Today we’d like to introduce you to Janice Hullett
Hi Janice, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Our Jam Journey – As a wife, mother, teacher, mentor and friend who loves to show hospitality by cooking and making delicious homemade foods and of course Jammin Jams. We started out creating jams for family and friends which spread to making gift baskets, fundraisers for mission trips and into community farmers markets and then selling our Jammin Jams at local retail shops and we have been jamming in the kitchen ever since. We have been creating our specialty jams for the last 10+ years.
We relocated to East Tennessee in 2018, and we expanded and continued our Jammin Jams business here locally, getting set up with the Maryville Farmers Market and craft fair events, expanding into Knoxville and surrounding local communities. If you find yourself in East Tennessee, you can enjoy our Jammin Jams at several retail locations in Maryville, Knoxville, Townsend and Sevierville including Dollywood Heart Song Lodge and Resort! They serve our delicious jams with their morning breakfast and create some tasty specialty drinks.
We are a small batch whole fruit jam producer and our niche is gluten free, dairy free, vegan friendly, and low sugar. By using ripen fruit it allows for the fruit’s natural sugars help sweeten our tasty and delicious jams and we reduce added sugars by 50% over other jams. We create our jams with your health in mind. Our jams are produced in a local certified kitchen and we follow TDA guidelines for preparing our jams.
Our family participates in various ways in creating and cooking with our jams as well as setting up at local Maryville Farmers Market (MFM) each Saturday as well as other community events year round. Ralph, my husband, meets and greets our customers at the MFM weekly with free samples from the “Jam Buffet” for our customers to taste our seasonal jams available prior to purchase. Hannah, our daughter, works with us by creating our designer jam labels, online store and website as well as our social media activities.
With our online store, at jamminjamstn.com our customers near and far can easily order their bundles of their favorite jams and have them shipped wherever they need for themselves, friends or family members as gifts. Each year, we add a few new seasonal flavors; we have expanded to tropical jams like Pina Colada, Tropical Splash, and fun new summer flavors like Strawberry and Raspberry Lemonade jams. We have traditional berry jams, like Strawberry, Triple Berry, Vanilla Berry and even Lavender infused jams like Blueberry Lavender, Blackberry Lavender Vanilla and Strawberry Lavender.
Many of our savory jams, Raspberry Chipotle and Jalapeno pepper jams can be used to marinate meats and seafood and from our own delicious recipes in which we created our first cookbook in 2019 and 2nd edition in 2024: “Cooking with Jammin Jams” with 100 recipes for enjoying our jams from breakfast, lunches, appetizers and dinners and desserts too!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Jamming has its challenges from getting the freshest quality fruits and veggies for our Jammin Jams. Since we rely on high quality ripen fruits for our jams to stay with our niche of gluten free, dairy free, vegan friendly and low sugar, we try to use local and community farmers fruits and then outsource to fresh frozen fruits, out of season, to meet the supply and demand of jam quantities needed for our online store, retail shops and local events.
We get a few customer requests for specialty jams each year that they can no longer get and everyone has their favorite childhood jam flavors they remember, so one of our goals is to be the creator and maker of those fond memories come true.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My prior professional work history in Colorado for almost 30 years, included construction management and early childhood educational teacher for 10 years. With both of those fields, you need to have good communication and people skills at a variety of levels. Each one requires analytical skills, plan strategies, solve problems and project cost variances; and these business skills have enhanced my leadership, decision making, communication and technical skills for day to day business operations.
How has all that translated into becoming “The Jam Lady”? It has helped in customer service meet and greet of my local and traveling customers, wholesale/retail relationships, and networking with other community businesses representing East Tennessee local and regional artisans. They say when you do what you love, you will never work a day in your life. Hospitality is in my jam, the love of cooking and people enjoying good food with friends and family brings it all to life, and therefore I do not consider my business “work” as I see the joy that people get from our specialty jams and sharing them with friends and family near and far.
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
Local artisans, like Jammin Jams TN, we see the farmers market industry growth, expansion and revenues increased following Covid as folks continue to look to support their local farmers and local economies. People like to see and meet the local small businesses as key industry food producers and their products knowing that they have quality food available for their families. Healthy eating trends have had an effect on the food industry and the the rising costs of fruits and fresh vegetables being passed along to the consumer at the retail stores; instead many customers have chosen to shop weekly at their local community farmers market supporting the area farmers. Older consumers tend to be more health conscious and want to shop small business by supporting the local farmers market vendors. Most farmers markets have adopted the acceptance of EBT payments which target the lower income consumer and that also has increased sales at the local farmers market trends.
We enjoy being able to participate locally within the metro Maryville and Knoxville communities supporting families with quality artisan foods, jams, fruits and vegetables which leads to weekly connections with our customers and visitors to East Tennessee. Jammin Jams TN also has future expansion plans that will be coming in 2025, so stay tuned!
Contact Info:
- Website: http://jamminjamstn.com
- Instagram: @jamminjamstn
- Facebook: Jammin Jams TN
