Cooking for Community

According to DeDe Frerichs, a lot of the conversations at her market booth starts from the same place. “Mostly people tell me, ‘oh I make this at home too but I hate making it because it takes forever.’ People are very curious – they want to know more. I’ve noticed, they ask, ‘What do you put in yours?’ They want to be educated. That’s the farmers’ market crowd.”

Frerich is the woman behind Nouriche Broth. Her line of chicken bone broth products is simple, high quality, and intentionally made. With names like “Feel Better,” “Light My Fire” and “Nightcap,” it is easy for shoppers to imagine how these broths could be incorporated into their kitchen and their life. These broths can serve as a base for your favorite recipe but they’re also quite able to stand alone as a comforting drink. Frerichs demonstrates this every Sunday, by offering samples of her broth at the booth, as well as full cups for sipping and shopping. Customers can really taste the difference between the products and begin to picture how they might be used.

“People love to tell me their honest opinion about everything. I’ll test my new flavors on people. I do google surveys to get feedback – to see what matters to them in [their] food. People who go to farmers markets really value food.”

For Frerichs, her journey to solo bone broth entrepreneur began with yoga. “I used to be a yoga teacher and food was part of the practice. We would practice and then we would cook all together. With Covid we couldn’t do yoga, and everybody was like, ‘I want the broth!’”

Like many people at the onset of the global pandemic, Frerichs looked to help in whatever way she could. She saw an opportunity to nourish her community, and so Nouriche began in her home kitchen. “[I was] nourishing traditional ways of eating. Chicken broth – you can buy it on the shelf at the store but it’s not really – I could get on my soap box – that’s not the real thing. That’s usually water and flavoring and preservatives.”

Demand grew and Frerichs followed the need she saw. “It happened so fast! I knew I wanted to reach a broader audience and I knew that to sell at farmers markets you had to be legit.” She moved out of her home and into a commercial kitchen, all the while with her eye on joining Portland’s thriving farmers’ market scene.

When speaking to Frerichs it is obvious that people are a huge part of the Nouriche business model. She seems to thrive on feedback, on ideas, and on community. “You build that relationship [at farmers’ markets]. It’s part of the fun of knowing where your food comes from. You’re meeting the maker, literally.” This is where she gets passionate, smiling broadly. “It’s the energetic exchange – the energetics of food are super powerful. Listening to your gut. We know that food makes us feel good and we want to seek it out.”

You can find Nouriche and Frerich’s five energetically different varieties of chicken bone broth at Hillsdale Farmers’ Market on Sundays from 9am – 1pm.