Florida Foodie

Virtually all of the tea consumed by Americans comes from somewhere else, but Brian White wants to change that.

White, who is from New Smyrna Beach, is the CEO of Yaupon Bros. American Tea Company. The business focus on selling “tea” made from the leaves of the yaupon holly plant.

White said he got started about 12 years ago. At the time, he said there was no commercial supply of yaupon available.

“So we really had to build a supply chain from the ground up which took a really long time and a lot of you know blood, sweat, tears and other people’s money,” White said.

Of course, it wasn’t just Brian White’s blood sweat and tears. His brother, Kyle, also became involved in the business.

White said his brother remains an active part of the day-to-day operations, dealing with much of the sales of the business. The brothers are also helped by the third founder of the business, Mark Steel, who started out as a mentor to the younger White brother.

In addition to building Yaupon Bros., White has been working with farmers across the state to promote yaupon as an alternative crop to citrus, as the industry has been struggling with citrus greening.

The business has seen quite an expansion since it started. Yaupon Bros. is now available in every Whole Foods supermarket in the state of Florida. The company also just recently opened a new production facility and cafe in Edgewater.

On the latest episode of Florida Foodie, White shares some of his future plans for Yaupon Bros. He also takes a deep dive into the cultural significance of the yaupon to the indigenous people of Florida and the U.S.

Please follow our Florida Foodie hosts on social media. You can find Candace Campos on Twitter and Facebook. Lisa Bell is also on Facebook and Twitter and you can check out her children’s book, “Norman the Watchful Gnome.”

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Twenty-five years spent working in kitchens does not typically lead to a career inside the tech sector, but Ben Ellsworth managed to do it — founding a company aimed at helping restaurants deal with unexpected staffing shortages.

Ellsworth is the founder and CEO of GigPro, which was recently launched in the Orlando area.

GigPro allows people in the service industry to fill in on open shifts at businesses — allowing those places to cover themselves if someone calls out sick or has to leave work unexpectedly.

Ellsworth, who is from Charleston, South Carolina, said he got the idea while looking for someone to fill an open shift at a restaurant where he was working.

“A dishwasher didn’t show up for a shift,” he said. “I looked at my line staff, and I said, ‘Who knows a guy?’ We all got 40 people on our phones that can cover the shift, but finding the person available is impossible. That’s when I got an AirBnb notification that someone had booked a room at my house for the night and I was like, ‘I wish he had booked to wash these dishes.’ And that was kind of a little lightbulb moment.”

Ellsworth feels as though GigPro can be a boon to the struggling service industry, which he believes was “hit the hardest by the pandemic.” Much of the service industry has been dealing with staffing shortages, though Ellsworth admits, this problem has been a long time coming.

“This has been going on for over a decade, you know, in Charleston — in any market that’s got a big dining scene and a high cost of living that’s experienced like a lot of economic gentrification,” Ellsworth said. “I mean, people are — where’re all the restaurants? They’re in the city center. People are getting pushed out of there — further and further — and if you can’t afford to live in the area, it’s tough to get to the area. So that was a decade of staffing just getting worse and worse and worse. And then COVID was like this Band-Aid that just got ripped off.”

Ellsworth said GigPro is designed to offer service workers more flexibility. He said the platform also provides a $15 per hour minimum for workers.

Ellsworth added that his company often sees GigPro workers end up with full-time employment coming out of a shift they’ve worked through the app.

In the latest episode of Florida Foodie, Ellsworth talks more about the founding of GigPro and how the service works. He also shares why he focuses on independent restaurants and expanding the service into a dozen markets.

Please follow our Florida Foodie hosts on social media. You can find Candace Campos on Twitter and Facebook. Lisa Bell is also on Facebook and Twitter and you can check out her children’s book, “Norman the Watchful Gnome.”

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Ashley D’Acunto, the co-owner of Phat Ash Bakes, says she has always enjoyed baking for fun — feeding her husband, Israel Erazo and her co-workers — but when the pandemic hit she suddenly found herself with more time on her hands.

“I was working at Lululemon in Winter Park and the store closed for COVID. And it gave me time to, you know, actually make a website and focus,” D’Acunto said “And then it just really took off you everyone was on their phone. Everyone was quarantined, spending time on social media and Instagram, scrolling and so it really just worked out for us in that sense.”

D’Acunto actually credits her coworkers at Lululemon for pushing her toward starting the business with her husband. One worker in particular really gave her the nudge she needed.

“Maddie is my friend from Lululemon who set up my first bake sale, she made me my first Phat Ash shirt, she named business. I mean this girl is incredible just because she’s a good person,” D’Acunto said. “She was like, ‘I know you like to bake. You should really just make a company called Phat Ash Bakes.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my God, you’re right. I’m not even gonna change it. It’s perfect.’”

That bake sale was D’Acunto’s first foray into cookie sales, but when the pandemic shut down much of the country, Phat Ash shifted to Instagram.

“People would slide into our DMS, place an order with us and we would meet them in the Target parking lot next to our house,” D’Acunto said. “And then we were like, ‘OK, this kind of looks a little shady. And maybe we should have a real location, instead of meeting in this parking lot and handing a brown bag over to these strangers.’ And so then we had a pickup location, we made it more official.”

Her social media success continued to swell. Now, with more than 17,000 Instagram followers, Phat Ash has moved into Orlando’s Trendy Mills 50 District. The business shares the space at 912 N. Mills with Grilled Cheezus.

In the latest episode of Florida Foodie, D’Acunto talks about how her business has grown and where the inspiration for her cookies comes from.

Please follow our Florida Foodie hosts on social media. You can find Candace Campos on Twitter and Facebook. Lisa Bell is also on Facebook and Twitter and you can check out her children’s book, “Norman the Watchful Gnome.”

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Nathan and Jenn Clark have spent nearly 10 years churning out marshmallows from their business, Wondermade, in Sanford.

However, they feel as though they are providing more than just sweet treats to the community.

“What everybody fundamentally needs isn’t just a marshmallow, they really need to be loved and they need a place to love other people,” Nathan Clark said.

The name for the business comes from a poem in the Bible, according to Nathan Clark.

“King David writes that we are wonderfully made and it really caught my attention,” he said.

The couple is really about spreading the love with their sugary confections. In fact, love is how Wondermade grew into the business that it is.

“I would love to sit here and say, ‘Let me tell you my brilliant business plan,’ but really, Jen and I just fell in love with making the marshmallows and it just kept getting bigger and bigger," Nathan Clark said.

In the latest episode of Florida Foodie, Nathan Clark talks about how a gift for his wife ended up being the foundation of Wondermade. He also talks about what it’s like working with his wife and six children in the family business and also explains why he only wears blue shirts and red pants.

Please follow our Florida Foodie hosts on social media. You can find Candace Campos on Twitter and Facebook. Lisa Bell is also on Facebook and Twitter and you can check out her children’s book, “Norman the Watchful Gnome.”

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Chauniqua Major-Louis, who goes by Major, never really liked the name of her popcorn business, Major's Project Pop.

“For the longest time, I wanted to change the name of the brand because I thought what is a Project Pop, like what is any of that mean? I just created it one day just (because) I needed to come up with a name, so I invented that,” Major said.

It wasn’t until later it occurred to her that Major's Project Pop could mean a lot more than popcorn.

“In 2020, I was so tired, and I was just getting home from popping around 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning and I had to get up and go do something,” Major said. “And this idea came to mind when I was thinking about POP.”

She realized in that haze of exhaustion that POP could be an acronym, bringing deeper meaning to her brand.

“It means people over profits, but it also means purpose over profits,” Major said. “And what that looks like is we advocate for people before sales and money.”

Major said part of the way she realizes those ideals in the business is by using the highest quality ingredients for her vegan, organic, non-GMO popcorn.

The quality of the snacks Major produces has always been her top priority. She wanted to make a product she would feel comfortable feeding to her own family, specifically her nieces and nephews.

In the latest episode of Florida Foodie, Major discusses how a Christmas gift prompted her to start Major's Project Pop and how she was able to grow the business by winning a limbo contest. She also talks about her favorite flavors and how Major's Project Pop helps to support Central Florida nonprofits.

Please follow our Florida Foodie hosts on social media. You can find Candace Campos on Twitter and Facebook. Lisa Bell is also on Facebook and Twitter and you can check out her children’s book, “Norman the Watchful Gnome.”

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Chef, restaurateur and author Richard Blais’ culinary journey started when he was just a teenager.

“My first job was at McDonald’s when I was 14,” he said. “I was the poissonier there — which means fish cook in French — which is a very important position at a fast-food hamburger restaurant that arguably has one seafood item.”

Blais said his family wasn’t big on fancy meals when he was a kid.

Despite these humble beginnings, Blais ended up at a prestigious culinary school, the Culinary Institute of America.

After school and several years in the culinary industry, Blais eventually entered the world of televised cooking competitions, ultimately gaining fame as the first winner of Top Chef All-Stars.

Since then, Blais has made the rounds with a variety of celebrity chefs.

Blais is now part of a trifecta of hosts — along with Rasay and Nyesha Arrington — on Next Level Chef, a reality cooking competition on Fox.

On top of his hosting duties, Blais is working on a new cookbook and also runs several restaurants, including the newly opened Four Flamingos at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress in Orlando.

On the latest episode of Florida Foodie, Blais shares his favorite dishes from his new Orlando restaurant. He also talks about some of his early experiences working in fast food and his first experience seeing an alligator in the wild while visiting family in Florida.

Please follow our Florida Foodie hosts on social media. You can find Candace Campos on Twitter and Facebook. Lisa Bell is also on Facebook and Twitter and you can check out her children’s book, “Norman the Watchful Gnome.”

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Dr. Amber Orman likes to practice what she calls “true healthcare.”

She is a radiation oncologist and also a practitioner of lifestyle medicine “which is using food and movement, the way that you feel stress the way that you sleep, your relationships and your use of tobacco, alcohol and drugs, to really change your life in a positive way,” according to Orman.

Orman takes that practice into the HEAL Program at AdventHealth. HEAL stands for Healthy Eating Active Lifestyle. Orman started the program with Dr. Nathalie McKenzie, a gynecologic oncologist.

The HEAL program shows cancer patients ways they can change their lifestyles to improve their overall health and help them recover from their diagnosis.

Part of the core of the HEAL program is encouraging patients to consume a diet that is at least majority plant-based.

Part of the reason for encouraging a plant dominant diet is because plants provide something that animal products cannot, fiber.

“Fiber is only in plants,” she said. “So when we’re eating fiber, that is what our gut microbiome needs to be happy.”

Orman explained that your gut microbiome is “a population of bacteria in your gut, that is absolutely central to many processes in your body.”

“So when this population of organisms in your gut is happy because they’ve been eating a lot of fiber, the global level of inflammation in your body is lower, and your immune system is functioning in a better way,” the doctor said. “When our immune system is functioning in a better way, it can pick off little cancer cells that are floating around in our body from time to time — because that is the case, we always have a cancer cell or two roaming around that our body is designed to take those out so that it doesn’t land in breast tissue or the pancreas and grow to become a tumor that we find and diagnose and treat.”

In addition to fiber, plants also provide phytonutrients.

“Phytonutrients, again, are substances only in plants,” Orman said. “One subset of a phytonutrient is an antioxidant. And they’re anti-inflammatory — they’re just very good for our body. They run around kind of repairing damage and preventing damage.”

In the latest episode of Florida Foodie, Orman shares more about HEAL and the improvements she has seen in her patients as a result of the program. She also shares more about the benefits of a plant-dominant diet for overall health and what changes people can make to begin improving their nutrition.

Please follow our Florida Foodie hosts on social media. You can find Candace Campos on Twitter and Facebook. Lisa Bell is also on Facebook and Twitter and you can check out her children’s book, “Norman the Watchful Gnome.”

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Sandra Shorter, owner of The Naked Cupcake, started her baking career in a quest to find the “perfect cake.”

At the time, Shorter was working in education and she used her fellow teachers as “guinea pigs.”

After refining her cupcake chops in school, in 2016 Shorter took the plunge and bought a food truck off of Craigslist. At the time, the truck was covered in graffiti, but a little love and work turned into the start of The Naked Cupcake. She also gave the truck a name — “Trixie.”

“My gosh, it was such a blur. I remember thinking like, ‘I’m actually going to do this,’” Shorter said. “And we started with Trixie as a way to test the concept and to also gain a following. If it worked, then, you know, the goal was the store.”

Trixie did work and, in fact, she’s still working. Trixie can be found popping up at events around Central Florida. However, Shorter is now also running her own brick-and-mortar store in Orlando’s Lake Nona neighborhood.

Running a bakery would be enough of a challenge for anyone, but when you throw in Trixie and her children to the mix you can see that Shorter has a very full plate. However, Shorter is quick to point out she not doing it all alone.

“Honestly, it’s just like God’s grace is pouring through me and helping me to finish it all and do it all,” she said. “I have an amazing team. I have a really, really amazing team.”

Shorter plans to keep growing the business as well. She said she is looking into buying a second truck in the next year or so.

In the latest episode of Florida Foodie, Shorter talks about all things cupcakes and frostings. She also shares stories about the early days with Trixie and how her business managed to flourish during the pandemic.

Please follow our Florida Foodie hosts on social media. You can find Candace Campos on Twitter and Facebook. Lisa Bell is also on Facebook and Twitter and you can check out her children’s book, “Norman the Watchful Gnome.”

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Hinge is not normally where one goes to start a business relationship, but that’s how Ryan McKenzie and Stevie Andujar got their start.

The pair did not stay together as a couple, but they have remained friends and business partners. They run Table Ghost Kitchen together.

It is a venture that was born “out of boredom,” according to McKenzie.

“We literally were in Ryan’s kitchen one day, and we just, like looked up a recipe and we’re like, ‘let’s make some chocolate chip cookies,’” Andujar said.

The pair posted about their cookies on social media, which led to people asking to buy a batch. From there it was a matter of trying to get the cookies to the hungry public.

This was the start of Table. The name is supposed to be reminiscent of Apple’s branding — a simple, single-word brand that people could relate to their product.

Table started in September 2020. Cookies remain the signature product of the brand, but the pair have also started venturing into savory items for their pop-ups around Central Florida.

The food is front and center, but Andujar has a background in media and brings those skills to the company’s social media platforms, especially its TikTok.

The pair have several videos showing off their products, such as their mac and cheese, waffles and seasonal offerings like their THOT chocolate.

Table Ghost Kitchen ships their cookies across the country and you can find them popping up at farmers’ markets and other events around Central Florida.

On the latest episode of Florida Foodie, McKenzie and Andujar talk more about the difficulties and successes of running their own business. They also rhapsodize about their waffles and share how people cannot seem to get the name of their business correct.

Please follow our Florida Foodie hosts on social media. You can find Candace Campos on Twitter and Facebook. Lisa Bell is also on Facebook and Twitter and you can check out her children’s book, “Norman the Watchful Gnome.”

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Starting his own restaurant has been something of an uphill battle for Alex Diaz.

Diaz is the chef and owner at Alex’s Fresh Kitchen in Casselberry. He said the location of his restaurant has been part of the challenge.

Alex’s Fresh Kitchen sits at 1015 State Road 436 in Suite 109 of a strip mall. The restaurant is also sandwiched between several chains, including a Wawa and a Tijuana Flats, so it took Diaz a while to establish his business.

The challenge was made even more difficult by the pandemic.Even after pandemic restrictions eased, Diaz faced new challenges from the politically charged climate.

Despite the challenges, Diaz loves the work of running his own restaurant. His love for his work is so profound, Diaz actually got some menu items tattooed on his arms, including the Mamba burger, the chicken and waffles and the lemon pie.

On the latest episode of the Florida Foodie podcast, Diaz shares how he went from corporate kitchens with Darden to opening his own restaurant. He also talks about what it was like growing up with a father who worked as a chef and how it is to run a restaurant with his mother to work with him at Alex’s Fresh Kitchen.

Please follow our Florida Foodie hosts on social media. You can find Candace Campos on Twitter and Facebook. Lisa Bell is also on Facebook and Twitter and you can check out her children’s book, “Norman the Watchful Gnome.”

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