Own a Craft Food or Beer Biz? Looking to Grow?

Join us at our workshops and late night events this summer on our 2015 Food Biz Road Trip. Get on the list. Whether you’re making jam at home for your local farmer’s market, or managing an online gluten-free flour business with customers nationwide, or expanding your craft brewery, if you want to grow your food business, our food biz workshops can help. We teach owners of craft, cottage, artisanal and traditional food businesses about crowdfunding, email marketing, operations and social media.

Pull Up a Seat at our Table

Thu July 16th (Bellingham, WA) – Workshop @ 6pm, Hang @ 8:30pm. *Event Over*
Fri July 17th (Seattle, WA) – Workshop @ 12pm, Hang @ 2pm. *Event Over*
Sat July 18th (Portland, OR) – Workshop @ 6pm, Hang @ 8:30pm. *Event Over*
Sun July 19th (Bend, OR) – Workshop @ 6pm, Hang @ 9pm. *Event Over*
Wed July 22nd (Boise, ID) – Workshop @ 6pm, Hang @ 8:30pm. *Event Over*
Fri July 24th (Boulder, CO) – Workshop @ 2pm, Hang @ 4pm. *Event Over*
Sun July 26th (Denver, CO) – Workshop @ 10am, Hang @ 12pm. *Event Over*
Tue July 28th (SLC, UT) – Workshop @ 12pm, Hang @ 2:30pm. *Event Over*
Fri July 31st (Chico, CA) – Workshop @ 2pm, Hang @ 4pm. *Event Over*
Sat August 8th (Los Angeles, CA) – Workshop @ 1pm. *Event Over*

Our Partners

What will you learn at our free bootcamps?

Funding

Learn the ins and outs of fundraising your food business, from traditional loan vehicles, to peer-to-peer lending to crowdfunding. From Kickstarter, to Indiegogo to niche platforms like Barnraiser, our food funding workshops will help you choose the right vehicle to reach your fiscal goals. Crowdfund Better has raised 5 and 6 figures for numerous food businesses, across the country using a variety of platforms & funding mechanisms.

Selling

Email marketing, from newsletters, to customer emails, to personalized emails to support a crowdfunding campaign still represents the highest converting form of digital marketing. Small Biz Triage is an active members of the MailChimp Expert Exchange and run workshops nationwide, while providing coaching in B2B and B2C sales tactics – whether your wooing back an old customer, or enticing a distributor.

Saving

Perhaps unsurprisingly, many business owners don’t claim to have a natural aptitude for the many daily details of running a business. Our education partners Hey Chef and Small Food Biz are here to help, providing time and money saving tips for the business end of your food biz. You’ll leave the workshop with worksheets to help improve efficiency in the back office and your bottom line.

Our Food Biz Project Portfolio

Challah Connection (Norwalk, CT) – Kosher Foods and of course Challah Bread
Soledad Goat Cheese (Mojave, CA) – non-profit animal rescue that makes goat cheese
Miracle Noodle (LA, CA) – healthy noodle and rice eCommerce biz catering to special diets
World Spice (Seattle, WA) – online and physical store selling specialty spices worldwide
Joy Foodly (SF, CA) – online video education focused on veggies
YummyShapes (SF, CA) – specialty food products for parents
Butter Lane (NYC, NY) – cupcake biz and food event / party place
Otaku Tea (Seattle, WA) – specialty teas catering to Japanese culture fanatics
Sound Urban Edibles (Seattle, WA) – edible landscape design, permaculture, etc…
Savor the Sound (Seattle, WA) – non-profit, “taste the music” events (chef / musician collaborations)
Monty’s Beef Company (Royal Oak, MI) – humanely raised, grass-fed beef
Arugula Catering (San Antonio, TX) – pesto book author, runs a successful market as well
With Love Community Market & Cafe (LA, CA) – successful $100,000+ crowdfunding campaign
Grist & Toll (LA, CA) – urban flour mill specializing in heritage grains
m. greenwood (LA, CA) – home kitchen (CFO) mother/daughter made jams
Yummari (Boulder, CO) – Gluten Free, Nut Free Energy Bars
Tribali Foods (Pasadena, CA) – Paleo Friendly Meatballs (now in Whole Foods)
Caviar (Seattle, WA) – specialty food delivery service

Testimonials

“The biggest mail order day since Christmas! Thanks guys!”
World Spice Merchants
“Seth, Nate, and their team members always have a “can do” attitude, and if they don’t know something, they’ll help you figure it out. They are totally awesome and make me laugh while still kicking ass…for the sake of my business!”
Hollie Greene, CEO, Founder, JoyFoodly®

Our Food Biz Support Crew & Education Partners

Here’s the short list of incredible experts that we’ve recruited to help you grow your food & beer biz.
Kathleen Minogue
Food Fundraising Expert
CrowdfundBetter.com
Pam Nelson
Food Biz Veteran
Butter Lane
Billy Gold
Food Researcher
Social Media Demon
Judd Handler
Food Copywriter
Health & Wellness Pro
Jennifer Lewis
Cottage Food Biz Expert
Small Food Business
Holly Verbeck
Food Biz Veteran
Hey Chef!
Courtney Nelson
Beer Biz Badass
BreweryPlus
Barry James
Founder / Writer / Expert
@The Crowdfunding Centre

About Our Partners

Jennifer Lewis – Small Food Biz A former professional pastry chef turned small food business owner, Jennifer is intimately familiar with the challenges food entrepreneurs face as they start and grow their businesses. Responding to the lack of food business information, Jennifer founded and runs the popular website, SmallFoodBiz.com. It provides information, resources, and tools to help artisan food entrepreneurs on their food business journeys. In addition to her culinary degree, Jennifer also holds an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. She is the author of 5 business books: Starting a Part-Time Food Business, Food on Wheels, and Getting Your Specialty Food Product Onto Store Shelves, The Soup To Nuts Business Plan Workbook, and Handmade.
Holly Verbeck – Hey Chef! Armed with credentials and corporate experience in risk management, human resource and organization systems, Holly’s career took a gastronomic turn when she married a chef. The typical chef profile: a passionate artist who suffers from being overworked and underpaid, and who knows more about food than running a business, astounded her. Responding to the growing demand for private chefs in the world-class destination of Lake Tahoe, she assembled a talented culinary team and founded HeyChef! in 1997. Focused on developing and elevating the professionalism and business acumen of hundreds of chefs, she teaches her well-tested business systems and back-office solutions to food and beverage entrepreneurs in order to free them from the overwhelm of running a business so they can get back to doing what they love most – making people happy with their food.
Kathleen Minogue – Crowdfund Better With a resume that ranges the worlds of business, marketing, education, non-profits, and the arts, Crowdfund Better founder Kathleen Minogue has made a career of wrangling creative ideas into cohesive projects. After running her own successful crowdfunding campaign in 2012, Kathleen invested time behind the scenes with the creators and executives of major and niche alternative funding platforms to understand crowdfunding from the inside out. It has given her a unique perspective on this rapidly growing space. Kathleen’s focus is on empowering entrepreneurs and creative businesses to run successful campaigns and find alternative funding through a combination of education and strategic planning. She has worked alongside project creators on platforms ranging from Kickstarter and Indiegogo to niche platforms like Seed&Spark, Barnraiser, Fund Dreamer, and Hatchfund on campaigns that have raised over $350,000. Kathleen has also run workshops for venues including General Assembly, Pepperdine University, the Director’s Guild of America, and the Small Business Administration. Kathleen is also a member of the Crowdfunding Professional Association (CfPA).
Barry James – The Crowdfunding Centre The Crowdfunding Centre provides real time big-data-driven tools & insights for crowdfunders, backers, platforms, investors & analysts including daily and weekly charts & news. Their work has been featured in the BBC, Wired, the guardian and Forbes. Barry James is an entrepreneur, global pioneer and innovator of Crowdfunding and FinTech, based in the UK. With his team he’s founded TheCrowdfundingCentre, TheCrowdDataCenter and VentureFundingHubs. A champion of entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurship at all levels, he comes from a tech / digital background (latterly designing and building cloud services) and has recently been directly involved in helping form the policy debate on the regulation of Crowdfunding in the UK and beyond. He’s currently a Visiting Fellow at the University of Portsmouth Business School.
Jennifer Lewis – Small Food Biz A former professional pastry chef turned small food business owner, Jennifer is intimately familiar with the challenges food entrepreneurs face as they start and grow their businesses. Responding to the lack of food business information, Jennifer founded and runs the popular website, SmallFoodBiz.com. It provides information, resources, and tools to help artisan food entrepreneurs on their food business journeys. In addition to her culinary degree, Jennifer also holds an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. She is the author of 5 business books: Starting a Part-Time Food Business, Food on Wheels, and Getting Your Specialty Food Product Onto Store Shelves, The Soup To Nuts Business Plan Workbook, and Handmade.
Labeltronix is California’s premier label printer for craft breweries, spirits, wineries, specialty foods, and nutraceuticals. The Anaheim-based company delivers on the promise of quality and reliability in every customer solution it creates. Customers large and small appreciate the company’s unique and proprietary materials, their expertise, the capabilities of the digital and flexo press, and the custom embellishments that add personality to a brand. Our range of labels includes eco-friendly materials and premium-quality papers. One of our specialties is making labels that stick when wine or beer bottles are submerged in ice buckets. Labeltronix’ digital printing capabilities allow us to print variable data for “limited edition” products, to make special seasonal or private labeled products, and create market tests at a reasonable price.