Champagne and Citrus Pound Cake
Champagne and citrus are meant to be together; that’s why mimosas taste so good. This pound cake is zesty and sweet with all the right textures. It’s slightly crunchy on the outside with a buttery and...
Create and Connect
For some women, it’s a light bulb that grows in brightness, or the recurring encouragement from a potential customer. For others it’s a lifelong vision whose time has finally come. But at some point, a successful food entrepreneur makes a decision to take a big step of courage into the kitchen, snap the towel and get down to business.
Ray & Al’s Lunchroom
Take a turn off busy US-12 into quiet downtown Galien, Michigan, and you might get the impression that nothing is happening. That is, until you notice all the cars parked midway through town, and all the folks heading to Ray & Al’s Lunchroom. Serving breakfast and lunch, this hotspot is the co-creation of Reyna Larson and Alice Hoffmann.
Hoffmann was ready to move on from a 20-year career in special education and Larson had considerable restaurant expertise when they met through mutual friends. Hoffmann’s vision of owning a coffee shop in a quaint village, together with Larson’s substantial following of previous customers, was the impetus to look for a location that could house their dream of a small-town diner.
They settled on a building in Galien that had previous lives as a drugstore, ice cream parlor and wine tasting spot. Before opening the diner in the summer of 2022, the pair spent a year doing building repair and upkeep. Galien townsfolk drifted in and out. They were curious, informative and supportive, but there were skeptics, too. The once bustling midcentury village had lost most of its storefront businesses, and now here come two women getting ready to open a DINER? Even their own families had doubts.
Larson and Hoffman (nicknamed Ray and Al) carried on and opened their establishment to believers and doubters alike. Hoffman says, “We just had faith that it would work!”
They offer a full coffee menu, with pastry and bagel breakfast options. Lunch includes seasonal soups, alongside classic and specialty sandwiches. The steady customer base consists of a diverse crowd of farmers, local businesspeople, vacationers, second-home owners, coffee friends and construction workers.
The women especially enjoy serving the Galien locals. Larson says, “Our older clientele has been the coolest thing. They come in on a regular basis, support us, talk about the town’s history and tell us about themselves and this building. They are just genuinely happy to have this place available for them.”
Hoffmann and Larson followed their instincts and drew on their confidence in and love for each other to shine a light in a small town. Larson’s advice to potential women entrepreneurs? “Don’t talk yourself out of it. It’s easy to second-guess yourself, especially when other people are doubting that you could be successful. When you really know what you’re doing and you can visualize it, it will be fine, because you’ll work hard at it.”
Ray & Al’s Lunchroom
118 N. Cleveland Ave.
Galien, MI
269.545.9018
rayandals.com
The Portage Collective
For Sheer Brown, it all began as a 2020 pandemic baking story. A trained animator, Brown found herself in her home all day, missing the challah bread and pastries that she couldn’t buy anywhere. She started baking her own, posting pictures on Instagram.
“I called it the South Bend Challah Company, and in about a day I started getting messages from people asking, ‘Where can I get this?’ And I said, ‘You mean you want to BUY it?’ Within two weeks, I was baking full time.”
One of Brown's customers, Annie Johnson (owner of Take Care South Bend), was considering using Brown’s baked goods in her gift basket business. Johnson’s baskets feature local specialty foods and treats, artwork and personal care items. Her business had also grown during the pandemic and she needed to free up space in her home, which was being taken over with gift basket inventory.
In conversation with each other and several other women-owned small businesses, the concept of The Portage Collective was born: a cooperative place where women could showcase their creativity and wares. Sharing their time and expenses makes it easier to have a retail presence in the community. In 2022 they leased a former private residence in South Bend’s Near Northwest Side, a neighborhood in the midst of rebirth.
Kelly Bailey, owner of Raw Oats & Refillery, opted in from day one. Bailey creates small-batch natural skin care items, including balms, oil, creams, facial soap and a variety of body soaps with complex scents. On a mission to bring more sustainable, less wasteful solutions to the area, she needed space where she could make a refillable station available for household cleaning products.
The Collective allows members to share resources, whether it’s storage space, using Johnson’s printer upstairs or the resource of time (members work shifts at the checkout counter). Currently seven makers and artists comprise the Collective, a gift-shopper’s utopia where other area partners also offer their wares, art and gourmet grab-and-go items in the inviting space.
Brown appreciates the atmosphere in the building, saying, “We all have an emotional awareness and sensitivity to each other. We are respectful so that everybody is able to shine.” Her advice to women considering their own business is “Don’t do it alone. Surround yourself with supportive people from your community that will lift you up. Investigate free resources that may be available in your community and collaborate as much as you can with other small local businesses.”
Johnson agrees. “Entrepreneurship is kind of lonely, because you can’t always ask a friend for advice because they’ve never owned a business before,” she says. “The exchange of ideas here is always exciting. We come up with ideas for different ways we can collaborate and try to make sure everyone’s opinion is heard.”
She believes many women have had to face similar challenges and barriers when starting a business, such as not being taken seriously by male counterparts or having trouble getting business loans. “I think women are taught the value of cooperation when they are pretty young. So it’s great to be able to support each other and provide that understanding and flexibility.”
The Portage Collective
905 Portage Ave.
South Bend, IN
theportagecollective.com
s.a.l.t. sisters
As a young adult, Charmane Andrews Skillen was determined to understand how to provide healthy meals for her young family, and so spent a lot of time in the kitchen. Years later, she happened upon a small spice store in Georgia while on vacation and was surprised to discover that there were many kinds of salt.
Diving into the world of sea salt, Skillen resurfaced with a focus on whole, unprocessed salt and its health benefits. The more she learned, the more certain she became that she needed to sell unprocessed salt and teach people how to use it in their home kitchens.
A stay-at-home mother at the time, with four young daughters, she began selling salt and peppercorns at farmers markets, in conjunction with cooking classes. She learned that her creative talents lay in the development of salt and flavor blends.
So distinctive were her products that a regular customer at a farmers market often remarked, “You’ve got a brand, and you’ve got to take it wholesale.” Skillen set sail with the s.a.l.t. sisters trademark, representing her daughters’ names: Sydney, Alexis, Lauren and Taylor.
Initially lacking confidence to go big, she tested the waters at several trade shows, with outstanding results. She used the momentum to develop wholesale clients nationwide and now, internationally, with annual sales of seven figures.
“In the beginning I had no idea what I was doing,” she says, “but what I had was the passion for telling the story and creating the products. I figured it out as I went along, and I asked a lot of questions as I met other business owners.”
Skillen now has 70 proprietary blends, made with meticulously sourced salt. Her efficient, loyal staff of eight blends all the products by hand in their production facility in Goshen. “We blend the ingredients, print our own labels, hand-fill our bags, jars and tubes,” she says.
“We sell a small amount of our products on our website to our very loyal retail customers, but most of our business is wholesale and built on small brick-and-mortar establishments. I was 47 when I started the company, but from the beginning I had a strong internal feeling that this is what I was supposed to do and that was my driver. What’s important to me is that people eat unrefined salt that has been sustainably harvested from clean sources.”
Skillen’s deep belief in her product along with her own perseverance were key to her success. She advises, “You have to have a passion as a driver because it gets really hard some days. And that’s OK, because you want things in life to be a challenge; it’s in that challenge that you grow. If it was always easy, everybody would be doing it, and you would have no benchmark for appreciation.”
s.a.l.t. sisters
574.971.8150
saltsisters.net/
Deborah Rieth writes from a Michigan small farm, where her soul is nourished by gardens, kitchens and words.
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