John Troy
Organic Taste Wizard

John’s friends call him The Wizard. They say his sure-fire magic makes food disappear by making it taste so good. They say he's the Organic Taste Wizard! He says Hess just doing what comes naturally.

John Troy was born in North Carolina in 1939. Summertime found him on a farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains where he began to learn all about the world of natural food, first hand. His Grandmother was his first food mentor. He spent his time harvesting strawberries, shucking corn, collecting eggs from the hen house, churning butter and even milking the cows. He helped his Grand mom prepare lavish meals on a wood cook stove. Mealtime was the highlight of the day at his Grandmother's farm and he loved the notion of feeding people. Mixing savory smells, good times and mighty fine eating became dear to his heart.

Thirty years later, John met his second food guru, Jamesy. A little man in the mountains of Jamaica with a heart as big as all outdoors. Jamesy was John’s spiritual Godfather. Jamesy's diet was totally natural out of the wild and he taught John the methods of preparing healthy food with what the good earth freely provided. Days were spent gathering and preparing food from scratch from the wild harvest. Jamesy taught John the power of food in healing the body.

When John returned from Jamaica, he opened a natural herb & spice store in Chapel Hill, NC, and his journey in the food business began. He went on to manage two emerging natural food stores before starting a foundation of the healing arts, The Lindenself Foundation. There, John was busy feeding folks incredible meals at retreats and gatherings. As a support for the foundation, he started an enterprise to make the first power bar, The Wizard’s Power Pac, a delicious high energy bar made with fruits, nuts, herbs, honey and ginseng.

Inspired by the advent of a first traditional soy facility in North Carolina, John concocted his first bottled sauce, The Wizard’s Hot Stuff. It is a miso based hot sauce still popular today. This was the beginning of the prolific storm of sauces, dressings and condiments that were to follow. He started American Natural Foods and introduced natural sauces and condiments to the national natural food trade.

From his growing reputation, John received an invitation from the prime minister of Grenada to consult on how to best utilize their small truck farms in reaching the culinary markets of the world. The following year, the governor of Vermont asked John to consult with the State of Vermont; helping small food artisans develop and re-formulate products and scale up for entry into the natural foods industry. He worked with this coalition of Vermont food artisans and now many of these are successful national gourmet and natural food companies. His consulting business took him to Japan where he learned about the wonderful world of Asian cuisine.

With consulting fees, John was able to build his own bottling plant in Cedar Grove, NC, The Wizard’s Cauldron. He launched the Simply Delicious brand and began his career in proprietary branding for folks who were looking for a qualified person who understood the need for a natural way of providing delicious food products.

John and his wife, Carol, began planning menus and cooking at their own natural food café in Hillsborough, NC, The Regulator Café. The popular café had a local following that allowed the pair to experiment with many innovative new American flavor profiles.

John then developed and formulated organic dressings for an artisan food company in the UK where they introduced the Simply Delicious brand in Europe, which is now the leading organic dressing and mayo brand in the UK. This led to the development of the organic private label brands of sauces and dressings in the UK for Tesco, Waitrose and Sainsbury. He continues to work with many small food artisans and coaching them about how to be organic and scale up for larger demands.

Today, John Troy is CEO and Organic Taste Wizard at The Wizard’s Cauldron, creating winning recipes and producing over a hundred different products for the organic food trade. Customers include Whole Foods Market, Moosewood Restaurant, Premier Japan, Simply Delicious, Mr. Spice, Rainforest Organic, Albert's Organics and Dr. Atkins. He's still doing what comes naturally.