Perishable Foodservice Product 2008

Outstanding Perishable Foodservice Product 2008: Good Wives/Innovative Foods Beef Wellington

Good Wives was founded in 1979, when Nina Robertson and her then business partner, Dale Coxe, started making handmade hors d’oeuvres at Robertson’s home in Marblehead, Mass. Drawing from the region’s history, they named the company after the Puritan expression “good wife” which was applied to married women and spoke of industriousness and integrity. Eventually, Coxe left, some of Robertson’s family joined in, and the company and product line continued to flourish. In July 2006, the Robertsons retired and sold Good Wives to Innovative Foods, a distributor and manufacturer of foodservice items. 

The company created the miniature Beef Wellington because of foodservice customer requests, says Chris Collias, CEO of Good Wives/Innovative Foods, Lynn, Mass. “They wanted a Beef Wellington with a good portion of tenderloin in a flakier puff pastry and we’ve created just that,” he adds. “We start with our all-butter puff pastry, handmade on the premises. We add select beef tenderloin that we get from the oldest beef cutters in the Midwest. Then we add our mushroom duxelle that is created by reducing a variety of mushrooms over five hours, and adding a little sherry, a bit of light cream and shallots to the reduction,” Collias continues. “We put it all together and finish by making its eight-step fold by hand. It’s become one of our largest selling products in less than a year.”

Also available for retail; goodwives.com.—Susan Segrest