Enabling Diverse CPG Food Brands and Their Founders

Minneapolis - Inspired by her family history in the restaurant industry and reconnecting African communities with traditional foods, Florence Karp founded Chef FLO-K Foods. The business makes Afric Sauce, an authentic African sauce available at local grocery stores and higher ed institutions. The founder finds much success in personally providing samples in-store and looks to replicate these good sales at larger retailers.

Grant Focus: Support the founder in her storytelling and creating brand strategies that help drive sales.

Saint Paul - Cynthia Lee launched Dearest Baker Macarons in 2015. Her passion for macarons evolved into what is now a successful business selling wholesale and custom order French macarons in traditional and character styles and Hmong American flavor fusions. Since a pivotal event selling 5,000 macarons in two hours in 2017, Dearest Baker Macarons has experienced steady growth and increasing demand.

Grant Focus:  Address specific operational needs by purchasing equipment and allow time for founder's professional development.

Hopkins - Founded by Edward Zhang and Caitlin Higgins in 2023, Bao Bao Buns showcases small-batch Chinese bao buns in both traditional and modern flavors. Customers can order frozen bao buns online, at select boutique storefronts, or at pop-ups to take-and-bake at home. Bao Bao Buns has a growing consumer base of both repeat customers familiar with the product and new eaters alike.

Grant Focus: Increase productivity and visibility by purchasing automation equipment and expand marketing and branding efforts.

Minneapolis - The idea of Hoyo and its original recipes were introduced by three sisters, Mariam Mohamed, Halima Mohammed, and Asha Galaydh. Now a social benefit corporation, Hoyo creates frozen sambusas and shelf-stable Somali sauces and provides employment for women, new immigrants, and low-income communities. In addition to retail sales, Hoyo supplies many local school districts.

Grant Focus: Lower operating costs by expanding into a new production facility and updating a key equipment.

Brooklyn Park - Junita Flowers united her lifelong dream of becoming a business owner and her favorite childhood treats with the launch of Junita’s Jar in 2018. The business aims to foster hope, connection, and inspiration for doing good and feeling good with each cookie. Junita’s Jar can be found nationwide in 500 store fronts and currently has the opportunity to become a supplier in a new food service opportunity.

Grant Focus: Optimize production processes and enhance packaging to prepare the business for new markets.

South Saint Paul - Eddie Shih and Sasha Szutu founded Linko Food in 2015 to preserve the flavors of Taiwanese sausage from childhood. The USDA-approved small business experiences especially high demand for its sausages during the Lunar New Year and community festivals. The founders hope to introduce the Taiwanese-flavored sausages at the State Fair someday soon.

Grant Focus: Increase output while maintaining high quality by upgrading production facilities, boosting marketing efforts, and enhancing retail partnerships.

Saint Paul - Soo-Maala Cafe & Grill is a Frogtown restaurant celebrating Somali culinary heritage. Among other dishes, highly popular on the menu is their handmade flatbread. Huda Farah, one of Soo-Maala Cafe & Grill’s owners, sees this as an opportunity to branch out and become a CPG supplier of specialty flatbread. Farah plans to process and package this product for the packaged food industry. 

Grant Focus: Expand business opportunities by packaging (the flatbread) for the CPG industry - specifically with proper equipment.

Roseville - Taking Stock Foods sells shelf-stable, organic chicken bone broths. After nine years, founders Molly Clark and Maddy Kaudy find their business a key local supplier of bone broths  - available in three flavors both online and at nearly 150 stores. As they prepare for new markets, a year-long assessment resulted in valuable customer feedback on their product and brand. Putting some of that feedback into play can take the business into new market opportunities.

Grant Focus: Address customers’ needs and demand by revamping packaging design.

Falcon Heights - Thembi Johnson created Tasty Tin to elevate homemade meals with premium spice blends. Five diverse blends cater to varying taste preferences and can be found online, at local farmers’ markets, and at pop-up events. The founder seeks ways to cement her business as a must-have, high-quality product for consumers, investors, and partners.

Grant Focus: Create packaging design and brand for key products and build cross-sector network and bridges for the brand.

Saint Paul - Since 2023, The Simple Sauce Company has been serving up French-Asian gourmet vinaigrette salad dressing through ties with a local retailer. Founder Xiong Zong Xiong crafted this fusion dressing with simple and natural ingredients and learned quickly how unique and loved this dressing became.   Xiong plans to formalize her processes and move into the CPG business with her product.

Grant Focus: Expand business opportunities by investing in new bottling containers, professional labeling, and kitchen supplies.

Silver Bay - Founded by Kaylee and Dan Cahill Mathews in 2020 as a mobile food stand, Baptism River Barbecue Co. brings true Northwoods barbecue to you. The business sources local meats to smoke over Minnesota’s boreal forest’s hardwoods and pairs this with made-from-scratch barbecue sauces. The founders hope to take their sauce to scale year-round and reach more retailers in the near future.

Grant Focus: Increase production through automation of the packaging process, and exploring co-packing. 

Minneapolis - Hadeal Attal started Zeytoon Bread & Co. with a passion for the heritage surrounding both sourdough baking and the Levant region in the eastern Mediterranean. Zeytoon Bread & Co. offers organic, artisanal bakery items infused with traditional Levantine ingredients, available for purchase at local farmers’ markets and online. 

Grant Focus: Scale production and ensure quality and consistency by investing in additional and new equipment.

Falcon Heights – 3 Bear Oats, founded by Therese Moore, is a maker of heat and ready to eat flavored oatmeal bowls. Over the years, 3 Bear Oats has consistently offered four distinctive flavors sold in the frozen section - each a meal in its own. 

Grant Focus: increase productivity through the addition of an automated filling system   to speed up the process of filling the flavored oat blends into the bowls.

Le Sueur - A Tiny Homestead, is a farm south of the Twin Cities owned and operated by Mary Lewis since 2021. It supplies fresh produce directly to communities through a farm share subscription as well as through local grocery stores. 

Grant Focus: keep operations going and meet demand during the MN winter months, by building an additional heated greenhouse on the farm.

Moorhead - Doubting Thomas Farm is owned and operated by Noreen Thomas, with help from her daughter-in-law. The focus - grow whole grains that are made into cereal, pancake mixes, and other products. It is expanding beyond the Moorhead area.

Grant Focus:  improve packaging to be more competitive in a wider market, than just the immediate communities surrounding the farm.

Cottage Grove - Brand new Premiere Organix, founded by Olamide Olatunbosun, launch its new beverage called Eso this year.  Eso is a plant-powered shake made from water, tiger nuts, coconuts, and dates.

Grant Focus:  increase production and enable entry into key markets including e-commerce platforms. 

St. Paul - Grlk is a garlic-based sauce maker, with multiple flavor-blends. Based on Founder, Peter Chehadeh's  Lebanese grandmother’s recipe, this sauce comes in multiple flavors and blends.  

Grant Focus: commercial labeling machine that will automate the packaging process and cut  labor time.

Eagan - Kalahari Associates' two founders are driven to share their Peanut Brizzle - a peanut snack inspired by their Ghanaian heritage. The product is now sold at local events and markets. 

Grant Focus: nutritional labeling and other regulatory needs, as well as packaging design and printing.

Minneapolis - K-Mama Sauce makes vegan Korean sauces –by KC Kye. K-Mama produces multiple flavors that are sold in various stores, including a national retailer and online platforms. To maintain his lead, KC continues to get his brand out into unique (chance of a life time) venues that give potential customers a tasty preview.

Grant Focus: position the brand for higher sales and distribution by showcasing during the 12 days of the MN State Fair.

Roseville – Founder Charles Lovejoy started out as a bartender about two decades ago. Today, he makes his own line of Bloody Mary mixes and supplies bars, restaurants and retail stores throughout the Twin Cities, as well as various online platforms that help him distribute beyond MN.

Grant Focus: access tradeshows and   development opportunities to increase the founder and his team's business & industry acumen.

St Paul - Maytown Foods started 2022 by  Shan Colombus. Maytown produces chili sauce. The sauce can be found in a few Twin Cities grocery stores already. Shan hopes to grow beyond in the coming years. To do so means increasing her ability to produce more. She is working on her capacity to do this well.

Grant Focus: purchase small equipment to speed up the self-production process, including a commercial sanitizer washer.

St. Paul - Per Se is a ready-to-drink mocktail producer that launched in 2021, by Hally Turner who wants to enable gatherings where diverse tastes and preferences are celebrated. Its non-alcohol drink products are all natural with familiar ingredients and half the sugar. 

Grant Focus: support the process of developing a new flavor.

Dayton - Please and Thank You Granola (P&TY) is a 4-year company founded by Brit Williams. P&TY offers bags of granola mixes and pocket-size bars for the on-the-go in a variety of flavors and blends. Products are sold in local co-ops and neighborhood stores.   

Grant Focus: development, testing, and launch of a new peanut-free bar. 

Newport - Uprooted is a new coffee business started by Saengmany Ratsabout and Gao Lee. Uprooted roasts whole beans originated from Southeast Asia, a new region to enter the global coffee industry. Its products are available in bags of whole roasted beans.

Grant Focus: purchase commercial-grade grinder to add ground coffee to its selection; and also help with branding and marketing.

Falcon Heights -Rachel Banken of Well Rooted Teas crafts loose-leaf teas from foraged botanicals found on local farms and forests native to Minnesota. Its infusions of herbs, roots, leaves, fruits and berries nourish the body and are grown and harvested in a manner that preserve the environment too.

Grant Focus:  purchase a dry-pack filling machine to increase packaging process. 

Roseville – Founder Charles Lovejoy started out as a bartender about two decades ago. Today, he makes his own line of Bloody Mary mixes and supplies bars, restaurants and retail stores throughout the Twin Cities, as well as various online platforms.

Grant Focus: access tradeshows and   development opportunities to increase the  team's business & industry acumen.

Cottage Grove - Brand new Premiere Organix, founded by Olamide Olatunbosun, launch its new beverage called Eso this year.  Eso is a plant-powered shake made from water, tiger nuts, coconuts, and dates.

Grant Focus:  increase production and enable entry into key markets including e-commerce platforms. 

Minneapolis - Ooyoo is the creation of a husband-and-wife team, Ahreum Kim and Nick Ng. It is a representation their values around culture, family, creativity, community, and nourishment. Inspired by their travels and Korean culture, Ooyoo taps into new flavors and traditions to bring an all-purpose spread that everyone can enjoy. 

Grant Purpose: purchase equipment to help increase production capabilities

Minneapolis – Apasa means reciprocity/fellowship in Hindi – values that Founder Shalini Gupta draws on to shape the transparency and linkage between land, farmers and the food that sustains us. Maker of a flatbread free of toxins but also freshly made with whole grain stone milled flour and high oleic oil.

Grant Purpose: consultant work on product improvement and processing equipment. 

Minneapolis – Big Flower Botanicals Founders Jennifer Trebisovsky & Justin Banda seek to expand their CBD lemonade experiment to encompass more CBD food products. The goal - pairing products to pain to people with topicals, beverages and tinctures. They want to demystify CBD and help it become a resource for wellness.

Grant Purpose: source larger quantities of CDB ingredients and increase volume.

Roseville – Founder Charles Lovejoy started out in bars and restaurants as a bartender. Twenty years later – he has his own brand of Bloody Mary mixes - in multiple flavors and sizes for bars, homes and more. Honored last year as a General Mills recipient of their Good Works Project, LBMM’s products are not only good – they “do good” by donating proceeds to homeless youth and education. 

Grant Purpose: new product development (esp. flavor profiling, labeling, and packaging for the new product).

Minneapolis – Route to India’s ancient super seed snack (puffed water lily seeds), affectionately called Yoga Pops, is a labor of love, collaboration and passion for founders and life partners Nalini Mehta and Anita B. With a brand mantra of “Mindful Munching,” RTI aligns holistic, personalized wellness,  with Ayurvedic principles and healthy snacking. 

Grant Purpose: purchase equipment to strengthen and automate the production - increasing yields 6x more than current levels. 

Richfield – Social Mixers believe flowers don’t just belong in a vase and herbs are more than garnish. Its botanical syrups are blended to create perfect beverages for all occasions and health benefits. The goal: a natural craft beverage ingredient company with product lines that are accessible to all, and includes bitters, shrubs/drinking vinegars, and infusion kits of dried herbs and fruit. 

Grant Purpose: purchase 4-bottling hot filling machine to increase unit production 

Excelsior – Founder Henry Kisitu’s Jajja Wellness tonics originated in his Ugandan grandmother’s kitchen. She was an African herbal medicine woman, worked as a nurse, and knew principles of Chinese medicine. Today, Jajja Wellness has an expanded line of tonics, loaded with natural, anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, the top sellers come directly from Grandmother’s and African indigenous recipes.

Grant Purpose: Secure co-manufacturing contract with a reliable co-packer in the Midwest region.