Really cool foods: company's operations HQ coming to Cambridge City.

• Author: Kaelble, Steve
• Position: AROUND INDIANA - Really Cool Foods

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WHAT'S INDIANA'S tastiest culinary export? Pork tenderloins? Bean soup? Marshmallows? Snack food?

How about Moroccan tabouleh? Or saffron orzo salad? Dishes like these might not be in the recipe boxes of a lot of Hoosiers, but starting next year these kinds of organic, natural, healthful creations will be shipped from Indiana to grocery stores across the country. New York-based Really Cool Foods is cooking up an operational headquarters facility on 50 acres near Interstate 70 in Cambridge City, where as many as a thousand employees will create and distribute timesaving prepared foods.

Really Cool Foods caters to people who want quick, high-quality, already-prepared meals that are neither frozen nor restaurant carryout. It's an underserved market in the United States, says CEO Bob Clamp, but is well-proven elsewhere. In fact, he says, "in the United Kingdom, the prepared-food business is bigger than the frozen-food business. We've created a prepared-food product that's at the intersection of convenience, quality and better for you." Products can be found in such places as Kroger and Trader Joe's.

The Indiana operation will start with a 77,000-square-foot, USDA-certified organic commissary and distribution center that will triple the company's current production capacity. Additional modules of 50,000 to 70,000 square feet will be added in the future. Clamp says the corporate headquarters will remain in Manhattan, but Indiana will be the operational headquarters, including not only manufacturing and distribution but some of the company's marketing and R&D functions.

The Indiana market for organic tabouleh may not be huge, but it's a great place for this kind of facility, Clamp says. "Indiana is so centrally located. We believe we can ship products out of Indiana to really anywhere in the United States," he says.

The company also was wowed by the deal it got on land and other incentives. "The third reason was more intangible," he says. "We had looked at buying existing facilities in Chicago, Ohio and Kentucky In Indiana, there seemed to be a true desire to have our business--the reception we got, the feeling that Indiana wanted us there, and the ease of doing business. The timetable fit a business timetable, not a government timetable."

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