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Chef Drew Starkweather founded Drew’s All-Natural in 1995. Drew received his first restaurant job at the age of 12, and during the following eleven years, worked his way through the ranks to become head chef at the prestigious Deerfield Inn in Historic Deerfield, Mass. It was here that people began to discover his all-natural salad dressings and marinades.

Before long, customers at the Deerfield Inn started requesting bottles of the dressings to take home. It was from this popular demand for the chef-created salad dressings that Drew’s All-Natural was formed. Drew designed the labels himself, and produced and packed those first bottles in his own kitchen. Chef Drew’s philosophy from the beginning was to offer products that were chef-created and nature-inspired, using quality natural ingredients.

Within a year a regional natural foods distributor picked up the line, making it available to customers in hundreds of stores in the northeastern U.S. Consumers were pleased to find a dressing made of all-natural ingredients with innovative flavors, and the line quickly grew beyond Drew’s production capacity.

In 1999, after outgrowing the initial production facility, Chef Drew decided to accommodate for the rising demand by constructing a new production facility in Chester, VT. The state of the art facility increased Drew’s production capacity by 800 percent, and new distribution quickly created demand for the additional output.

In 2001, Drew’s All Natural sought and achieved organic certification for its production facility. That same year, the company introduced its line of all-natural salsas, including Hot, Medium, and Mild. In 2003, the original salsa varieties became USDA Certified Organic, and Drew’s introduced a fourth variety, Double Roasted salsa. Drew’s All Natural Double Roasted Salsa debuted at Natural Products Expo East, a major industry trade show held in Washington, D.C, and was recognized there with a coveted “Taste of Expo” award.

In 2004, Drew’s All Natural was awarded registration by NSF International, the not-for-profit health and safety company, for complying with its stringent Good Manufacturing Practices.

Today, Drew’s All-Natural remains privately owned and Drew is still very much involved in the daily activities of the company. Drew’s ranks among the top three shelf stable salad dressing brands in the natural products industry and is still one of the fastest growing brands in the country. The company’s top-quality dressings and salsas are now available nationally wherever natural products are sold.

Drew Starkweather was born and raised in Leverett, Mass. where he was the youngest of seven children. Passionate about food and cooking from an early age, he began working at the age of twelve as a bread baker’s apprentice. He spent eight years working his way through the ranks of restaurant kitchens before spending the next eight years employed as a professional chef.

Starkweather attended college in Greenfield, Mass., where he studied mathematics and chemistry. While working on his degree, he founded his first business, “The Sushi Caterer,” which brought the freshness and bounty of the New England seashore to local groups, and allowed Drew to put himself through school with the earnings.

After several years working as a professional chef, Starkweather was hired to be the head chef at the Deerfield Inn located in Historic Deerfield, Mass., where customers soon began clamoring to bring home bottles of his unique and intriguing Soy Ginger dressing and marinade. Starkweather began bottling the dressing in his own kitchen in 1995 to meet the demand, and it became a fast favorite with the locals. Since then, Drew's All Natural has developed into one of the largest and fastest growing brands of natural dressings in the nation, and is available in both natural and conventional grocery stores. Although “Chef Drew” still develops product recipes in his home kitchen, he designed and built a cutting edge production facility in Chester, Vt., in 1999.

Starkweather and his wife, Cathy, still make their home in Leverett, Mass. with their two daughters. They enjoy traveling together as a family, which has allowed Drew to pursue another favorite interest – perusing the open-air markets in major cities for culinary finds.