HAYDEN, IdahoNeiman Marcus products? Straight from Hayden, Idaho?


Its true.


Though the prestigious Dallas retailer might not peddle its crystal champagne buckets and ermine bathrobes around here, the gourmet frozen crab cakes and seafood pot stickers it sells are made at a warehouse on a quiet side street in Hayden where Stacey James business, Staceys Famous Foods Inc., set up shop earlier this year.


In this six-week period, James says, referring to the month and a half before Christmas, well ship out 10,000 boxes of frozen seafood treats to Neiman Marcus customers who order the goods featured in that upscale retailers annual holiday catalogs.


This year, Staceys Famous Foods crab cakes are featured on the cover of one version of that nationally known catalog. Inside, before affluent consumers get to the $1,500 caviar and $275 cheesecake, they get an eyeful of the Hayden companys tasty offeringselegantly arranged on fish-shaped, glass-and-chrome trays. Neiman Marcus sells the miniature crab cakes and the pot stickers in quantities of 24 for $30 and $45, respectively. Both come with dipping sauces.


James says that the companys frozen goods sell for less at outlets such as specialty food stores. It markets the miniature cakes, which weigh half of an ounce each, in packages of 12, and also in larger, three-ounce patties in pairs. A package of the larger cakes, which are precooked and ready to reheat, typically retails for $7 in a grocery store.


The 37-year-old James, whose business card lists her title as the Head Cake, typically refers to the products as crab cakes, but the company makes 10 different types of frozen cakes, featuring various kinds of fish or shellfish. In addition to crab, it uses lobster, crayfish, shrimp, scallops, salmon, Thai fish, or sea bass. It also makes the pot stickers and other products, such as seafood rolls, stuffing, and tortes, out of some of that same fare.


James says that the company, which moved to North Idaho from Palo Alto, Calif., about six months ago, employs 12 people. She declines to disclose annual sales, but says they fall between $2 million and $5 million.


About two-thirds of the companys sales are to food-store chains, mostly natural-foods chains, such as Whole Foods Market and Wild Oats Market that dont have stores in this area.


The natural-foods market is growing tremendously, James says. Our products arent organic by any stretch of the imagination, but thats still a great place for us to grow.


Staceys Famous Foods products arent available here now, but James says she expects local stores to carry them soon. She also foresees that some of the chains she currently supplies opening outlets in the Spokane-Coeur dAlene area.


The other third of the companys business involves sales to catalog retailers, high-end restaurants, and special-event coordinators and caterers. In addition to Neiman Marcus catalogs, the companys products appear in Hickory Farms and Norm Thompsons catalogs.


James says the company makes a special Pebble Beach seafood cake for Professional Golf Association mens tournaments. It also makes cakes for some of the large Las Vegas hotels and casinos.


In addition to planning to increase the companys penetration into food stores and other venues, James says she eventually would like to create her own retail catalog. The company is working toward that, but doesnt have a time line for rolling it out. Since Staceys Famous Foods already drop ships for Neiman Marcus, which means it ships orders from the Hayden facility directly to the retailers customer, it wouldnt be difficult for the company to fill orders placed through a catalog of its own.


West Coast kick


While the products are sold nationwide, Staceys Famous Foods has more success in the Western U.S. than it does on the East Coast, even though crab cakes are more common there.


The East Coast is a much harder sell because they are used to a more traditional cake, James says. These have a California kick to them.


In addition to the standard fish meat, bread crumbs, parsley, and egg, James likes to throw into many of her products Dijon mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and a little jalapeno.


Even Jamess husband, Colin, a native of Great Britain, reports that most of the cakes are too spicy for his taste, though he does enjoy many of the pot stickers and the Pebble Beach cakes.


Staceys Famous Foods moved to Hayden to escape the skyrocketing costs of doing business in the Bay Area, James says. She says she found Hayden after wandering east from the Seattle area on a trip to scout out a place to relocate. She says that Jobs Plus of Coeur dAlene played an integral part in assisting the business after it decided to move here.


When it moved, Staceys Famous Foods didnt interrupt its business operations. James says she personally was driving a delivery truck with 45,000 crab cakes to a PGA tournament in the Bay Area one day, and was setting up a kitchen in the companys new building in Hayden the next day.


The company moved six of its employees to Hayden from the Bay Area, and a convoy of its employees broke down equipment and drove it to North Idaho as soon as the last cakes for the Bay Area tournament were finished.


It was like a military operation, she says. It was done with great precision.


Since moving here, the only problem to arise so far has been in transporting fresh seafood inland from the coast. James says the company has had to find new suppliers, and shipping costs have increased by 5 percent to 6 percent. Thats been more than offset, however, by the money saved in electricity costs and real estate costs. The companys monthly electricity bill here is one-sixth of what it was in California, she contends, and a new, 5,200-square-foot structure costs significantly less to buy than a comparable-sized building in the Bay Area.


Still, James speaks fondly of Palo Alto. Before starting Staceys Famous Foods seven years ago, she was part-owner of a seafood restaurant there called Pearls Oyster Bar. While at Pearls, which she, her sister, and a friend bought when she was just 25 years old, James developed her crab cake recipes and discovered there was a market for selling frozen cakes.


You have so many people in California who are gourmets, but dont have time to cook, James says. They want gourmet and are willing to pay top dollar for it.