Meaningful Marketplace Podcast

Co-founder and Director of Operations Chris Baily saw a need in the local Portland community for offering co-packing along with the expertise to guide food entrepreneurs through the gauntlet of successful commercialization. Coincidently our guest, Hannah Kullberg, Business Development Director, was at the SBIC seeing the same gulf between food startups and becoming successful food companies. The need was definitely there to assist these fledgling companies and help guide them over the hurdles. They met, decided on a strategy of offering entrepreneurs co-packing, the first step between the entrepreneur’s kitchen and the grocery shelf, and additionally the experience of Hannah and Chris to fill the knowledge gap to success. Hannah had the background for certain. While co-founding and scaling The Better Bean Company from farmers markets to national distribution, she intimately experienced the barriers to success. Over nine years building Better Bean Company she held all roles in the business including business development, sales, marketing, HR, basic accounting and operations. While operations manager, Hannah implemented a HACCP program and supervised three-fold growth in production, adding equipment, new filling lines and hiring new team members. She took the business through Non-GMO and B-Corp certifications. As sales and marketing manager, she launched the product into several new regions growing sales and velocity. They applied for a grant from Business Oregon to launch and even talked about that on our show on Episode #29, January, 2020! And so was born Community Co-Pack, or COCO as those on the inside call it. Currently with about 10 clients, Hannah and Chris have worked out the kinks of their startup and are producing entrepreneurs. Hannah fields inquiries in a very efficient manner. Inquirers fill out a form which also links to a mutual NDA and her calendar to schedule a call. Then begins the screening process. Criteria are pretty simple, as COCO’s equipment and resources don’t fit everyone’s needs. However, referrals are a big part of COCO’s services, as they believe in helping everyone build a strong food community. COCO has a fryer for snacks, a pouch packer, a blender for beverages, can do light vegetable processing and can do fresh also. They want to offer more services, but they also stick to their knitting for the present. And they want to focus on their local community, even though they have been approached by potential clients from out of the area. Hannah stays true to her calling and her mission to collectively build an equitable, regenerative, resilient, regional food system. Website: https://www.communitycopacknw.com/ Instagram - @communitycopacknw @hannahkathrynkullberg Our hosts: Twitter - @sarahmasoni and @spicymarshall, Instagram - @masoniandmarshall

Thank you for Listening to The Meaningful Marketplace Podcast with your hosts, Sarah Masoni of Oregon State University's Food Innovation Center and Sarah Marshall, owner of Marshall's Haute Sauce. Connect with us on Instagram @meaningfulmarketplacepodcast.

Call our hotline with questions for Sarah and Sarah at 503-395-8858. If you would like to support our show, write us a review, share episodes with friends, or subscribe to our Patreon.

Producer: Sarah Marshall of The Joy of Creation Production House
Audio engineer, mixer, and podcast editor: Haley Bowers
Show logo designed: Anton Kimball of Kimball Design
Production Coordinator: Kayleen Veatch

It’s the middle of calving season for ranchers, and if you don’t know what that means, you’re not alone. Tyler and Angela McCann fifth generation ranchers and owners of Wyoming Cowboy Cuts can tell you. It’s when the cows are giving birth to their baby calves and as Tyler says, averages about three a day. That’s intense work and Tyler admits he’s rather tired as he gives his interview. Calves are born and raised on the undulating sagebrush steppe of the family’s Hancock Ranch and when weaned from their mother cows, travel 72 miles to Tyler and Angela McCann’s farm. There, the beef cattle reside in irrigated pastures, and, in addition to their grass diet, eat a corn, oat and barley grain supplement. The McCanns’ daughters, the family ranch’s sixth generation, often pet the beef cattle at their twice daily grain feedings.Here’s the family story on how all this came about. Angela’s grandfather and grandmother purchased the ranchlands where, today, the McCanns’ cattle graze. When Angela’s grandparents married, her grandfather owned a saddle and bedroll, and her grandmother had a few cooking pots and a sewing machine. The McCanns’ honor their family’s hard work by furthering the ranch business’s environmental and financial sustainability for the next generation — their daughters. The family is the epitome of the American Dream. Technically, the ranch is a commercial beef herd raising a mix of Red Angus, Black Angus and Hereford cattle. The idea of “finishing beef” started about 12 years ago when Tyler and Angela married. Finishing is a process of essentially fattening up the cattle with the corn and grain feed instead of selling off the cattle after only grazing them in the pasture. Deciding that they would be losing money on the grazed cattle by selling them at auction, they chose to keep and finish the cattle and found the taste after processing was incredibly good. That led to the path of selling their choice beef direct to the public and eventually added pork and lamb to the product line. Business must be good, as a look at their website shows they are sold out of almost every offering. The company will ship their products, but shipping from central Wyoming poses some challenges. Luckily, the McCann’s have experienced such high sales locally that they haven’t had to do much shipping. The process of landing that delicious piece of beef on someone’s plate is quite an odyssey. The McCann’s time their calving for the spring of the year and after the calves reach around six weeks of age, the branding activity begins. That’s when the company has a solid count of future cattle and the mothers will then continue to raise their calves through the summer. In the fall, the company begins gathering the herd in the pasture, which is 56 square miles in size. The cattle are in pairs, mother and calf, so the calves need to be weaned away then sorted into steers and heifers (boys and girls for us beginners). The ranchers then select the best heifers to keep breeding then sell the majority of steers to a backgrounder, someone who will take the steers from their weight of a little over 500 pounds and put them in a yearling program, meaning keeping them in pasture another summer. The McCann’s also take the cattle they keep and put them in the same program where the beef will grow to the 850-950 pound range. They are then brought to the pasture for the finishing stage, being grain fed twice a day and checked carefully for any maladies. Occasionally, the lucky ones even receive a name (check the website). The company has found that the grasses in their pastures produce a unique flavor and have been experimenting with the combination of grasses and cross-breeding to offer multiple flavors of their products. When products are available, buy online at: https://www.wyomingcowboycuts.com/. Follow them on IG: @wyomingcowboycuts, FB: @wyomingcowboycuts Our hosts: Twitter - @sarahmasoni and @spicymarshall, Instagram - @masoniandmarshall.

Thank you for Listening to The Meaningful Marketplace Podcast with your hosts, Sarah Masoni of Oregon State University's Food Innovation Center and Sarah Marshall, owner of Marshall's Haute Sauce. Connect with us on Instagram @meaningfulmarketplacepodcast.

Call our hotline with questions for Sarah and Sarah at 503-395-8858. If you would like to support our show, write us a review, share episodes with friends, or subscribe to our Patreon.

Producer: Sarah Marshall of The Joy of Creation Production House
Audio engineer, mixer, and podcast editor: Haley Bowers
Show logo designed: Anton Kimball of Kimball Design
Production Coordinator: Kayleen Veatch

In 2000, three families got together to open a neighborhood market, a place where local communities could come together to connect with where their food came from. They wanted a friendly, inviting place that honored its region’s farmers, ranchers, growers and makers—helping them – and their customers – prosper for generations to come. They called it New Seasons Market. A previous New Seasons guest on our show, Lori Hunter whose title is Local Finds and Culinary Events Program Manager (say that three times in a row fast) joins our host Sarah Marshall to talk about the difference in operating their grocery store chain now, in comparison to her first, pre-COVID lockdown interview. Loris starts by saying that having an online presence has been one of the biggest changes since then. The shift worked well for New Seasons as people went to online shopping and grocery store pickup, because the company had aligned with Instacart early on. New Seasons also has a dedicated e-commerce team that worked with its vendor partners to load their product pictures and pricing information onto the website to keep sales moving. And to go the extra mile, New Seasons put its local vendor products on end caps and helped their vendor partners develop new recipes to stimulate sales. In the beginning of the COVID lockdown, they limited the number of people in the store and had all the social distance, masks, hand sanitizers and dots on the floor to keep customers and staff super safe as no one was sure what was going to happen. One of the big curve balls the lockdown threw to grocers was the proverbial toilet paper “shortage”. The grocery store that was popular was the store with toilet paper, right? But when the TP started getting distributed again, delivery trucks were full with nothing but TP, because the boxes were so large. This, of course, created a shortage of other products because there was no room left on the truck. But because New Seasons’ vendor profile has always been local makers and growers, their deliveries of cheese, fish, meat, vegetables, wine, fruit and all the other great foods didn’t change and they dodged the rows of empty shelves that many other grocers faced. Another big change was the traditional in-store sampling. The lockdown made the New Seasons’ team take a new look at staffing structure for that activity. Their previous formula was to let people in each store conduct sampling activities spontaneously and was heavily recipe driven. As Lori’s title of culinary events demonstrates, sampling is now arranged as a promoted and targeted event company wide. As an example, the chain recently promoted sockeye salmon in their sampling to create a great customer experience revolving around trying something new, liking it and buying it. The salmon is local and in addition, New Seasons promotes the sauces and spices to go along with the recipes and those are also locally sourced. And this cooperative spirit comes back to New Seasons: Their local vendor partners create recipes for the promoted items on their own social networks and wrap the effort around the item being sold at New Seasons Market. It all works to support the company’s mission: To build community through good food. Go to their website for a great experience: https://www.newseasonsmarket.com/. Social media: IG@newseasonsmarket. Our hosts: Twitter - @sarahmasoni and @spicymarshall, Instagram - @masoniandmarshall.

Thank you for Listening to The Meaningful Marketplace Podcast with your hosts, Sarah Masoni of Oregon State University's Food Innovation Center and Sarah Marshall, owner of Marshall's Haute Sauce. Connect with us on Instagram @meaningfulmarketplacepodcast.

Call our hotline with questions for Sarah and Sarah at 503-395-8858. If you would like to support our show, write us a review, share episodes with friends, or subscribe to our Patreon.

Producer: Sarah Marshall of The Joy of Creation Production House
Audio engineer, mixer, and podcast editor: Haley Bowers
Show logo designed: Anton Kimball of Kimball Design
Production Coordinator: Kayleen Veatch

Yana Yakhens started out at a baking company in Portland, Oregon, but always wanted to break out on her own. She had been experimenting with chocolate for some time and loved it for its qualities as well as the taste. The fat and oils help it maintain its taste through processing and makes it a favorite for food product developers. Her first idea was the HeartBreaker that she produced for Valentine's Day. Along with the chocolate heart, the package contains a hammer made by her husband - a true family affair - that the recipient uses to smash open the heart. A true "hustle" and reflective of Yana's entrepreneurial spirit. But custom products like that can't get a business to volume, so the company's main business is unusual chocolate bars. "Rosemary and ginger walk into a bar" is a great example of a unique combination of flavors, a great name and hand-crafted looking packaging for the bar that Only Child offers. "There's so much joy around us in life" Yana says, and her chocolate bars show that and offer her philosophy to those who enjoy her bars.

"Masoni and Marshall the meaningful Marketplace" with your hosts Sarah Masoni and Sarah Marshall

We record the "the Meaningful Marketplace" inside NedSpace in the Bigfoot Podcast Studio in beautiful downtown Portland.

Audio engineer, mixer and podcast editor is Allon Beausoleil

Show logo was designed by Anton Kimball of Kimball Design

Website was designed by Cameron Grimes

Production assistant is Chelsea Lancaster

10% of gross revenue at Startup Radio Network goes to support women entrepreneurs in developing countries thru kiva.org/lender/markgrimes

Listen to the "Masoni and Marshall the meaningful marketplace" live on-air every Friday at 9:00am pacific time on Startup Radio Network at startupradionetwork.com

Thank you for Listening to The Meaningful Marketplace Podcast with your hosts, Sarah Masoni of Oregon State University's Food Innovation Center and Sarah Marshall, owner of Marshall's Haute Sauce. Connect with us on Instagram @meaningfulmarketplacepodcast.

Call our hotline with questions for Sarah and Sarah at 503-395-8858. If you would like to support our show, write us a review, share episodes with friends, or subscribe to our Patreon.

Producer: Sarah Marshall of The Joy of Creation Production House
Audio engineer, mixer, and podcast editor: Haley Bowers
Show logo designed: Anton Kimball of Kimball Design
Production Coordinator: Kayleen Veatch

Our show hosts are headed off to New York next week for the Fancy Food Show. Follow them on @masoniandmarshall . And now for a chocolate show, a fan favorite. Maureen Nikaido, is founder of Moku Chocolate a chocolate company with a great story. Since Maureen sponsored a Nicaraguan child and made a visit to the country, she has been dedicated to spotlighting cacao farmers around the world, Her chocolate handcrafts high-quality, bean-to-bar, single-origin chocolate from raw, direct trade cacao beans. Moku’s direct trade beans are sourced from farmers in Nicaragua, Peru, Dominican Republic, Sierra Leone, Madagascar, and Colombia. This ensures socially responsible compensation to the cacao farmers and fosters prosperity among the farming communities with a focus on integrity, quality, and environmental sustainability. However, it’s the stories she shares with her customers about the farmers, their country and their lives that creates a bond far beyond eating a chocolate bar. Maureen and our host Sarah Masoni originally met at the Portland, Oregon Good Food Mercantile, sponsored by the Good Food Foundation. Its mission is to celebrate, connect, empower and leverage the passionate and engaged, yet often overlooked, players in the food system who are driving towards tasty, authentic and responsible food in order to humanize and reform our American food culture. Maureen started selling Moku Chocolate in February 2021, but the idea had begun on that Central America tour in 2013. She went to a chocolate museum in Granada. The story of cacao bean, the source of chocolate, the fact that it grew on trees, the natural beauty of the region and the care and craftsmanship that went into creating chocolate was so richly told that Maureen was hooked. There was another side to the story, however. The cacao bean was essentially a second crop for the farmers, to bring in some extra income. But the share of the global market value they received as incredibly small, and most families were barely subsisting. After a few years, Maureen jumped into researching the chocolate craft community and in 2019 things got serious business-wise. Luckily, she found a legion of people who wanted to make chocolate treats, but also support fair trade and a better life for the farmers. Maureen then took some online classes to learn how to make chocolate and since then the notoriety has been excellent. Her first big award was International Chocolate Awards for her goat milk chocolate. And the awards have been stacking up ever since. Maureen’s packaging is extremely sophisticated and consistent, so take a look on her website when you have a chance. Her distribution is currently online and about two dozen grocery stores down the central valley of Oregon. Where to find out more about Maureen and Moku Chocolate: Website - Moku Chocolate – moku chocolate
Instagram - Maureen Nikaido (@mokuchocolate) • Instagram photos and videos Twitter - Moku Chocolate (@MokuChocolate) / Twitter Good Food Mercantile - https://goodfoodfdn.org/event/good-food-mercantile-portland/ @masoniandmarshall on Instagram

Thank you for Listening to The Meaningful Marketplace Podcast with your hosts, Sarah Masoni of Oregon State University's Food Innovation Center and Sarah Marshall, owner of Marshall's Haute Sauce. Connect with us on Instagram @meaningfulmarketplacepodcast.

Call our hotline with questions for Sarah and Sarah at 503-395-8858. If you would like to support our show, write us a review, share episodes with friends, or subscribe to our Patreon.

Producer: Sarah Marshall of The Joy of Creation Production House
Audio engineer, mixer, and podcast editor: Haley Bowers
Show logo designed: Anton Kimball of Kimball Design
Production Coordinator: Kayleen Veatch