Archive for Agriculture

 Buzzing with Purpose: The Inspiring Journey of Mikaila Ulmer and Me & the Bees Lemonade

Emory freshman saves the bees, one bottle of lemonade at a time | The Emory  Wheel

Don’t be discouraged by life’s little stings. Get back up and spread your wings – Mikaila Ulmer

It’s not often that our greatest adversity can become our biggest success. But that was the case for 4 year old Mikaila Ulmer. At that young age she started on a journey that would conquer her fear of bees. In the process she but also lead to the creation of a purpose-driven brand. Inspired by a serendipitous encounter with a bee sting and her great-grandmother Helen’s 1940s recipe for flaxseed lemonade, Mikaila founded Me & the Bees Lemonade. Adding honey to the mix, she not only created a delicious beverage but also initiated a mission to save the honeybees.

For over a decade, Me & the Bees Lemonade has been producing refreshing lemonades. Mikaila’s journey is not just about entrepreneurship; it’s a commitment to environmental stewardship, 10 percent of the profits dedicated to bee conservation. The company has seen remarkable growth. With a staggering 500 percent increase since its humble beginnings in Austin, Texas

Mikaila’s entrepreneurial spirit was evident from a young age. Starting with lemonade stands and entrepreneurial events she built an aptitude for buisness. The brand’s success story extends to national retailers such as Whole Foods Market, The Fresh Market, World Market, H-E-B, and Kroger. Me & the Bees Lemonade can also be found in restaurants, food trailers, and natural food delivery companies.

Mikaila Ulmer is not just a business magnate; she’s a social entrepreneur with a heart for the environment. When she’s not leading workshops on bee conservation or participating in entrepreneurship panels. Her favorite nonprohit,Healthy Hive Foundation, amplifies her mission to save pollinators.

Despite her business and speaking engagements, Mikaila remains a dedicated high school student. She juggles classes in Spanish, science, and rock climbing while actively participating in her buisness. Her commitment to education and advocacy showcases the importance of a balanced and purposeful life.

She gained national attention when she appeared on Shark Tank in 2015, securing a $60,000 investment from Daymond John. In 2016 she was invited to the White House, where she met President Barack Obama. She introduced Obama at the United State of Women Summit, earning praise as an “amazing young lady.”

Me & the Bees Lemonade has expanded its reach beyond beverages. In February 2020, the brand was available in over 1,500 stores nationwide. She is now selling throuh major retailers like Whole Foods, Cost Plus World Market, and Kroger. The product line has expanded to include lip balms made from beeswax, showcasing a commitment to sustainable products.

Mikaila’s journey is not just confined to beverages and balms; it’s now chronicled in her book, “Bee Fearless, Dream Like a Kid.” The book delves into her adventures as a social entrepreneur. She offers insights into her purpose-driven brand and the lessons learned along the way.

Me & the Bees Lemonade | LinkedInFrom a bee-sting-inspired idea to a nationally recognized brand, Mikaila Ulmer’s journey is a testament to the impact of a young mind. Her dedication to saving the bees, commitment to education, and entrepreneurial success make her a true trailblazer. As Me & the Bees Lemonade continues to flourish, Mikaila’s legacy inspires us all to dream big, stay fearless, and create a buzz with purpose.

 

Impossible foods

Impossible foods was founded in 2011. Impossible foods is a company who makes vegan meat. They make vegan beef, pork, and chicken. The mission of impossible foods is “The team behind Impossible Foods is made up of scientists and social media experts, industry veterans and interns, micro and macro thinkers, steadfast vegans and meat-loving omnivores. Despite many differences, we share common ground: kindness, curiosity, and a deep motivation to save the best known planet in our universe.”

Impossible foods made over $1 billion in profit in 2021. This company creates meets by using plants. They believe that using plants saves animals.

According to impossible foods this is the science behind the meatless meat. “Heme is what makes meat taste like meat. It’s an essential molecule found in every living plant and animal — most abundantly in animals — and something we’ve been eating and craving since the dawn of humanity. Here at Impossible Foods, our plant-based heme is made via fermentation of genetically engineered yeast, and safety-verified by America’s top food-safety experts and peer-reviewed academic journals. Watch more below.”

Unfortunately I do not agree vegan meat.

https://impossiblefoods.com/products?utm_term=impossible%20foods&utm_campaign=DTC_Brand_Impossible+Burger_Exact&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_acc=2479765405&hsa_cam=12533286701&hsa_grp=118520323359&hsa_ad=548013987767&hsa_src=g&hsa_tgt=aud-817090123606:kwd-347614969335&hsa_kw=impossible%20foods&hsa_mt=e&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gclid=Cj0KCQiAkMGcBhCSARIsAIW6d0CINFm4xQX9I5dm9FmbFIiQfXhykGelzsKPPBGLjsrkgDM_z_i5eKgaAizDEALw_wcB

Recycling Makes a Difference: The story of Ryan Hickman

At age 3, Ryan Hickman noticed the problem of all the garbage lying around the streets in our country. Ryan wants to make a change and started recycling his garbage. In doing so, Ryan was making 5$ for every time he was able to bring in some of his garbage to the recycling center. As he got older he was able to collect his neighbor’s recyclable garbage as well. To do so more efficiently, he used a bike that had a bag connected to it so he could carry more trash. At the young age of 7, Ryan successfully was the founder and CEO of “Ryan’s Recycling Company”. His fame rapidly grew and he was featured on many popular News sites. These include CNN’s kid wonder as well as the Ellen show, and the Today show. Ryan also started up a website where he is able to sell his merchandise. All the profits of his merchandise go to a rescue organization (Pacific Marine Mammal Center). From the profits of the shirts, he has been able to raise a mere 14,000$. Ryan has also been responsible for the recycling of over 1.5 million pieces of garbage. For a kid who is only 13, Ryan shows us how possible a small idea can be. Ryan is a great example of someone who utilizes his entrepreneurship skills to make a change for good in this world.

Plant Enthusiast

Hilton Carter began his entrepreneurial journey with a Fiddle Leaf Fig. Plants were always a passion for him and when he began filling the rooms of his home he realized he had to incorporate them into the design of his house. He built up quite a social media following and discovered he could turn his passion for greenery into a business. He worked with Target selling plants and home care goods and later published three books entitled, “Wild at Home: How to Style and Care for Beautiful Plants,” “Wild Interiors: Beautiful Plants in Beautiful Spaces,” and “Wild Creations.” Carter was able to invest his time into his passion to benefit the lives of others through his books while turning something he loved into a business.

Misfit Veggies Might be the Next Best Thing

 

Do you like getting your vegetables shipped right to the door? Maybe you are a fan of how Amazon or other stores are shipping vegetables to homes around the nation. Are you passionate about helping the environment and limiting food waste? Well Abhi Ramesh is here to make that a reality. In 2018, Ramesh founded Misfits Market, becoming so successful he was featured on Forbe’s 30 under 30.

At many supermarkets and grocery stores around the United States, produce is wasted because it looks “weird” or due to overstock. These stores also give farmers guidelines for how produce should look, and if it does not line up, then the farmers toss it into a different pile, a pile of waste. Misfits Market fights the food waste problem by outsourcing produce that is extra or is a “misfit” veggie from local farmers. These misfit veggies are sometimes misshapen or discolored, however they taste just as good as a normal looking veggie from the grocery store.

Misfits is a subscription based service, you can choose how often you want veggies delivered and how much produce you want. Because farming is a seasonal occupation, at different times of the year, the boxes come with different veggies. There is a large variety of fruits and veggies that Misfits sends with each box.

Customers can put suggestions in for what they want or do not want, but for the most part, receiving the boxes are a fun mystery. With Misfits, my family has been able to try a lot of new fruits and veggies I had never heard of before. Some are great, and others are not. Misfits also provides some recipes for how to cook some of the more interesting and less common veggies.

Ramesh took a prevalent problem and made a great product. He identified the problem (food waste), and who the target customers were, and then created a service that provides vegetables at the click of a button.

https://www.misfitsmarket.com/

Rent The Chicken

Chicken renting – excuse me?

Jenn and Phil Tompkins founded Rent The Chicken three years ago, due to an identified need for fresh eggs in peoples’ personal backyards. The idea seems absurd, but Rent the Chicken is now a nationwide venture with 40 affiliate farms and even locations in parts of Canada. According to customers as well as the founders, the difference between fresh eggs and store-bought eggs is incomparable.

The idea came to Jenn and Phil simply based off of a search for crazy business ideas. Their crazy search has created what now gives each customer a coop, four hens, all the feed, all the supplies, and full support from Jenn and Phil throughout a typical six-month adventure. Jenn and Phil like to say, “yard to table.”

Since starting the business three years ago, Rent The Chicken now have 10 rental families who also have their Hatch The Chicken program, which takes three weeks for the eggs to hatch and another two weeks to care for the baby chicks. Rental families are provided with the essentials – incubator, fertilized eggs, book, cage, feed, water dish, feed dish – and then chickens begin laying their own eggs around six months.

More often than not, rental families become attached to their chickens and they become pets. Because Phil and Jenn understand the attachment that can take place, they do offer the option for renters to adopt their own chickens.

Certainly unique and original – that’s what this is.

 

In the News:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=I6lfyeuWmGc&feature=emb_logo

On Their Website:

http://www.rentthechicken.com/p/news.html

 

 

Leigh-Kathryn Bonner with “Bee Downtown”

Leigh-Kathryn Bonner, a student at North Carolina State University and fourth generation beekeeper, needed somewhere to keep her beehive while at college. Unfortunately, dorms have pretty strict policies about what you can and can’t bring to college — and beehives weren’t exactly encouraged.

With the permission of the company she was interning for, she was able to keep her beehives on their roof. Shortly after, other companies heard about this project and wanted to be able to make an impact with bees in their companies and communities.

Bee Downtown soon became a business born out of Leigh-Kathryn’s pure love for bees. They now have over 250 hives at 40+ corporate locations such as Chick-fil-a, Burt’s Bees, Delta, and IBM are among a few of the companies that have participated. IMG_7506.JPG

The honeybee hives are installed and taken care of by Bee Downtown. They offer additional programming for their company partners such as hive tours, team building, and leadership development. The companies involved have access to exclusive events and contacts through Bee Downtown.

Not only is Bee Downtown helping the bee population grow, it is helping companies to grow through employee engagement and interaction. Bee Downtown is a great example of a company with a social mission that will impact many.

Bonner hopes that Bee Downtown will continue to “positively impact the environment, educate the public, and provide a turn key sustainability program for businesses.”

 

Corporate Beekeeping

Leigh-Kathryn Bonner is a 25 year old entrepreneur who loves bees. Yes, you read that correctly. Bees. She is a fourth generation beekeeper who grew up on a farm in North Carolina. While she was in college, she was unsure about whether she wanted to continue her family’s business or pursue a different career. However, one day while she was studying abroad, she read an article about the decline in bee populations. She was astonished that this was a problem that affected not only her own country, but the whole world as well. She realized that she wanted to be a part of a solution that saved bees all across the world, while continuing her family’s legacy.

Bonner was able to take her family’s beehive business to the next level by creating Bee Downtown. Bee Downtown is a company that installs beehives on the grounds of large corporate headquarters. Its mission is to help save honeybee populations which ultimately helps agriculture. For example, Burt’s Bees, Chick-Fil-A, and Delta are among the many companies that have already signed up to contribute to this mission. Each company that partners with Bee Downtown will host numerous beehives on the properties of their headquarters locations. They will host these hives without doing any of the hard work that normally comes with beekeeping. Instead, Bee Downtown will train each company’s employees to maintain the hives as part of a corporate perk. This corporate perk has not only shown to raise morale of employees, it also helps to foster an environment that promotes social impact within companies.

According to Bonner, surveys have shown that 85% of employees who work at companies that have partnered with Bee Downtown have said that the hives have caused them to feel proud of the companies they work for. Another 95% have said that beekeeping was their favorite employee engagement activity each year. Bonner has successfully found a way to make a profit while also providing a way for people to become involved with a sustainability initiative.

Leigh-Kathryn Bonner is an inspiring millennial entrepreneur. She incorporated her background, passion, and talents into a sustainable business that encouraged social impact. If other millennials looked to Bonner as an example of a successful entrepreneur, they would be inspired by her story and may even want to turn their own passions into a business. I believe that with Bonner’s ambition and work ethic, she will be able to expand Bee Downtown all across the globe.

Tree-planting Tea Business Continues to Grow

Mark Sotomayor, a fellow Grove City entrepreneurship major, started his own business in October of 2017. Té Amo was created in response to Mark’s belief that he should start a business in college due to his major. Mark summed it up like this, “If you’re gonna major in it, why not try your hardest to start a business?” He knew that if he came up with an idea, he could also use it to enter into various competitions that Grove City pays for . Using his Peruvian grandmother’s chai recipe, Mark shares his love for tea with Pittsburgh, and gives the proceeds to Haiti. Having gone to Haiti before, Mark came up with an idea for a value proposition: for every bottle of tea bought, one tree is planted in Haiti. Trees naturally make the soil more rich in nutrients, thus causing more produce to be able to grow. With more resources, Haitians can make a living and feed their families.
 
During my interview, Mark’s face became serious as he explained that not all aspects of his business have been sunshine and rainbows. This past year, there was a mix-up with Mark’s business taxes, making him receive a hefty $800 fine from the IRS. In addition to this, Mark also received a cease and desist order from a company in Guatemala with the same name, Té Amo. With these two problems along with various others, Mark does not know for sure what the future holds. But he does know that, “People are supportive of my idea…It makes them feel something, as it should.” While Mark encountered many hardships, he still feels confident in the idea of his product and he wants to make it work. Exemplifying true grit, Mark illustrates how to persevere through seemingly impossible situations because his vision is worth more than just a paycheck.

Wonky Drinks

Karina Sudenyte and Maciek Kackprzyk are two young Welsh entrepreneurs who decided to tackle the left-over food and plastic waste problem with one business, Wonky Drinks. The social enterprise was created by the two at ages 20 and 23 with a successful crowdfunding campaign. Within a year, the two were buying ugly, but edible fruit at 70% of market price and bottling the unique juice in recycled glass bottles. In doing so, Wonky Drinks has prevented 175 tons of fruit from going to a landfill. The business’ main source of revenue currently comes from B2B sales with partnerships including Bank of America, HSBC and Merrill Lynch, KPMG, and caterer BaxterStorey. Moving forward, the company’s goals include giving more drinks to charity, reducing 10,000 tons of produce waste, and breaking into supermarkets with different canned drinks.

Karina and Maciek have won a Young Entrepreneur of the Year trophy at the NatWest Great British Entrepreneur Awards 2017 for their work. During their childhood, Karina would help her mom sell household goods and Maciek would attempt to sell paper shoes to his neighbors. Maciek has now earned two masters degrees in law and Karina is focusing on earning a BA in Business Management. Their entrepreneurial spirit coupled with their academic achievements is a testament to the good that can be done when  natural creativity meshes with acquired knowledge.