Archive for Food – Page 3

Ben Pasternack

Ben Pasternack is an Australian technology entrepreneur, and he is the CEO of three businesses. The three businesses he runs are called simulate, flogg, and monkey. It all started when he was just 14 and got bored in his science class so he decided to create a fun app to pass the time. He created the app called “impossible rush” and this had over 2 million downloads. The best part of his story was what he put in his locker at the end of eight grade that read “If you’re reading this, you really f—ed up.” He said he wanted to never go to school again and wanted to make money with his apps. His most successful business is called simulate and his signature product is NUGGS which is a plant-based nugget simulation. I thought that his story was very interesting because he was not the type of kid to pay attention in any of his classes in school. I respect how he found what he was good at and just focused on that when starting his own businesses. His journey is inspiring because at the young age of 16 he had to move from Australia to the United States by himself. He said there were times he felt very lonely but fought through it by focusing on his passion of developing new apps. I also thought it was clever how he uses different social media platforms to reach his customers. He takes full advantage of the web so he can optimize his success for each of the businesses he owns.

Ben Pasternak - Wikipedia

Michael ‘Mikey’ Wren – Mikey’s Munchies Vending

Michael ‘Mikey’ Wren is a young entrepreneur from St. Louis, MO, who started his own line of vending machines called “Mikey’s Munchies Vending” back in 2016 when he was just at the age of eight (EIGHT!).  There is not much I found that makes Michael a unique entrepreneur. His road to becoming an entrepreneur had obstacles. After overcoming his struggles with reading and comprehension in the third grade, he developed a growth mindset and persevered through many of his life challenges.

He is now 13, has 12 vending machines, and continues to give back to his community. He gave away $10,000 worth of brand-new clothing to children. He hosts an annual toy drive to donate new toys to kids. He and his Mom designed the “I Am an Entrepreneur Masterclass”, which is designed to help families teach their kids about business and money without feeling overwhelmed and frustrated with not knowing where to start.

What drives Mikey is that he believes that there is an entrepreneur in everyone and he is on a mission to inspire the entrepreneur inside all of us. What makes his idea great is that it is a service that many people use throughout their daily lives. Mikey shows the entrepreneurial traits of expanding his business. He is the author of the Amazon Best Selling children’s book “Mikey Learns about Business” and he is also the author of the book “Biz Is A Wiz” which is written for kids that are in PreK through 3rd grade.

Micheal inspires me to look at things that many people use in their daily lives and find opportunities for innovation. I have learned the principle of keeping an open mind to opportunities.

Lily Born — The Kangaroo Cup

  • What is exemplary or unique about these young entrepreneurs? Lily Born is a unique entrepreneur because her business solved a very niche, specific problem within her family. She dug into something she was passionate about.
  • What drives them? Lily’s need to help her grandfather with Parkinson’s is what drove her. Out of love she was able to develop a solution to her grandfather’s struggles.
  • What makes their idea or business model interesting? Their business model is interesting for a few reasons. She saw a unique way to modify cups for a select population, which gave this market a creative and useful product. People don’t ever do anything extraordinary with cups. They sort of have one purpose, and other than different styles, they stay the same. Lily was able to create a whole new genre of this product that would serve people all over the world.
  • What entrepreneurial traits do they demonstrate? According to an article, “To perfect her design, Born and her dad traveled across the world to the ceramics capital of China, JingDeZhen. There, they were able to refine the models, find a manufacturer, and prepare for a production run of ceramic cups, which come in plastic, too.” By doing this, she showed her desire to learn from the best and adapt her product from the top of the market.
  • How are they innovating? Lily Born and her business Imagiroo innovated by creating a new niche in the cup market. Her product, the kangaroo cup, has three legs and is made to prevent spills. After her grandfather, who had Parkinson’s Disease, kept spilling his drinks, she knew there had to be a way to fix this problem. Thus came the creation of the kangaroo cup.
  • How do they specifically inspire you and help you in your own thinking about entrepreneurship and innovation? She inspires me and helps me in my own thinking because instead of focusing on the problem, she only saw the solution. This reminds me of scripture, specifically with the David and Goliath story. David spoke about God nine times and only about Goliath twice. One could say that David was focused on his vision, not the circumstance. The same applies to Lily Born.
  • What principles have you learned? Lily is a great example of what happens when you see a problem as a potential solution. We say no pain, no sale a lot in class. She experienced the pain of her grandfather, and through it, was able to create a product that would not only help her grandfather, but anyone who struggles with spills.

Beef Jurgens

Cameron Jurgens is an NFL center. He plays for the currently undefeated Eagles. He plays back up for one of the best centers in the league, who he hopes to replace once Jason Kelce retires. Cameron Jurgens got the opportunity play in the NFL because of his elite play for the Nebraska Cornhusker. He was a third team all big ten selection. His tough play earned him the nickname “beef” Jurgens. He is huge guy at three hundred and two pounds which probably contributes to the earning his nickname. This name gave Cameron an idea.

The nickname is a constant advertisement. He realized this and decided to start his own Beef Jerky business. With the new NIL deal allowing NCAA athletes to make money off their image and likeness, he was able to start making money in college. He started wearing his merchandise to post game conferences and speaking on the business when he could slide it in. He realized the better he played the more attention he got and the more advertising his business got.

Once he left college for the pros, his opportunities only rose. He went to NFL combine and got national attention. He was one of the fastest offensive linemen at the draft and that got everyone to turn their heads. His nickname started to spread to the national media. Cameron took full advantage. He started to offer his jerky for free to the analysts and sports casters. They are the ones looking for a story to talk about. All over national media people were raving about how good his jerky is. Some analysts who did not get any started to ask him on live TV for some jerky.

Cameron Jurgens impressed me. He was able to use his gifts and abilities in one completely different are to make him money in another. He clearly had good situational awareness and maximized what opportunities he has received.

Fraser Doherty-SuperJam

SuperJam-Fraser Doherty

Fraser Doherty is a Scottish entrepreneur from Edinburgh who founded SuperJam. SuperJam is a company that uses traditional recipes to create a range of 100% pure fruit jams, which are sweetened with grape juice and made using superfruits such as blueberries and cranberries. He started his incredible business career at the age of just fourteen. Fraser was taught how to make 100% fruit jam by his grandmother, and that is where he found the inspiration to start SuperJam. At the age of 16, he presented his brand to Waitrose, which is a British supermarket, and went on to be the youngest ever supplier to a major supermarket. SuperJam has since grown to be a very successful company that has sold many millions of jars through thousands of supermarkets. Fraser says that starting SuperJam has been such an incredible adventure. He said he never could have imagined that what he started as a hobby in his parents’ tiny kitchen would grow into something so big. Here is a quote from Fraser that I think is a great way to look at entrepreneurship, “I think so long as you have a good idea and believe in yourself enough to give it a shot, you stand a chance of learning a huge amount. Maybe your idea won’t work out the first time but if you’re always willing to change it or come up with something else, you’re bound to create something successful.”

Fraser Doherty

Fraser Doherty is a young Scottish entrepreneur from Edinburgh. Fraser was just 14 years when he started producing fruit jams from his grandmother’s recipe which eventually turned into his company, SuperJam. Fraser started selling these jams by going door-to-door in his neighbor, setting up stands at his local farmer’s market, and doing bike deliver orders. Fraser’s jam was made from 100% fruit, which brought local appeal to the product. In 2007, Waitrose, a leading supermarket in the U.K., partnered with Fraser and starting selling his jam at various locations. Before he knew it, Fraser’s jam would pick up heavy traction and numerous more stores in the U.K. and around Europe starting carrying the product. Fraser would also expand his product to Japan and Korea, where a million pounds of merchandise would be sold on a Korean shopping site in less than 1 hour. What’s fascinating about Fraser’s story is his upbringing. Fraser was passionate about what he was doing and saw potential in his product but started small and local. Fraser had to build his company from essentially scratch and go through all the selling stages before reaching a national retailer. Fraser’s story can serve as inspiration to always expand your horizon and test potentially murky waters with your product because you never know who or how many people can find liking in it. To conclude, Fraser was also awarded an MBE award by Queen Elizabeth II.

Daimiyan Menya- Honey Bee Butter

Daimiyan is 14 years old and lives in Tennessee. It is interesting to see how this 14-year-old combined her passions with an opportunity in the market while positively impacting the World. Daimiyan caught covid within the past couple of years, and like many people, she lost her taste and smell. She noticed that the one thing she could still taste was butter, and with Daimiyan loving to cook as much as she does she decided to make her butter. Daimiyan also expressed her love for nature, so she combined the butter idea with helping save bees. Now her final product is honey-based butter, in which she has forumulted many different flavors.

Daimiyan started her business small by selling her butter at a garage sale. When a customer buys her product they also receive a free bag of wildflower seeds to plant to help save the bees. With the profit Daimiyan has made already she has graciously given some of that profit to a local animal shelter. She also plans to make new flavors of honey butter for the upcoming fall/Halloween season. All this information can be found because Daimiyan made her local news after she began selling her honey butter.

https://wcyb.com/features/5-star-students/hardees-5-star-student-young-entrepreneurs-new-business-is-all-the-buzz

Alina Morse And The Healthy Lollipop

Alina Morse is just an ordinary high schooler with an extraordinary passion for clean teeth. The 17-year-old is the CEO of a company called Zolli Candy. Zolli Candy creates lollipops, hard candy, and taffy all vegan, natural, KETO, gluten-free, and sugar-free. As a child, after having been offered a lollipop from a bank teller, she pondered over a major problem. Candy is terrible for your health and especially, your teeth. At the age of seven, she decided to act and spent two years over her home stove, endlessly researching, and questioning dentists and food scientists. The result was a lollipop sweetened by xylitol and erythritol, natural sweeteners that, due to their ability to neutralize the mouth’s pH, actually prevent cavities and tooth decay by lowering plaque and bacteria. 

By the age of nine, Morse’s lollipop was finally ready and launched when Whole Foods Market picked it up. The new Zollipops became a bestseller on Amazon and were quickly adopted by Kroger in 2016 while Morse became an inspiring new face to the rest of the entrepreneurship and oral health world. 

With her passion for healthy teeth and gums, Morse has waged a war against the tooth decay epidemic, specifically in children. In an act to save kids’ teeth, she began a “100,000 Smiles” campaign and in doing so, has donated thousands of Zollipops to schools and dentists and has donated her profits to oral health education. It is inspiring to see someone so young be so passionate about one area of pain, a passion she has nurtured since the age of seven and successfully weaved into her million-dollar idea. Morse is a surprising entrepreneur due to how she flipped the problem. She not only made candy harmless. She made it healthy

Not So Dark – A Delivery Focused Business

Founded by Clement Benoit and Alexandre Haggai, this French startup has raised 80 million dollars in recent series B funding for their new project. At first look, there idea of a delivery food service may seem cliche, but Not So Dark offers a unique business model. Instead of just offering a delivery service to existing restaurants, this startup seeks to expand their online menu as well as deliver. Not So Dark partners with interested restaurants and then sends ingredients and recipes to create foods for several brands they own such as JFK Burgers and Fat Panda. This allows the restaurant to always be cooking food, whether its their own menu for customers in store or Not So Darks menu for online customers. Its a win-win for everyone, customers get the food that they desire and the restaurant sees increased business, Not So Dark just takes a small cut of this.

These entrepreneurs  inspire me in my own thinking through their innovation and creativity. They are effectively changing the entire way that we view restaurants. Instead of going to a place because it specializes in a food or menu that we want, restaurants using this model are becoming a more generalized and multiuse. The seemingly endless menu paired with delivery service means that they are basically a place where you can pay other people to cook a meal for you, an extremely useful and attractive idea.

Mr. Cory’s Cookies

  • Cory Nieves is one of the youngest entrepreneurs as he started his own business at the age of six. His business is called Mr. Cory’s Cookies  and he makes delicious all-natural flavored cookies and sweet treats. The one thing that stood out to me was how dedicated he was throughout the process. It started with selling hot cocoa then transitioned to making the famous all natural from high quality ingredients cookie. For being that young, I found it very impressive how seriously he took his idea. It sounds like the thing that differentiates his cookies from others is the ingredients that he uses. He expanded his line of cookies to more health-conscious people by including flavors like double dark, oatmeal raisin, and sugar with still more to come. I thought that this was smart because eating cookies and other sweet treats is not a healthy option, but with his cookies, it sounds like a better alternative. One thing that I am curious about is the nutrition facts that is not listed on the website. I would’ve liked to compare his cookies compared to normal ones to see how big of a health difference there actually was. While I was looking at the menu, it says that a portion of the proceeds goes back to the community. This is a great idea and represents his purpose of starting the business which is inspiring. He is very mature for his age, and I respect the fact that he still gives money from his sales which shows that he truly is trying to make the world a better place (his dream).
  • At 17 Years Old, Cory Nieves Runs Successful Cookie Business 'Mr. Cory's  Cookies'