Putting a Spotlight on the Entrepreneurs

We love hearing stories behind new brands, and at the 2015 Winter Fancy Food Show, FBU interviewed with a great number of entrepreneurs to find out their story. We asked them how they got started and what they did before launching their businesses, to which many replied had nothing to do with food or beverage. Some of the entrepreneurs were former consultants, Wall Street traders, photographers and even camp counselors. While their backgrounds varied, all of them had amazing stories behind their brand. We took our interviews from the show to highlight a couple of these beginning stories.

In this newly released video, you’ll hear stories from entrepreneurs like Kaitlin Smith, who founded Simple Mills, which makes healthy baking mixes, Tyler Merrick, who founded Project 7, a gourmet chewing gum company, and Bill Keith, who is the president of Perfect Bar, a refrigerated nutritional bar company. All the entrepreneurs were excited to share their story and experience with FBU, and if the drive and excitement we saw was any indication of how much these entrepreneurs wanted their companies to succeed, then we think they have very bright futures ahead of them.

FBU wanted to take this opportunity to also announce that we will be launching a new segment spotlighting entrepreneurial stories, in which we’ll speak to entrepreneurs about how they got started, what advice they have for new business owners, tips on operation, and general reflections of their experience thus far. We want our FBU members to know they are not alone in the startup process and that our hope is that these interviews be a source of motivation for them as fellow entrepreneurs share not only the triumphs, but also the struggles of running an early food and beverage startup.