Who Invented The Sandwich

Ellicott City woman sells products by moms for moms

Reusable sandwich and snack bags, animal-shaped sandwich cutters and natural, eco-friendly laundry detergent are just a few of the mom-invented products that make life easier and more enjoyable for Kim Lemmonds and her two children, ages three and five.

And she doesn't have to go far to get them. Lemmonds runs an online business called Berry Best Moms out of her Ellicott City home, where she sells more than 130 mom-invented products aimed to help mothers with young children.

"It's very subjective," she said. "It's based on what I think is going to sell well, what I like, if it's useful and if it's unique."

Lemmonds said she uses a lot of the products she sells, most of which cannot be found in stores.

"Some of them have become so integrated into my life, I don't know what I'd do without them," she said.

When her children were smaller, Lemmonds said she often had good ideas for products that she could use. She found many other mothers often had similar ideas, but only a few created products to sell.

Lemmonds said she would buy many mom-invented products, but could only get them on each individual product's website, so she would have to place several orders and pay multiple shipping fees.

She asked herself: "Why isn't there somebody who aggregates all of these mom-invented products?"

"That's where I launched my business from," Lemmonds said.

Her website went live on July 15, 2010, but Lemmonds started building relationships with mom inventors and vendors more than two years ago.

"They're really amazing women," she said.

One of those mothers is Gina Tepper, of Columbia, who sells a product called Thirst Clencher, which she designed when her daughter was a baby to prevent her from being able to throw her bottle on the ground.

"I just made this little contraption that held onto the bottle so when she threw it it would just kind of swing, like a tether," she explained.

Eventually, Tepper realized the contraption would also hold adult water bottles, so she created a version without the tether and with a clip so it could be attached to a belt loop, backpack or purse. Lemmonds sells both the baby and adult version of the Thirst Clencher on her website.

"I really think it's great what she does, that she's trying to support mom inventors," Tepper said of Lemmonds.

Though Tepper and many of the vendors Lemmonds works with are local, she said she has products that come from as far away as Australia. However, she only sells to the United States and Canada so she is able to charge a flat $5 shipping fee, which she said would be difficult to do if she had to pay international shipping costs.

DownWithTyranny!: Does anyone care what the 11th Earl of Sandwich ...

The Eleventh Earl of Sandwich and his forty-year-old heir, Orlando William Montagu, entered the catering trade in 2001, establishing a chain of sandwich restaurants called Earl of Sandwich. Their partner is the guy who founded Planet Hollywood. They have outlets at the Downtown Disney Marketplace and in the Fort Drum Service Plaza, in Okeechobee, Florida. Later this year, they will open branches in New York, one in midtown and another on John Street. . . . [A]ccording to their literature, "we don't serve mere sandwiches. We serve The Sandwich." Now of course it's always good to know that we New Yorkers are on the verge of catching up with what's chic in Okeechobee, and of course England, where the 11th Earl and his son the future 12th Earl (addressed as "Lando" by his father, as in "Paper napkins, Lando, please!") . . . well, as Lauren puts it in her report (which is not available free online , by the way): "The other day, in London," Lauren explains, "a concerned American sandwich lover performed some reconnaissance." Now one doesn't like to think that The New Yorker actually paid her way to London to sample these gustatory delights. Was she maybe there on her own, and took advantage of this opportunity to clue New Yorkers and no doubt other Americans (where do you go on a trajectory that runs from Okeechobee through NYC?) that Something's Coming? Well, I suppose that's none of my business, except possibly when I have to write my next subscription-renewal check. It was, as I'm sure we all recall, the 11th Earl's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather (I think I've got the right number of "great"s, but don't bet The Sandwich on it), the 4th Earl of Sandwich, who invented the sandwich. Lauren quotes the famous account by "the French traveler Jean-Pierre Grosley," from 1765, that attributed the invention to the earl's compulsive gambling, which rendered him unwilling to surrender more than one hand to even so important a function as nourishment, which he took in the form of "a bit of beef, between two slices of toasted bread, which he eat without quitting the game. This new dish grew highly in vogue, during my residence in London." Both father and son employ cooks, but they have strong opinions about sandwich construction, even if the construction of their sandwiches is often subcontracted.

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