Press: December 8, 2000
Homesick Jamaican Musician Mixes Up Marketable Spice
By Ann Claycombe, Correspondent
The Chapel Hill News, Dec. 8, 2000
Two years ago, Pluto Richards got a letter from Mongolia.
A Peace Corps volunteer named Hilary Anne Exon was begging him to send her more of his Pluto’s Caribbean Bliss Jamaican Jerk Spice. “Jerk” refers to a Jamaican technique for seasoning and roasting meat.
Exon had gotten a bottle as part of a care package, and it had provided her with the only tasty meals of the previous year.
“I ate jerked fried potatoes with onion and garlic, and even jerked marinated yak meat,” she wrote. “I’m getting ready to try it with camel.”
Richards sent her a case of spice. He’s getting used to unusual requests. His Jamaican spice mixes have created a fiercely devoted following of food lovers who have sent him letters from South Africa, Japan and throughout the United States. Their loyalty is his biggest weapon in the battle to turn Pluto’s Caribbean Bliss into a household name.
Richards did not set out to become a spice king. Growing up in Jamaica, he took good food for granted. He never learned how to cook. When he moved to New York in 1983, he could still easily find the foods he was used to.
But in 1990, when he moved to North Carolina, he found himself high and dry.
“I started to experiment from memory,” he says. It took him two years to work out a blend of herbs and spices that satisfied him. Jamaican cooks use certain kinds of woods to give their food a smoky flavor, Richards says. He had to figure out how to mimic that flavor in the mix.
At that point, Richards had no thought of selling his secret blend. He already had a career, as the lead singer and guitarist for Plutopia, a well-known local band. He was simply trying to recreate the food he loved.
Once he was satisfied, he started to prepare jerk chicken for his friends. One friend, Robert Monath, was secretly dreading his first taste of Richards’ creation. He had tried jerk chicken before and hated it.
“As soon as he tasted the first bite, he froze for a moment and said, “You’ve got to market this,” Richards remembers with a smile. “I didn’t pay him any mind.”
But Monath kept repeating himself with every bite. And towards the end of the meal, he said something that got Richards thinking.
“You could call it Caribbean Bliss,” Monath said. The name was so perfect, Richards says, that he realized he had to do it.
Today, Monath and Richards are business partners. Richards and his family mix and pack the spice—which now comes in original, mild and salt-free varieties—while Monath, who is a lawyer, helps with the business and marketing ends of the business.
The business is growing slowly but steadily.
“We’re the best-selling blend in A Southern Season,” Monath says. The store also acts as Caribbean Bliss’ distributor, getting the product out to the gourmet and natural food stores that are the brand’s main outlets.
“We ultimately do want to get into mainstream grocery stores,” Monath says. “We’ve gone the gourmet route first because there aren’t the same barriers to entry.”
Most grocery store chains charge food producers with expensive “slotting fees”—charges for shelf space in their stores. Small producers like Pluto’s Caribbean Bliss simply cannot afford the fees.
They are continuing to expand, through demonstrations and especially through word of mouth. Pluto himself can be found at Wellspring and other stores with a roasting pan full of jerk turkey, introducing customers to its taste.
“People are recommending it to other people,” Richards says. And when they taste it, they come back for more, he says, even if they have to write from Mongolia to get it.
Richards is pleased by his success, but not surprised. Pluto’s Caribbean Blend, he says, lets people experience the wonder of Jamaican cuisine for themselves.
“It’s got this really great ability to make anything taste good,” he says.
Entrepreneur and musician Pluto Richards created Pluto’s Caribbean Bliss Jamaican Jerk Spice.
