Dab of Ranch

Hello my fancy friends! It’s so good to be with you once again. I’ve missed you and I hope the holiday season was as easy and gentile as it could be. We are in a brand new year, 2023, and I am so excited to see what the next 12 months bring all of us. A new year is always an opportunity for a new adventure, and try as we may, planning for the unknown can be a little tricky. But we don’t have to think about that right now. Today, we are going to peer into a familiar and even nostalgic universe, with a slight skew towards the world of oddities, and dare I say potential future interior decor collectibles. Many companies will dip their toes into the world of home goods and interior design. We’ve seen fast fashion giant H&M release their own catalogue of throw pillows, beauty conglomerate Kim Kardashion released a minimalist home organizing set of accessories, even A list singers like Kelly Clarkson, Lionel Richie, and Lenny Kravitz have their curated furniture collections you can shop on big name websites. 

But then, there are the more curious home decor brand cross overs. It’s much less common to see brands selling home decor directly on their websites, especially when they are in an otherwise unrelated industry. The 90’s brought us tobacco giant Camel’s rewards program, that included prizes like a Joe Camel clock and pool table set. Coca-Cola has had a slew of products from dining tables and chairs to vintage looking metal wall hangings. Today, we have a collection of home furnishings and accessories from salad dressing king Hidden Valley. I was literally perusing Hidden Valley’s website, trying to check the ingredients on their ranch flavor packets for my own dietary restrictions, as one does, and I stumbled upon an entire section of their website called the Ranch Shop. A subset of this category was simply labelled “Home Collection.” At first, I thought I was having some kind of hallucination brought on by a mental breakdown, but sure enough, this is a real home decor collection, from a real salad dressing company. This is certainly a strange and surprising source of home decor. In this episode, we’re going to look at the highs and lows of this collection, what it means for the brand, what items are worth it, and what you can skip.

But first, let’s talk about the Color of the Week. We are diving all-in on this Hidden Valley subject, as the colors do play and important role for most of the product line. The bottle labels have long since used a consistent shade of true green, similar to Benjamin Moore’s Vine Green 2034-20. This bold paint color packs a punch and can be used in your home to liven up all kinds of accessories, from mirror and picture frames, to the insides of cabinets for a surprising burst of energy. This color feels classic, preppy, and playful - but remember that a little goes a long way, and balance it out with hints of bright yellow, cloud blue, carnelian red, and lots of prints and patterns. We are full steam ahead - next stop, Hidden Valley Ranch.

I’m a ranch dressing fanatic, but the mayo-based condiment can be polarizing! I know plenty of people who cannot stand it. But one thing is for sure - this sauce is distinctly American. Let’s do a quick history of ranch. It’s tied in a very on-the-nose manner, to resort-style guest ranches  or dude ranches of the early 1900’s. Wealthy East coasters had begun to romanticize western cowboy life, but didn’t want to get their hands dirty with actual farm work, and so a market for a tourist friendly cattle ranch experience opened up from Texas to North Dakota. California’s Palm Springs became a particular hot spot for the dude ranch industry. Guests could expect an all-inclusive experience with meals and activities including hayrides, horseback riding, hiking, and campfires. The popularity of these experiences peaked in the 1930’s, and by the 1950’s the market was becoming oversaturated. Enter one Steve Henson. Steve opened the Hidden Valley Ranch in Santa Barbara county in 1956, and while the ranch itself was only open for a short four years, probably due to this being the tale end of the industry’s popularity - the menu became a major hit, particularly Steve’s salad dressing recipe, a hearty mix of mayo, sour cream, garlic, onion, parsley, and dill. This stuff was so popular, Steve began a mail order business for the seasoning packets, naming them after the ranch itself, and eventually grew a food empire that’s still alive and kicking 60 years later. That bring us to present day, many brands have adapted the flavor, and it’s hardly limited to just salads. In fact, it’s used as a dipping sauce just as often in my opinion. But Hidden Valley is still the original, authentic brand that is solely dedicated to all things ranch.  Anyways, what in the world does all this have to do with interior design?

In the fall of 2022, Hidden Valley Ranch launched a home goods collection in collaboration with designer Dani Dazey. Dazey is a self taught, multi-disciplinary designer from California who loves maximalism and lots of saturated colors, and is the designer of the Palm Springs Trixie Motel in California, and star of the HBO Max show of the same name.

The marketing strategy is the bold taste of ranch inspires bold design, and the tie to a designer based in Palm Springs dovetails with the brand’s history of the dude ranch boom. Fun fact, this is not the town of Palm Spring’s first rodeo as a vehicle for the marriage between processed American eats and interior design. In 2019, tex mex fast food king, Taco Bell created a pop up hotel in the heart of Palm Springs that made the rounds on social media and joined many other non-hotel brands in creating a hospitality experience including Equinox gyms, Japanese lifestyle store Muji, and even Cuisinart. There’s clearly an appetite for the mix of nostalgia, Americana, and kitsch that make these brand crossovers into the world of interiors appealing, but let’s take a look at exactly what we are getting from Hidden Valley’s home collection.

So we’re going to do some blind reacting to their products. Looking at their website, I see the crown jewel is a sofa, but that’s sold out, so I’m going to come back to it a little later. There’s a ton of textiles. Placemats, a shower curtain, a table cloth, a duvet cover, and a fleece throw blanket all done in the same pattern which appears to be a variation on the classic Formica boomerang print. Except rather than using boomerangs they are using silhouetted green and blue ranch dressing bottles. If you haven’t seen the Atomic Boomerang print before, it’s a very colorful organic pattern of rotating and overlapping shapes in various sizes and forms. It always reminds me of bowling alleys or the Jetsons, and of course Palm Springs.

There is a second print that’s only available on a sold out throw blanket that feels way more Warholian, with a checkered grid of two images - a more detailed ranch dressing bottle and a slice of pepperoni pizza. The color scheme is classic Hidden Valley green, bright orange, aqua, white, and golden yellow. They show this print paired with a yellow velvet sofa, not the sold out one I mentioned before though. Did ya’ll put ranch on your pizza growing up? I didn’t, but now I’m wondering if I should try it. There’s also wallpaper in both prints. It’s the peel and stick variety, which is always more expensive than traditional wallpaper, but is very easy to remove. So you get one two foot by eight foot panel for $75. Now, the typical American ceiling height is nine feet, making one panel a foot shy, which means installation is a pain because you’d have to keep cutting a little piece to fill in that last twelve inches. A typical wall is about 10’ long, so do an accent wall, you would need 6 of these puppies to cover the whole thing, putting us at $450 for one ranch themed wall.  You get to make the call if that’s within your budget. The wallpaper is not sold out in either pattern as of January 2023, so get it while its hot.

There’s also some desk accessories including coasters, a tray, and a pencil case. In terms of the quality of these pieces, the shower curtain, bath mat, and fleece throw blanket are 100% polyester. If you don’t have a lot experience with polyester, I can tell you it’s inexpensive, light weight, durable, and moisture and mildew resistant. But it is not known for its breathability, and it holds on to odors unlike any other fiber in the market and it can be a conductor of static electricity. So that throw blanket might not be the coziest thing over time. The duvet cover, table cloth, and placemats, on the other hand, are 100% machine washable cotton, which sounds hopeful. I’m curious how well either product holds up in the washing machine, as cotton can be subject to shrinking and warping, but it’s a more natural option than polyester, and certainly a better option for the pillow and duvet cover set. Although these items, in a queen size are $210, and this doesn’t include a fitted or flat sheet, so you better be in love with that Atomic Ranch pattern.

Okay, let’s talk about the show stopper from this collection - the $10,000 sold out sofa. It looks like there’s a waitlist for it, but you have to register and create an account to get on the waitlist. That’s exactly what I need in my life is an account with Hidden Valley Ranch. So in terms of the product description, we get the basic dimensions. It's 6 feet long by 36 inches wide. The fabric is poly velvet. There isn't a description of the construction, for instance a solid wood frame, Dacron wrapped foam, or anything like that so we kind of don't know what we're getting in terms of quality. The design is really fun, in fact the sofa looks a little bit more like a daybed than a traditional sofa. The back reminds me of an early 90’s upholstered headboard. It’s a full half circle with radial channel tufting, I love that detail, and the whole thing extends pretty high up.  I wish the listed dimensions included the overall height of the sofa because that is obviously what is most unique about the piece. It's exceptionally tall. There’s one image that shows a few people sitting on the sofa and the back is above their heads at the very center. If I was trying to plan a room with this sofa, like figure out if I could hang art above it, the height would be critical. There aren’t really arms on the sofa, just two round bolsters that look like they might be loosely attached somehow, maybe with Velcro, maybe with ties, again the description is light so it’s unclear what the construction details are. I do see a welt or piping detail at the edge of the seat, which is great, that gives the seam more durability and looks high end. The seat and arms are a golden yellow color, but the back is a mix of white, millennial pick, and yellow; in a wavy concentric pattern. On top of all the colors are orange dots that appear to be about the size of a fist. It looks like a pizza, and its pictured with these little ranch bottle throw pillows, although it doesn’t mention them in the description, so I’m not sure if they are included.

The design is so fun, and I could easily see this in a college dorm or an apartment with six roommates, some kind of party house where everyone has a good sense of humor and no one is too serious about furniture. It could even be good for a kids’ playroom. I really like the design, I think Dani did an awesome job with the aesthetic, my issue with the images on the website, is with the quality. Like, the back, from what I can tell, and I have to say there aren’t a ton of pictures, only three on the website, the back looks pretty thin. I wouldn’t want to lean backwards too much, I think this sofa would have to be pushed directly up against a wall to stabilize it, otherwise there might be a tipping risk. 

Dani Dazey did mention this project on her social media, but the story she tells about it is different from what made it to the Hidden Valley’s website. She actually built a custom, one of a kind sofa that looks somewhat different from the one on the website. It’s a slightly darker yellow and it looks smaller and generally thicker, and we see it’s construction process in some behind the scenes footage, which looks decent enough, although I still can’t say if it looks comfortable to sit on for extended periods of time.  My guess is Dani created her one of a kind piece, but what we are seeing on the website is an attempt at mass production of that design. If that actually got rolled out, I’m not sure. Did Dani’s original sell out on the spot and they never made anything after that, or did they mass produce a small quantity and then that sold out? I cannot tell you.

But I can say, looking at what is available on the website, and setting aside the custom piece Dani created, compared to similar retail items, I think the price on this is very high. It’s really fun and the aesthetic is unique and playful, but there’s nothing on the website that gives me confidence that this is a quality made product. In fact, there’s actually a note that states, and I quote, “Couch pictured may appear slightly different than actual product.” So what that tells me is I’m paying 10K for a sofa and I’m not even sure what it’s going to look like. And that doesn’t even factor in shipping, I would estimate at least another grand for moving something like this across the country. Of course, there’s no way to know that because it’s sold out, so I can’t enter my shipping information to see what the total would be. But, my point is that if you like this quirky style of sofa, for 10 grand, you could hire your own local crafts person or furniture maker to build this custom for you, and the quality would probably be higher, or at the very least, you’d know how the sofa was being constructed. That’s just my opinion though.

So overall, there’s a few products that I think could be fun, particularly the shower curtain and the placemats, but this whole collection comes with the same premium price tag we see with other celebrity home decor collections. The cost is coming from the name and the novelty, not the quality of the product. Remember that. Personally, I have to understand the “why” of things like this to sleep at night. Why did Hidden Valley decide to create a home goods collection? Other than to offer mid range products at high end prices. Where is the logic? After researching it, I have a theory. And if I’m, wrong, Hidden Valley Ranch marketing department, take note, because I clearly have a brilliant marketing mind.  I propose this might have been the brand’s way of testing the waters of interior design because they could re-open the original dude ranch. It wouldn’t even have to be in the same location, it could be a completely new, modern, nature-focused resort with great food. This could the first step in that direction, potentially. Time will tell. Definitely check this collection out for yourself, have a look at the products, and let me know you opinions over on Instagram. The link is in the show notes. If you haven’t gotten yourself a snack, now is great time to do it, whether it’s ranch and carrot sticks or something else entirely. My favorite thing about the whole concept of this collection is indulging our bold side, whether it’s with food or home decor. You’re never too loud, too much, or too anything. You get to be as bold as you are.  Take awesome care of your bold self, and I will talk to you next time.