Copycats and why we are glad for them

We've started our company a little less than three years ago. Not a long time to do anything remarkable yet, the work starts to prove its effects in relatively unexpected ways. 

In food business recipes are hard (or even impossible) to protect, so all we can do is "keeping it real".

Yet, we start to itch when we see a product with ingredient list an exact COPY OF OUR PRODUCTS. Especially when it comes from a former cooperating business to which we've made sausages before.

One Finnish company just came out with their new products, raw chicken sausages with two revolutionary flavours: Herbs and Chili! Good job.

Wait, aren't those exactly the two flavours we created to them last year? Well, these are broad flavour categories, anyone can come out with them. The ingredient list MUST be different, right? Some twist, some changes, some creativity...

Let's see. Chicken, salt, black pepper, paprika powder, chili, garlic, casing. Jeez, that's an exact match with our ingredients. And the Yrttikana?

Chicken, salt, black pepper, garlic, salvia, marjoram, casing. Bingo! We have fond memories of our Yrttikanamakkara as it won silver in 2016 at the 1st Finnish Artesan Food contest.

If you have a good idea, people are going to copy you. (I actually copied this from somewhere else...See?) If you have a good product, someone will try to make it. In fact, it IS the PROOF that you have a good product if copycats appear.

We are proud to contribute to Finnish sausage culture and proud that our recipes are so good other companies take them without even an attempt changing them.