November 13, 2002|By Amy Ratner | Amy Ratner,SPECIAL TO THE SUN
HAGERSTOWN - When a package from Miss Roben's mail-order specialty-food company arrives at the Massachusetts home of 9-year-old Kelsey Collard, her mother jokes she's likely to jump the United Parcel Service deliveryman.
That's because Miss Roben's, a small, but growing Maryland company located just outside Hagerstown, makes food for people like Kelsey who are on such restrictive diets that most supermarket products are off-limits to them. Boxes from Miss Roben's arrive bearing the gluten-free cookies, pretzels, and cake and bread mixes that Kelsey needs because she has celiac disease.
"The main thing that drives us is that we are sensitive that these people really have to go through hoops just to get food," says Jay Berger, 43, who owns Miss Roben's with her husband Roy, 38.
Celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder that causes the body to treat the gluten protein found in wheat, barley and rye as if it were poison. That means wheat flour and many other wheat-based additives found in commercial foods can cause celiacs to have health problems including diarrhea, severe weight loss, failure to grow, dental defects, infertility and osteoporosis.
Doctors estimate one out of every 150 Americans suffers from celiac disease, and the only treatment is a gluten-free diet that excludes most bread and breaded items, cereals, pasta, pizza, cake, cookies, pretzels, sauces and gravies.
Miss Roben's makes, packages and sells baking mixes that enable those on a gluten-free diet to make these common foods from alternative flours like corn, potato and tapioca starch, and rice and soy flour. Miss Roben's also carries pre-made items like rice pasta and gluten-free crackers and doughnut holes. Almost all the company's business is done through mail order, although a limited number of health-food stores, including some Whole Foods Markets, are starting to carry its products.
The company was founded about 13 years ago by namesake Roben Berger, the sister of one of the current owners, when she came up with a recipe for bread for a friend who had celiac disease. In the beginning, a tri-folded sheet of white paper served as the company's catalog. The 12 mixes offered were shipped in plain, clear plastic bags.
Today, Miss Roben's boasts a 53-page color catalog that offers 400 products, including everything from hamburger buns made from tapioca flour to tiny cookie cutters for making gluten-free animal crackers. A bold orange and blue mixer decorates the packaging of the products made at the company's no-frills plant in an obscure industrial park where workers use laundry baskets to gather items and fill orders.
Meanwhile, the company's nationwide customer base has grown to include a wide swath of the 6 million to 7 million Americans with food allergies, as well as autistic children whose parents see behavioral improvements when the children follow a gluten-free, casein-free diet. Parents of some children with attention-deficit disorder who follow a dietary approach to improving behavior also order from the company.
To make mixes that are gluten-free, and sometimes also dairy-, soy-, egg-, nut- and corn-free for those with multiple allergies, Miss Roben's takes numerous steps to keep its warehouse, equipment and supplies unadulterated. When the company moved from its early home in the basement of Roy Berger's townhouse, it invested in a specialized machine for mixing and packaging to make sure there would be no chance of cross contamination. Suppliers constantly have to be investigated to be sure the flours they send to the company are pure.
The extra care and cost that goes into making foods for restricted diets, combined with what is perceived as a small customer base, has long deterred companies from getting into this niche of the food market. There are no hard numbers on exactly how many of these companies exist in the United States, but estimates vary from about a dozen to three dozen.
Ann Munoz-Furlong, director of the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network, a national support group based in Washington, D.C., says only one or two companies existed 10 years ago. "We see the growth in the number of companies as an indication that there is a real need for these kinds of products," she says. "They are very important when you consider that families of children with allergies and food intolerances don't have other choices in the food market. Before these companies came along, people with allergies just did without."
This idea of people doing without is like a stone in the shoe of Jay Berger. "Someone said to me, `I have celiac disease and I can't eat eggs.' I saw it as a real challenge," says Berger, a former physical therapist with no professional food training. "I look at it as food chemistry."
