I’d always seen Angie’s BOOMCHICKAPOP popcorn at Expo West and of course at supermarkets everywhere. But not until I heard the founders’ journey on Guy Raz’s NPR podcast How I Built This, from their quandary as to how to make a living through finding success years later, did I become entranced with the brand and realize that a list of interviews with food company founders would be so useful. You can hear their story right here, right now. Or use the links below to listen to other episodes. The HIBT series features an impressive array of deep, inside stories from relatively new companies ..read more

Didn’t make it to 2023 Natural Products Expo? Here’s what you missed… Grain free, gluten free, organic foods and beverages will always be among the thousands of food company booths lining the floors at the Anaheim Convention Center each March for Expo West. Every year there is some ingredient or packaging twist that appears and makes the list as a new trend. Here’s what stood out to food trend experts and retailers at the 2023 Natural Products Expo. Vegan cheese products  – The Plant-based Food Association tasted plant-based (vegan) cheeses and foods made with vegan cheese. Functional fo ..read more

What do you think when you hear: Keurig SodaStream Bartesian ? I hadn’t heard of Bartesian either, but it follows in the footsteps of other home drink-making machines…only for artisan cocktails. Brilliant! Why is a home cocktail-making machine based on flavor pods so genius? Once someone invests in buying the Bartesian, they’ll have to make use of it. That means selling pods. Selling pods is like selling a wonderful razor. You keep buying blades. Over and over. Until you decide to give away the machine or tuck it in a cabinet. But Bartesian founder Ryan Close, a former bartender, thought ahead ..read more

If you’ve been waiting to start a home-based, packaged food business to sell food on Etsy, to retailers and wholesalers, or directly to food lovers across California, well now is the time… https://foodstarter.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/buy-home-cottage-food-instagram-2022.mp4   Here’s the full scoop on California homemade cottage food laws and our Micro Enterprise Home Kitchen Operator law (MEHKO) for homemade meal businesses. I’m now a Realtor® in California and would love to help home-based food entrepreneurs find the perfect home to buy to build your mini-empires! Here’s how to rea ..read more

Looking for healthy, delicious snack ideas? I drove almost 8,000 miles in the dead of Winter and never stopped to buy food…for real! My list of foods that didn’t require cooking or heating is more timely than ever! Don’t wait till next winter. Don’t wait till your next road trip. Or a once-in-a-generation snowstorm. There’s nothing wrong with being prepared by having good, convenient, portable foods on hand. 12 Instant Snacks and Heat and Eat Meals for a Long Road Trip or Camping Along with my homemade treats, I subsisted for thousands of miles (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) without having to ..read more

In 2016, a report from Zillow determined that new Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s grocery stores increased neighborhood home values within a mile of the supermarkets.* This was before Amazon acquired Whole Foods, and their data spanned many years, finding “etween 1997 and 2014, homes near a Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods appreciated an average of 148 percent and 140 percent, respectively. The typical U.S. home appreciated by 71 percent over the same period.” In December 2021, a new Whole Foods Market opened under a beautiful new apartment development in my Oakland neighborhood of Temescal / Rockridg ..read more

In Septemeber of 2019, Nancy Chang contacted me to ask how to get her soup business started. She explained: “We are creating nutritionally dense and herbal teas for people who are recovering from treatment for cancer in Oakland and delivering to them starting in the East Bay. This concept has been a passion and purpose for me to bring into the world ever since my mom passed away from leukemia…” At the time, Nancy’s only option for running a soup business in Oakland — which is in Alameda County — was to produce the soup in a commercial kitchen. Or hire a contract manufacturer to make the soup f ..read more

“You have a remarkable flair for the obvious.” Sometimes I don’t. And sometimes the Internet doesn’t either. And this leads to my fruit fly story. Recently, I heard I wasn’t the only one for whom clusters of flies mysteriously appeared despite my not having any food around. I went online and discovered all sorts of DIY fly strips by boiling up sugars, dipping paper… overall quite a production that made me wonder if you could use the same strips for DIY leg waxing. But I decided to go old school and bought some of those tubes that the sticky strips pull from. A week later, the strip had ne ..read more

If you’re selling food products, the list below may be pure gold for your business. Look quickly, as many of these expire in April and May, 2021. Please tell me if this post led you to apply for any of these: Walmart Open Call for new products made, grown, or assembled in the United States Registration ends April 30th. Target announced a new accelerator to help new businesses grow. USDA value-added producer grants for farms and producers using American grown produce have access to many millions $$$. DEADLINE COMING UP FAST. Natural Products Expo East will be in Philly ..read more

This is Part 1 of a 4-Part Series: Re-imagining Good Food Business (Written in 2020, some of the information may be out of date so check for the latest knowledge before making real-life business decisions.) When I began writing, birds, not buzz saws, hummed outside. Wind, not cars, whizzed down the street. Then shelter-in-place subsided. The white noise of cars and the BART subway system and leaf blowers hearken the old normal. What have we learned from the clean air and coyotes roving the streets as we sheltered-in-place?  This project began as a simple update to my book Good Food, Great ..read more