For this episode, I was joined by Amy Zitelman, the CEO and Co-founder of Soom Foods, a Tahini brand. Completing their first sale in 2013, Zitelman and her two sisters founded Soom to capitalize on tahini’s relative obscurity in the American market. While tahini is a primary ingredient in everybody’s favorite dip - hummus - few people realize the full versatility of this delicious spread. But Soom’s efforts to grow Tahini’s recognition have paid off. From starting as a three-person team, with Zitelman bringing this little-known ingredient to farmers markets and sampling events and packaging Amazon orders by hand, Soom has come a long way. In 2025 alone, they expanded their reach by over 2,000 in-store locations and can now be found in 5,500 locations nationwide. The future looks even more promising: with less than 1% of households using tahini, Soom is set to get this awesome spread into as many hands as possible.