Who Is Eat Chic? Reese’s peanut butter cups (especially the holiday eggs and the trees, holler!) are my favorite candies of all time. That is, until I tried one of Lotta Andonian’s Eat Chic chocolates. OMG, you guys. They are so good. Like Reese’s on steroids, or rather, Ritalin. More refined with grown-up touches like Maldon sea salt and fresh ground nut butters that go beyond peanut: almond, hazelnut, cashew. Lotta says she’s got 30 flavors on rotation at any…
Who Is Fawen? Amanda Bowen and Fabio Fossati are a couple. They do normal coupley things like work out and go on walks together. But a few years back, they took their relationship to the ultimate level. No, not marriage. Entrepreneurship. Amanda had been making soup. Good, warming, delicious soup. One day, in a rush to get to the gym, the duo grabbed one of her concoctions and sucked it down cold. That’s when the lightbulb clicked and their drinkable…
Who Is Bread SRSLY? The tale of Bread Srsly is ultimately a love story. Sadie Scheffer dropped out of college and moved across the country to follow her crush, a bold move more reminiscent of a Hollywood rom-com than a budding entrepreneur. Only, in a cruel twist of fate, it turned out that Prince Charming wasn’t quite so smitten. Not one to be deterred, Sadie set out to win his heart…by following the old adage that a man falls in…
Who Is Mouton Noir? In 2003, at the age of 30, Andre Hueston Mack was the first African American to be named Best Young Sommelier in America. Soon after, he accepted a somm job at The French Laundry before Thomas Keller sent him across the country to open the most anticipated restaurant of the year, Per Se. In 2007 – really just a few years after he jumped into the food and wine world – he left fine dining to launch his…
Who Is Jalapa Jar? Tommy Byrnes (a Texan), Joel Nearing (a Texan) and Steve Smith (a Yank) are the founders behind Jalapa Jar, a fresh salsa developed by Joel and put onto NYC breakfast tacos by Tommy and Steve. Yep, you’ve heard that correctly: legit, Austin-style breakfast tacos have made their way to the streets of New York City. Specifically, this crew is churning out my favorite food (seriously, send all the tacos my way) at the Clark Street subway station in Brooklyn.…
Who Is Dave’s Gourmet? Dave Hirschkop wasn’t trying to start a hot sauce company. He was simply on a mission to create the hottest hot sauce on earth because the drunk kids who kept coming to his burrito joint were annoying AF. He thought it’d be funny to fry their taste buds and revel in their misery. Except they weren’t miserable. They loved every second of it, and soon, Dave was bottling his sauce and slanging it way beyond his…
Who Is DANK Banana Bread? Caitlin Makary is a badass. She rides a motorcycle. She rock climbs. And she owns DANK, a banana bread company inspired by her vegan sister and rock climbing friends. Rider, climber, entrepreneur — you could say her risk tolerance is higher than most. For years, Caitlin worked in corporate fashion, and it took a nudge from an old boss and a massive breakup to catapult her into entrepreneurship. In January 2016, she broke up with her…
When I grow up, I want to be Willow King. Or, maybe more accurately, I just want to move to Boulder, CO, hang out with Willow and her co-founder, Mara, and eat fermented things all the live long day. We could go snowboarding (even though I have no idea if Willow snowboards), plan trips to exotic locations (she definitely does this) and dream up ways to pickle our favorite foods (something she’s already got on lock). But, since I have…
I’m starting to sense a theme in many food startups: families. When people decide to hop into entrepreneurship, especially in such a passion driven business as food, they want to do so with people they trust. And in many cases, the people people trust the most in life happen to be kin. That’s certainly the case of Fire Cider, started by Brian Huebner, his sister, Amy, and Amy’s hubs, Dana. While Dana and Amy initially concocted the idea for this…
What do Colombia, Kermit the Frog and a mariachi band have in common? Not much, except for the fact that they’re all tied together in one person: Jonathan Echeverry. As a kid, Jonathan split his time between Atlanta, where his family owned a Mexican restaurant, and Colombia, where they owned a coffee farm. The restaurant took up much of his parent’s time, so he and his siblings found ways to be around them as much as possible: by loading the dishwasher, bussing…