Fresh ideas are as important to the food industry as fresh ingredients to a dish.
Since the time when James L. Kraft borrowed his wife’s double boiler to develop processed cheese, ideas have sprung from someone’s kitchen onto consumers’ shelves.
Innovation starts with entrepreneurs – courageous people who manage to take an idea, a recipe, a concept and scale it up for access to the country and world at large.
In many cases, this is rooted in personal experience. The four entrepreneurs featured in our cover story all concocted food products intended to appeal to the needs and desires of themselves and/or their loved ones.
Read on to find out more about how
- Cancer survivor Damien Lee couldn’t find a cup of instant noodles that suited his needs – so he developed his own.
- Denise Woodard couldn’t find good cookies for her severely allergic daughter, so she made them herself.
- Kelli Lipson built the Jello-O shots she made for her college friends into Spoonable Spirits – and she hasn’t graduated yet.
- The search for a non-allergenic base for nondairy milk led to Jeff Richards's Mooala, the only refrigerated banana milk in the U.S.
