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Birdola Products, the 800-pound gorilla in the world of seed cakes for wild birds, has just added two new blends to its successful Stacker seed cakes menu: Finch is loaded with Nyjer seed, and the other, Beetle, is packed with tasty freeze-dried beetles.
"There are actually farms (in the U.S.) that grow the beetles, amazingly enough. You can't import (beetles)," said Rick Savino, marketing manager at Birdola, a quiet little company with 30-to 35 employees located at 1650 Broadway in northwest Grand Rapids.
The company is about as all-American as a business can get. Just about the only ingredient in Birdola seed cakes that doesn't com from the United States are those Nyjer seeds, which come from Pakistan, Myanmar and India. Farms in the Midwest and in North and South Dakota supply the black oil sunflower seeds; peanuts come from Georgia; millet comes from Colorado and the Dakotas, and so forth.
Birdola now is a subsidiary of United Pet Group Inc. of Cincinnati, which in turn is a division of Spectrum Brands Holdings Inc. of Madison, Wis. But until about six months ago, it was an independent business founded in Grand Rapids by Don Metz in 1988. Metz had an insurance business, but he was "always kind of an inventor and tinkerer" on the side, according to Savino, who has been with the company for 16 years.
Back in the late 1980s, Metz had suffered a heart attack, and while recuperating, his brother-in-law gave him a tube-style birdfeeder. Metz went to a store to get a bag of wild...