Ex-equities trader becomes soup entrepreneur

Ellenka Baumrind learned to work hard at the London office of Goldman Sachs, which has a reputation as a workaholic's paradise.

The unending schedule at Goldman, where Baumrind was an assistant equities trader, has so far paid off. Baumrind, now of East Hampton, has succeeded in the difficult task of getting her own brand of ratatouille - vegetable stew - placed on the shelves of 400 Stop & Shop stores across the country.

"I would say that the work ethic Goldman Sachs requires helped me to run my own business," said Baumrind, a London native who is now president of Ellie's Country Delights Inc. in East Hampton. But Wall Street, Baumrind said, never seemed as tasty as what was in her heart: the food business.

She left the Street in the late 1990s for East Hampton and started buying fresh vegetables at farm stands.

She worked with a Cornell University food entrepreneurship program, then developed her own recipe in 2004, and brought her products to a show at the Javits Center in Manhattan the next year. Food executives liked the taste but said her product had to be natural. Baumrind made her ratatouille dairy-free, low-cholesterol, gluten-free, wheat-free, and with only 150 calories. Her products caught the attention of Stop & Shop executives through a diversity program the company operates that seeks women and minority vendors.

James Sturgis, director of supplier diversity for Ahold USA Retail, whose parent company, Royal Ahold of Amsterdam, owns Stop & Shop, said the products of only about 60 small businesses - out of some 300 who apply annually through the supermarket's minority program - wind up on the store's shelves. Sturgis said that at the time Baumrind applied, Stop & Shop inexplicably had no ratatouille on its shelves. But, he added, the supermarket chain's buyer who tasted Baumrind's product "really enjoyed it."

Now Baumrind is in talks with Whole Foods Market to accept her products.

Baumrind's Regular Vegetable Stew, Vegetable Stew with Mushrooms, and Spicy Vegetable Stew, got onto store shelves late last year. The stews, manufactured by a Brooklyn company, just underwent a second production run of 26,000 jars - the first was 22,000 jars - that retail for between $6.79 and $6.99. While her $120,000 investment has so far yielded anemic profits, Baumrind says the business is cooking.

"It's scary" Baumrind said of being on her own. "But then there's seeing my product on the shelf."