Konrad Bouffard - Round Rock Honey

Konrad Bouffard - Round Rock Honey

Written by Staff Thursday, 03 April 2008

Round Rock Honey, Round Rock • Hutto • Georgetown • 828-5416, www.roundrockhoney.com

Q. How did you get started in the honey business?

A. I felt that I could offer a superior product based on my techniques for keeping the bees, moving them around, maintaining the hives and mixing the honey. I literally woke up one day and said ‘I think I’m going to do it.’ The next day, I filed a DBA at the Williamson County Courthouse, and then started selling our honey and our vegetables at the farmers market. From day one, we were an immediate success.

Q. What differentiates your honey?

A. We typically have a greater number of pollens in our honey, and we test it at Texas A&M so we know what’s in it every single week. We also test our competitors’ honeys, and we’ve never found another honey with as much pollen diversity as ours. We’ve tested honeys from Europe, Asia, all over the United States and counties in Texas. We also test for pollutants and adulteration, making sure water or corn syrup hasn’t been added to the honey. We know those things haven’t been added, but we want the lab results to prove it and that gives our customers a lot more confidence.

Q. Why do you think people buy Round Rock Honey?

A. Most of the time when people taste our honey, they buy it because it tastes so much better than store-bought honey. If they’ve experienced natural farm-based honey, they find that our honey has that distinctive, raw, unfiltered and unheated taste.

Q. Is your honey more expensive than grocery store brands?

A. Our honey is one of the more expensive brands out there because it’s very expensive to produce. A lot of equipment and a lot of labor goes into making it. When it comes to buying honey, if you pay less, you get less. If you pay more, you get more and we have the tests to prove it.

Q. Has your company grown since it began in 2003?

A. Every year that we’ve been in existence, we’ve had 300 percent growth. For any company, that’s just phenomenal. We’ve just been out there plugging away every single day and people have responded. Just on our Web site, we’re on track to quadruple our sales from last year. I’m not intimidated by growth, but this is getting to be pretty intense.

Q. What do you want people to know about bees and honey?

A. Our entire culture and society relies on bees. Pretty much everything you see in the grocery store is pollinated by bees. If not for the bees, an apple would be about $3 to $4 instead of 50 cents. Pumpkins would be too expensive for farmers to grow, then all of a sudden Halloween would look a lot different, and people don’t realize that. In fact, now we’re more reliant on bees because of the need to mass-produce food. People don’t realize in a typical teaspoon of honey, there’s probably 200 to 500 different pollens in there, and that comes from thousands of bees. One bee produces a teardrop of honey in a lifetime. So think about how many bees it takes to make that. Just eating a teaspoon of honey everyday and knowing it’s mine, it’s a product of the land, it’s the miracle food of nature – I love that.

Q. What is your typical day at work?

A. Our bee hives are spread out over many locations all over Central Texas. We usually have 12 to 15 hives in one location at a time per season. On a daily basis, the majority of my energy involves deliveries, maintenance of hives and actual bee-related things, dealing with customers and employees, working on Web sites, marketing and developing strategies for the future.

Q.What inspires you to work long hours in the bee yard?

A. All my family members are renowned for their ability to outwork everyone around them. They all have advanced degrees. I have a master’s degree and my dad has two Ph.D.s and two master’s. It’s a tradition in our family to work hard and achieve success. It’s just an appreciation of the value of education and hard work. And if you’re going to be a bee keeper you have to have that because you’re going to work hard.

0 Comments