Target Market (7)

Alex Bevan has gotten himself into a pickle for profit. The 57-year-old “skinny li’l boy from Cleveland, Ohio” and wife, Deidre, are peddling their Skinny Pickles at local farmers markets and mom-and-pop retailers. The business sprouted on New Year’s Day 2007, when they took a jar of homemade bread-and-butter pickles to a potluck party. One guest liked the Bevans’ creation so much he offered them land where they could grow cucumbers. Alex, Deidre and 13-year-old son Kyle hauled the yield to a commercial canning facility, where they hand-cut and pickled the cucumbers using “an old standard recipe that got tweaked a little bit,” Deidre says. The appeal, she adds, lies as much in the picture of Alex’s “pickled” face on the label as the product’s flavor. “People look at the label,” Deidre says, “and they smile.”