Business Runs at Snail’s Pace but It’s Making Some Headway

To say that business is slow at Enfant Riant Escargot of California is putting it mildly. It truly moves at a snail’s pace.

The nation’s only commercial escargot company is on the move, and owners Mike Beyries and Tracy Brash hope that more American palates will grow sophisticated enough to appreciate their product.

Two million snails slither through two greenhouses in Petaluma every year en route to restaurants and gourmet food stores in 26 states. The snails are packed in water in 7 1/2-ounce cans retailing for $6 to $7, including a small cookbook.

While Beyries and Brash are serious about their 2-year-old business, they’re not above joking. Beyries insists that his little mollusks have great intelligence and are trainable.

Holding one in the palm of his hand, he orders it to “Stay! Sit! Play Dead!” The little critter complies.

“You have got to have a sense of humor to be in the snail business,” Beyries said. His background as a professional stand- up comic on the club circuit in Los Angeles has come in handy.

Beyries, however, was teaching at San Francisco State University when Brash suggested starting an escargot company. Brash had been trying to do a story on a Santa Rosa man raising snails commercially, but found that he had moved to Texas, leaving behind a book on raising snails.

“It started just as a lark,” Beyries said. “Tracy is an epicurean and gourmet who has traveled throughout Europe.”

Brash soon was raising snails at his Tiburon home. Enter Beyries, his boyhood chum.

“We sat down and started to talk about it one night and were still talking when the sun came up the next morning,” Beyries said.

Lots of research followed, including a check of governmental regulations.

“They couldn’t decide if we were a farm or a ranch,” Beyries said. “Our insurance company lists us as a feed lot.”

The company buys snails by the ton from farmers happy to unload the pests that had been attacking their plants.

After delivery to Petaluma, the snails are fed a mixture of soy meal, bran flakes and minerals. Several weeks later, they’ve been fattened to eating size and are fed only water for three days to cleanse the digestive system.

While Beyries and Brash normally work with only one other employee, they hire as many as 30 part-time workers during a monthly cooking week, during which the snails are parboiled, picked out of their shells and cooked under high pressure.

While some imported escargot come with flavoring, Beyries said most chefs prefer the pure version so that they do not have to work to overcome another flavor.

“The texture is perfect,” he said, noting that his escargot are not rubbery and chewy like their larger, imported cousins.

Start-up costs two years ago came completely out of pockets for the two men.

“We think of ourselves like a small winery; we like to keep control,” Beyries said.

In fact, he likens the escargot industry to the wine industry of the 1940s.

“At that time, people thought only foreigners, winos and extraordinarily rich people drank wine. Now people think of escargot as only appetizers you order in restaurants. We hope that will change, too.”

While the company is short of its ultimate goal, it is on track.

“We set up a five-year schedule and we’re within $100 of the goal we set for two years,” Beyries said.