Small Food Business

Today we are speaking of Tera Johnson, the founder and director for the Food Finance Institute. A serial entrepreneur herself, Tera’s mission is to create the next generation of environmentally and economically regenerative food and farming businesses. She founded teraswhey(r) and is the host of the Edible-Alpha podcast and, as you’ll hear, has first-hand experience in creating a successful investor-financed company. Tera is a frequent speaker, teacher, and financial consultant to sustainable food and farming businesses, social venture funds and investors.

TRANSCRIPT:

Jennifer: Tera, thank you so much for joining us today.

Tera: Oh, thank you for having me.

Jennifer: I’d love to start this podcast by having you tell us about the Food Finance Institute and how the Food Finance Institute and you and your team are working to help food businesses.

Tera: Sure. I started the Food Finance Institute after I sold my own company, which is the national brand Tera’s Whey. If you go to a Whole Foods, or a … I call them the hippie co-ops, or yeah, or GNCs, anywhere in the country, you’ll see that brand these days.

Yeah. It’s now the number-one brand in the natural category, which is something I never … It was the big, hairy, audacious goal when I started, because there were over 200 brands.

Jennifer: Wow.

Tera: Yeah, isn’t that crazy? It’s crazy to me, and it’s number four of any brand of whey protein. Yeah. That’s any brand. Right? Yeah. But-

Jennifer: Ah, that’s amazing.

Tera: Yeah. Yeah. This is all relevant, because I had to raise $14 million to start Tera’s Whey, because I had to build a factory. There was no place to process organic whey at the time. That was the crux of the business model. There was no incremental way to start that business. I learned everything. I tell people I don’t even like money, and I had to learn so much of it to do that.

Yeah. Then, I had to raise more money in the pit of the great recession to support a national brand rollout, because we ended up doing that, ironically, much faster than we anticipated, because Whole Foods took us nationally right out of the gate, virtually nationally.

It takes a lot of money to support a rollout like that. I mean, people at the time … Now, this was 2019, people were telling me, “Well, you’re going to need about a million bucks to support it.” I was like, “Oh, no. Bailing wire and duct tape. I’m from the Midwest. We do everything on the cheap.” And it took a million bucks. Now, it’s more than that. I think it’s at least a million five.

Anyway, when we sold our company, I had investor money in. That’s the trajectory you’re on once you do that. When I sold my company, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do next. I’m too young to retire. I really wanted to work with other entrepreneurs and help them on this money piece of the equation. Because of specific things with food businesses, you constantly need to bring money in from the outside to support their growth. It’s not like in software, where once you invest a bunch of money up front to develop the app or the software, and then your cost of goods is virtually zero, right? Every time you sell a license.

Food isn’t like that. We got to keep buying ingredients to make the food all along, and we have to make it, and there’s a whole bunch of issues with how equipment gets financed and that it’s not incremental. Right? It’s lumpy.

Jennifer: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

The holidays are rapidly approaching and for many food entrepreneurs, this can be a prime time to rack up sales. In this podcast we talk with Eric Rupart from Nutkrack about how he’s using his 40+ years in the food industry to help him plan for his company’s very first holiday sales season.

TRANSCRIPT:

Jennifer: Eric, thank you so much for joining us today.

Eric: Oh, thanks for having us.

Jennifer: Very excited to talk to you about your company but also to be talking about what you are doing to get ready for the holidays. Before anybody shoots daggers and arrows at me, I realize that at least up here in the Pacific Northwest the trees are just starting to change, but for entrepreneurs it’s really important to be forward thinking when it comes to the holidays.

Jennifer: Before we get to that though, can you tell us a little bit about your company and how it got its start, a bit about you as well. I had done some reading before we were talking today and I read that all of this started from a mistake, so I want to know if that’s true.

Eric: It is true. I have a well deserved reputation for making lots of mistakes. I just try to make them new and different each time. It’s not like I set out to make them, I just seem to make them a lot. As chefs are wont to do, 13 or 14 years ago I had, I think it was seven or eight different pots going and I wanted to make candied pecans in the same way that I had always made them for a salad for a dinner that I was having that night. At about an hour and a halfish of pecans in a, boiling them in a simple syrup as I always had, and got distracted as I’m also wont to do and scooped the pecans, thinking they were something else, and put them into another pot and then instantly realized what I had done. I think I might have said bad words and then scooped them out and put them on a sheet pan and just thought, “Well, I’ll get rid of them when they cool down and I’m cleaning up.”

Eric: Finished up all the prep and about an hour or so later was looking at the pan and noticed they look good. They didn’t look like what I thought they’d look like and they looked good so I nibbled on one. I think a lot of chefs will tell you this, that food always tastes better when somebody else makes it.

Jennifer: Yes.

Eric: It’s so true. It almost doesn’t matter what it is. When I nibbled on the pecan I didn’t know what to expect and I thought, “That’s actually really good. That’s really good,” because we can be pretty objective about the food that we make. It’s kind of our responsibility as professional chefs to know when something is going to be very appealing. “Oh wow, that’s got a lot going for it there.”

Eric: I kept cleaning up and it made quite a mess. About an hour later, hour and a half later, I was wrapping everything up and I got to that pan and they were gone. That pound and a half of pecans were gone. I knew or at least I thought I knew that I was the only person in the building at the time and I remember snacking on them a little bit. I ate the whole pound and a half. I don’t do stuff like that. It sort of struck me as, “Wow, they were that good? All right.”

Eric: A week or so later I got around to trying to recreate them and did, added a little bit of ingredient and tried to track better the technique that I was using. They turned out really well and I shared them. This holds true to this day, several thousand pounds later that I’ve made, I’ve been a chef for, I wasn’t a chef in 1979 but I started my food career in 1979. I’d like to think that I’ve made a lot of really good food along the way.

Michael Kanter of Eliot’s Adult Nut Butter takes a totally new spin on nut butters with his innovative and bold flavors. How would this play out with online customers who may not have tasted Eliot’s flavors before? Micheal shares his experiences selling via Amazon.com.

TRANSCRIPT:

Jennifer: Michael, thank you so much for joining us today.

Michael: Thanks so much for having me.

Jennifer: So now the first thing that comes to mind when hearing the name of your company is, and I imagine this is the same for most people, what makes your peanut butter adult? How did you come up with that piece of it?

Michael: So the quick and short would be that we’re doing grownup savory flavors of nut butter and as I was trying come up with the names of the company, Elliot’s Grownup Flavors, while already Elliot’s Grownup Nut Butters a bit verbose so condensing it down to adults seemed to be a good way to convey the idea ’cause when you look at our jar, we’re doing just grownup flavors that are meant for adults like Spicy Thai Peanut Butter, Honey Chipotle Peanut Butters. We’ve got seven different SKUs and so I thought there was kind of a hole in the market of targeting the more grownup, sophisticated adult palette.

Jennifer: You know it’s one of those things it’s funny because when I was looking at your products, it’s one of those moments when you’re almost like, “Oh my goodness, why hasn’t anybody actually gone in after this hole in this market before?” Because for so long we’ve just so calmly associated nut butters with kids and then maybe the adults will like the ones that the kids like. So how did you, I mean, how did you get started? What’s your background? Can you tell us a little bit about how you got to developing these flavors and realizing that there was that hole in the market?

Michael: So my background was an aspiring chef working my way up the restaurants for a good five years in Brooklyn, Seattle and Portland and my goal had always been to open my own restaurant. And I slowly realized that while I liked food, super passionate, always fully passionate about food, food systems, all of that, that a restaurant might not be the place for me. So anyways, I take a step back in the kitchen, I literally was thinking about creating software or app idea and I was literally sitting at my computer eating a bag of, like, spicy cashews and I started thinking, “Ya know, this is one of my favorite snacks,” tamari almonds, curry cashews, I love these by the handful, so why not as a nut butter?

Michael: So I went downstairs, turned on the food processor, [inaudible 00:02:15] nut butter, tasted it, and was like, “Wow, great by the handful, great as a spread.” I had friends and family try it, did a little experimenting, but I also started digging in to do some research to see if this was a good idea, ’cause while I was sitting at my computer, I looked and ya know, there really was nobody doing this concept. So either it meant that this was a terrible idea, that there’s no market for it, or that this was something that was untapped, that needed to be looked at, and one of the things I found out, which sort of goes back to the name, is in the US, about two-thirds of the peanut butter in the country is actually consumed by adults.

Michael: I think when I found that number, or found, ya know, looking at the statistics and then as I’ve grown the business and talked to people, it just seems like adults, we grew up as kids eating peanut butter, but it’s just a great comfort food. But we’ve also seen it across all sorts of categories where,

Angela Marvidis of Tribali Foods showed up at a Whole Foods Market buyer meeting with not much more than an idea on how to revolutionize the frozen food aisle and some samples in a ziplock bag…and it worked!

TRANSCRIPT:

Jennifer: Angela, thank you so much for being here today.

Angela: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Jennifer: You know, I mentioned a little bit about your company in the introduction, but I was hoping that you could tell us a little bit about … What got you into the food business? What was your inspiration? What’s a little bit about your story?

Angela: Certainly, I’ve been in the food service business my whole life. My dad, ironically, owns and operates hamburger fast food restaurants in Southern California. We’ve been in food service our whole lives, and we’re Greek, so cooking is a big part of our culture, and celebration, and bringing family together.

But at the age of thirteen, I became a vegetarian, and that was more of a quest for the best nutritious way of eating. What I knew at thirteen was obviously not what I know now. I wish I could rewind back. I was doing it wrong, but I was just determined not to consume red meat for various reasons at that time, but more moral, environmental, and health benefits. So fast forward 35 years later, and I think I just gave away my age, but I studied nutrition and became a holistic nutritionist, and really dove deep into the science of how well-sourced and humanely raised, and nutrient-dense grass fed and finished meat can have some profound impact on the way you feel, and the way you perform.

Being that I was an athlete all my life too, I thought maybe it’s time to incorporate a little beef back into my diet, but like I mentioned, I had those three issues I wanted to overcome. The environmental, the moral, and the nutrient density of the meat. I sourced some grass fed and finished beef from farmers, that I went to the farm and vetted and saw the animals, how they were raised, what they were fed. These were all important to me, and I never looked back. I tried meat four years ago and that was it.

Then I dove deep into producing what I had known all my life, which was burger patties. I bought a grinder on Amazon, and then would source all these great, wonderful meats from farmers, directly from the farms, and seafood as well. I would make four-ounce circular patties, just marinated with various herbs and spices and vegetables and purees. I didn’t want any junk in the patties, no binders or fillers or preservatives or additives. I have these at home, and before not too long, people would pass by and say, “Can we have that Greek pork patty you made? Or the Moroccan lamb was so tasty. Or what about the umami beef, the Southwest salmon, the wasabi tuna.”

I had all sorts of different patties. Like I said, they’re just a nice, convenient way if you’re interested in portion control, you want to make sure you’re getting four-ounces of good, clean protein, you want it convenient and cooking it straight from frozen. This is the need my patties met. Before long, the freezer was empty and I just kept producing and producing. I finally took it to my local Whole Foods, and they knew my dad and his restaurant. We’ve been in business for over 50 years. They all knew we’re the burger family, so they were more apt to bring me in and try the patties. They thought, “Okay, this is well-known company burgers for over 40 years, and she’s got an interesting story.”

They brought me to corporate. They said, “Let’s see what you’ve got.” The rest is history. It was a year and a half until I’m on the shelves.

Jordyn Gatti of Better Almond Butter wasn’t 100% convinced that Amazon was the right sales channel for his business. So what made him change his tune? He explains more why – along with tips for how to get started with Amazon, in today’s podcast.

TRANSCRIPT:

Jennifer: Jordyn, thanks so much for joining us today.

Jordyn: Of course, thank you for having me.

Jennifer: As I was saying in the introduction, we’re gonna be talking about your experiences selling through Amazon as one of your retailers, but before we get there I want to backtrack just a little bit. I’d love to know a little bit more about you, and your company, and how and why you got started. So can you tell us about that?

Jordyn: Yeah, totally. Probably like a lot of people who end up starting a company, I maybe almost backed into it almost. I started out, if you really want to go way back to the very beginning. I was a musician just out of high school, and that was pretty cool. That took me touring around a little bit. Got to see some cool places, meet some cool people. Then I actually decided that I need to make a living. Actually, at the point, I moved to New York City, maybe at the age of about twenty-two. And I started working in film. And backed into that as well. Just looking around for work, hey do you wanna come for blah blah blah, and come work on a film set. Sure, sounds like a good idea. Yeah, so I worked in film, and that was my most recent career. And I ended up doing that for probably about four or five years.

And then this past … Actually, I would say not this past. It was the winter before just this one. I was running out of a little bit of love with film and with what I was doing and was just, in general, looking for a change. And someone once referred to it as … Well, ’cause I’m 26. It was actually my boss, when I told him I was no longer going to be working in film, he was like, “Oh, it’s all good, man. This is your quarter life crisis.” Okay, cool.

My quarter life crisis for me was very much, to really sum it all up, and I certainly have felt about it lately and this definitely parlays into the mission behind the company is … I definitely had a strong, strong idealism when I was younger. I think that’s pretty common in a lot of young people, probably borderline, but definitely idealistic. I think I lost that a little bit. I think there are … you work in a professional environment and people say that that is something that you’ll grow out of, that you’ll get over that or so on and so forth, and I felt like I sort of lost the idealism and I lost that, interesting enough, in film. That’s because we were doing a lot of commercials and a lot of studio work, which is … it’s not that it’s dull, but it gets very samey after a while. The bigger the job, the further you are disconnectedness from the real creative of the meaning from it, and you’re just a crew member. You’re just there on set surrounded by 50 or 60 people, just kind of doing a task.

This coming back into food, or I should say not back into, but just coming to food for the first time, I really wanted to refine my idealism. I’ve always been an entrepreneur and I’ve always wanted to … I love building things, just in general, always been a builder, always, always, always. Even as a kid, just building forts. I just wanted to physically build things and this is like the ultimate version of building something. It’s building a company ’cause there’s … you’re building something on it, every single possible level or playing. You’re just building things.

So, yes,

Food entrepreneurs have a lot on their plate which adds up to a lot of worry a lot of the time. Rather than add to that already overfull plate, let’s take a look today at some things that you maybe don’t need to be as worried about as you are.

TRANSCRIPT:

Jennifer: Hi. Today we’re talking with Brad Ebenhoeh, managing partner at Accountfully, about five things that food entrepreneurs don’t need to worry about.

Jennifer: Accountfully, which can be found at Accountfully.com, is really interesting because they are a book keeping and accounting firm that works with small food entrepreneurs across the country.

Jennifer: As you, as a food entrepreneur already well know, our industry is a bit quirky on many levels. When it comes to accounting and bookkeeping, having someone on your side who understands food is key. Accountfully does more than the day-to-day work of professional accountants and bookkeepers. They also pride themselves as serving as a long-term strategic partner to their clients. This means that Accountfully can act as their bookkeepers, accountants, CFOs, controllers, and CPAs. Fluent in the inner workings of the food businesses that they work with, they are also a trusted advisor, a resource when it comes time to making big decisions.

Jennifer: Brad, thank you for taking the time to talk with us today.

Brad: Well, I really appreciate the invite, Jennifer. I’m excited to chat a little bit more.

Jennifer: What I’m really excited to talk to you about today is that we as entrepreneurs, we tend to always be worrying about our business. It’s the stuff that keeps us up at night. But you say there are some things that we don’t necessarily need to be worried about, or as worried about, as we may be. So, I want to hear what those are.

Brad: Coming from an accountant who runs an outsource accounting company, a business who supports food entrepreneurs across the nation, I just want to let you all know, that yes, there is a lot of things that you probably stress and worry about that you don’t need to worry about as much,and for you to realize there’s people out there like my firm Accountfully that can help you out with those items. My whole goal from a business support service provider is to provide clarity to business owners as well as help them understand what they need to focus on at the level of business that they’re at, or at the specific stage of business that they’re at. I’m looking forward to getting into those topics over the next 20 or 30 minutes or so.

Jennifer: That’s great to hear ’cause for a lot of entrepreneurs, sometimes there is so much on our plates that it’s trying to decipher which of the things we need to give top priority for our time and our energy and our stress, and which of the other things that we can either let fall further down the list or potentially outsource to somebody else. How do we manage all of that? That in and of itself can be a stressor, trying to figure that piece out.

Brad: Oh, no doubt. No doubt. To open a small business, run a small business with all the red tape, the requirements from a local, state, federal level, taxes, business licenses, et cetera, is a pain. Especially in the food industry, where you even have more requirements, around FDA requirements, packaging, and all that stuff that is an extra set of stress points versus just a normal service provider business or whatever. It’s a headache and there’s a lot. As much as you can prioritize or donate off your brain, specifically around things related to accounting, cash flow, taxes, systems integration, margins, etc., that we can talk about here will help out. That’s my goal as a fellow entrepreneur myself, is I wanna train,

Today’s interview with Mike and Laura Ellis of Mt. Hope Farms is going to be a little bit different, because it’s going to be more of a coaching style. They are facing some challenges, which I think are similar to what many listeners may be facing. I wanted to just open it up and make this more of coaching style; so that you could hear the challenges that they’re facing. Potentially, you won’t feel so alone; and that also you can hear potentially some ideas and tips that may work for you as well.

TRANSCRIPT:

By way of background, Mt. Hope Farms is based in Molalla, Oregon. They specialize in preserved foods and unique fruits. They have won awards from the Good Food Awards for their fruit spreads; which are made with the best fruit that they actually grow and source. They are an operating farm, and much of the produce from their farm goes into their … preserves. They also source ingredients as well, which can include local spirits, spices, organic sugar, and other ingredients that also contain no GMOs.

Each recipe is original and each jar is made with love. It’s meant to pair with cheese, charcuterie, baked goods, and anything else you can imagine. Their products are a reflection of their farming heritage, their love of the land, and are meant to highlight the berries and fruits that are so special to their farm and family.

Laura and Mike, thank you so much for joining us.

Laura: Thank you so much for having us.

Jennifer: In the bio that I just read, we were talking about … or one of the pieces that we talked about was farming heritage. I wanted to actually start just with a very basic foundation question, which is what is your history or your background with farming?

Laura: Well, Mike and I are on his grandpa’s farm. That’s the land that we’re farming, the ground that we’re farming. We’re the third generation. He knows all of the … Actually, do you want to tell them about the background and everything?

Mike: My farming history, it goes back as many generations as I can count back. I remember being told about … it was my great, great grandpa that walked out here to Oregon on the Oregon trail.

Jennifer: Oh wow.

Mike: At the age of something like eight or something like that. We bounced around throughout the valley, throughout our history; but my great grandpa settled around the area and grew lilies and glads. His wife bred pansies. They shipped bulbs and seeds all over the world.

Jennifer: Oh, interesting.

Mike: Did that throughout … They survived the Great Depression. They always would say that people would buy flowers before they’d buy food; something to make life seem normal again.

Laura: Lift their spirits and make them happy.

Mike: Yeah.

Jennifer: Yup.

Mike: Also, traded flowers and bulbs for musical instrument they donated to the high school for their music program.

Then my grandpa branched out on his own. He went into grain farming, … and slowly kind of moved from one farm to the next as we head from Canby over to Molalla. In ’62, he bought the farm that we’re on right now. My dad farmed with him all of his life, growing grain crops. Then, they transitioned over into grass seed production. We do … still do some grass seed production, some clover seed and radish seed for cover crops and forage.

Laura: Yup.

Mike: Then, with our … with us coming on the farm, we decided we needed to look to the future, do something that was going to be more sustainable because all the farms around us are three to four times our size. We’re small; and trying to grow a commodity,

In this short podcast, we try to get to the bottom of a question that comes up more often than not as people consider starting a food business.

TRANSCRIPT:

Today I want to address a question I get asked frequently when I’m talking to budding food entrepreneurs and those who are dreaming about one day starting a food business. It seems as though a question that’s on a lot of people’s minds is do I need to have professional experience before starting a food business?

The short answer is no, you don’t. Plenty of people in this industry – from food truck operators to restaurateurs to those who produce packaged products that they sell wholesale – have found success without a culinary background behind them.

That being said, I’m going to add a caveat to that. Before I started culinary school, I had no culinary experience beyond cooking and baking in my own kitchen. Culinary school helped me fine-tune my skills and gave me a level of confidence that I didn’t have prior to that about what I was capable of in the kitchen. Specifically when it comes to pastries, the science behind pastries can be so exacting that I felt it was important I focus and learn it in school.

This isn’t to say that you need to follow the same track. I was 21 when I went to culinary school so it’s not like I had years of even home cooking experience under my belt! If you feel confident in your culinary skills then I would argue that spending the money on culinary school is not necessarily the best bet. Especially now with the number of online and in-person cooking classes – if you feel like there’s one or two things you want to brush up on you can probably do it at a much lower cost than a full-on commitment to culinary school.

The question about whether or not you need to spend some time working in the industry though – regardless of whether or not you go to culinary school – is a different one altogether. Unless you’re planning to start a home-based food business or other small farmers’ market business, I don’t think you necessarily need to spend time working for someone else. But if you’re shooting for something a little bigger – like a food truck, café, or restaurant – I personally think some of the best time you can spend preparing for your new business venture is by working for a similar food business. If you’ve listened to these podcasts before, you may remember our conversation with Natascha of The Ginger Pig food truck in Boulder, Colorado. She talked at length about the benefits she derived in working for a restaurant before she opened up her food truck. It’s worth noting that she worked for that restaurant for free because she felt that experience would be so critical to the success of her business. I tend to agree with her – and by the way, in case you missed that podcast I’ll post a link to it in the transcript for today’s podcast.

Learning how to cook or bake is something that many can fine-tune – but learning how to handle the production and operations side of working in a fast-paced kitchen where you have customers literally waiting outside your door is another thing altogether. What you learn working for another company – both the good and the bad – can go a long way in helping you determine what you want to do in your business.

As way of another example – someone I know opened up a cupcake store several years ago at the height of the cupcake boom. At that time, she didn’t come from a culinary background though she did know how to make darn-good cupcakes! However,

(This is a repost from last year which I feel is important to share again). In honor of Veteran’s Day, in today’s podcast we’re talking with the Chief Marketing Officer of a veteran-owned and run small food business.

TRANSCRIPT:

Jennifer:

I don’t typically share straight business stories on this Podcast series, but Rumi Spice’s story really caught my attention, for reasons that you’ll see in a minute. I knew this was a story you had to hear.

 

 

By way of background, Rumi Spice is a food focused social enterprise, founded by a team of US Military combat veterans. They import saffron directly from rural Afghan farmers in an economic partnership. By connecting Afghan farmers directly to the international market they seek to catalyze market driven economic development one farmer at a time.

 

 

The Rumi Spice processing facility in Herat, Afghanistan employees 75 Afghan woman who are paid direct wages. In addition, saffron is more and more becoming a viable alternative to growing opium, which is both a security and economic problem plaguing not just Afghanistan but the international economy. By cultivating for-profit business, Rumi Spice is helping to lay a foundation for long term peace in Afghanistan.

 

 

Emily Miller, who we’re speaking with today, is co-founder and CMO of Rumi Spice. Emily thank you so much for joining us, really appreciate it.

 

Emily:

Thank you for having me.

 

Jennifer:

To begin with, I particularly wanted to feature today’s interview around Veteran’s Day because of both your and your co-founder, Kimberly Jung’s, military background.

 

 

Would you mind sharing with our listeners a bit about your military background?

 

Emily:

Yeah, absolutely. Kimberly and I first met at West Point, we were both classmates, class of 2008. We graduated and were engineer officers in the army as 2nd lieutenants. Both of us had very different experiences in Afghanistan. I was serving on a Special Operations Team; I was one of the first women to go out on night raids with Special Operations and work with women and children. Whereas Kim spent her deployment as a Route Clearance platoon leader, so she was actually looking for improvised explosive devices on the side of the road.

 

 

Very, very different experiences in Afghanistan, but we both took away a very common thing which was kind of a love for the Afghan people and for the country itself.

 

Jennifer:

Was there a moment when you or Kimberly, when you guys were in Afghanistan, when you started to develop an idea of that would later become Rumi Spice? Or was is it you took away with you kind of a love for the Afghan people and sort of kept that in the back of your mind, but didn’t necessarily think that you might wanna start up a business that would somehow integrate with Afghanistan?

 

Emily:

When we were in Afghanistan we didn’t have the idea specifically for Rumi Spice or saffron particularly. We did have this frustration with … We just didn’t feel like we were making an impact, a long term impact in the Army. Kim always talks about how she would go out with her platoon, she would clear a roadside bomb and then within a few hours another one would be in it’s place kind of thing. That’s a little bit how it felt in the Army. We would go out on these night raids, get bad guys, but the very next day more bad guys would pop up.

 

About a year ago we aired a podcast about the Samuel Adams Brewing The American Dreams competition and I’m excited today to follow up with last year’s winners, Katy Flannery and Gwen Burlingame who are the co-founders Minus The Moo; a gourmet lactose-free ice cream. One of the things I think makes their story so unique and inspiring is that they won this national competition despite having been in business for only about a year and a half. Proof that you don’t need to be a million dollar revenue business and sold nationwide to win business plan competitions!

TRANSCRIPT:

Jennifer: It was about a year ago when I aired a podcast in which I talked to Jennifer Glanville, who’s the Director of Brewery Programs for Samuel Adams, about the American Dream Wildcard pitch room. We’re following up on that initial podcast today by talking with the winners of the 2016 competition. So, Katy and Gwen, they … I’m so excited to have them on today to have them tell us a little bit about their company, but also about their experiences going through the competition. So thank you guys for joining us.

Gwen: Thank you so much for having us on.

Jennifer: Absolutely. You know, I just want to start with, can you tell us a little bit about your company? The name is Minus the Moo. So tell us about it, and how it got started.

Katy: Hi, this is Katy. So we started Minus the Moo because I love ice cream, and growing up, ice cream was a huge part of my life. But unfortunately, over time I started realizing that I was lactose intolerant, so it left this huge void in my life that I wanted a traditional premium ice cream that my friends and family would be willing to enjoy with me, but that was just lactose-free. So I went to my kitchen to start creating a lactose-free ice cream that still made with cream and milk and all the same ingredients as a traditional premium ice cream, but we just add the lactase enzyme to break down the lactose. That way, those who are lactose intolerant and those who aren’t can share the same kind of ice cream together.

Jennifer: So how did you, can you tell us a little bit about your background, because how did you realize that, hey I can create a premium ice cream product, with using things like the cream, but I can take the lactose out of it?

Katy: Gwen and I actually, so we went to Villanova University, and that’s where we met and became friends, and I was a nursing major. So while I was sitting through my organic chemistry classes and biochem, learning more and more about lactose intolerance, the lactase enzyme, and all the involvement around that, I was daydreaming about how one day I can have a premium ice cream that was lactose free. So my background in health sciences, and working in the field it gave me the tool kit to be able to identify what was wrong and what I needed to do to fix it, and then subsequently I went to the Penn State ice cream short course back in 2015, and learned more about ice cream. So I already started working on my recipes at home, but going to that program helped give me more tools to be able to figure out how to perfect our recipes to make our premium ice cream taste just like any other ice cream, but just without the lactose.

Jennifer: So when you were originally developing those recipes, were you doing it with the mind set that you wanted to start this up as a business? Or were you doing it with the mind set that I just want something that I can have for myself at home?

Katy: So I wanted something I can have at home, but when this is all coming about and when I was in college I would tell my friend how...