John’s friends call him The Wizard. He says he’s just doing what comes naturally.

John Troy is a North Carolina native, born and raised in this gentle, southern state. Summertime found him at a farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains where he began to learn all about the world of natural foods, firsthand. His Grandmother was his first food mentor. He spent his time harvesting strawberries, shucking corn, collecting eggs from the henhouse, churning butter and even milking the cows. He helped his Grandmother 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 became 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 foods 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 world’s first energy bar, The Wizard’s Power Pac, a delicious high-energy bar made with fruits, nuts, herbs, honey and ginseng.

Inspired by the advent of the first traditional soy facility in North America, John concocted his first bottled sauce. The Wizard’s Hot Stuff. This miso based hot sauce is 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, today, many of these companies that John coached are successful national gourmet and natural food companies. John’s consulting business also took him to Japan where he learned about the wonderful world of Asian cuisine.

Leveraging the consulting fees that he had earned, John was able to invest in and build a company with a bottling plant in Cedar Grove, NC. Thus The Wizard’s Cauldron, Inc. was founded. He began to assemble a skilled and energetic team of people with shared principles. The company began an enterprise in proprietary branding for folks who were looking for a qualified team who understood the need for a natural and organic way of providing delicious food products.

At the same time, 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 coached an artisan food company in the UK where they developed and formulated organic dressings for Tesco, Waitrose and Sainsbury. He continues to work with many small food artisans, coaching them to be organic and how to scale up for larger demand.

Today, John still coaches at the Cauldron, where they continue to produce winning recipes. He refers to the company’s marketing strategy as “The Wizard of Oz” marketing strategy. The company currently supplies over three hundred different products for the organic food trade. Customers include Whole Foods Market, Wild Oats, Central Market, Premier Japan, Simply Delicious, Spectrum, Redbone Alley, Charlie Trotter, Albert’s Organics, Earth Fare, Ingle's Markets, Topco, Lund's/Byerly's, Garlic Gold, Oliv, Lavender Hill, and other fine labels. The enterprise is still doing what comes naturally, and organically, and continues to serve it’s customers.