he said. “We’re not looking to offer a large grocery store variety of barbecue sauces, for example. We’re looking to offer the best barbecue sauce.”

New products this spring will include pineapple chutney, strawberry-rhubarb dessert topping, green and red tomato salsa, citrus marinade, whiskey steak sauce, Montreal steak seasoning, strawberry preserves, cherry dessert topping, dry mixes including banana nut bread and stout beer batter, and an interesting marinade called “cherriyaki,” which, said Mr. Szabo, “combines a bit of Chinese taste with a Michigan flare.”

In addition to their special sauces and seasonings, the company will offer custom-made gift baskets, and Freshwater Foods is also teaming up with Darryl and Kathi Lavender, owners of the Woolly Bugger company, a roasted coffee company from Harbor Springs.