Florida Foodie

FusionFest is a nonprofit in Orlando aimed at celebrating the diverse cultures and heritage that can be found around Florida. “Our whole mission is for people to learn about different cultures — like to showcase and share their backgrounds, but also learn from different cultures,” Thali Sugisawa, the executive director of FusionFest said. As part of that mission, the organization has developed Div...

A wife’s wish for a good bagel quickly spiraled into a new business and career for a couple who had spent much of their working life in retail. Jeff and Danielle Perera are the owners of Jeff’s Bagel Run. In 2019, Jeff Parera found himself out of work. His wife, Danielle Parera, had been a stay-at-home mom for a few years at this point and had been planning to rejoin the workforce, allowing Jeff P...

The pandemic continues to cause issues across multiple industries, but agriculture has faced several unique challenges — from crops rotting on the vine during shutdowns to having to find new ways to sell their produce. Dr. Christa Court, director of the Economic Impact Analysis Program at the University of Florida, is an expert in regional economics and works in the school’s Food and Resource Econ...

Traditional cuisine is very important to Jess and Elizabeth Calvo, the owners of Thai Farm Kitchen. The couple is offering a menu of traditional Thai cuisine which they said is hard to come by, even in Thailand. “Elizabeth, my wife, she the chef and she inherited (these) very old traditional (recipes) from her ancestors — her great grandmother, from her grandmother and from her mother as well, " J...

A past girlfriend first introduced Shaun Noonan to the idea of switching to a vegan diet, but it’s a lifestyle that has come to define his work. “That (relationship) was young in my teens, so I had never really formed that classic negative opinion of vegetarianism,” Noonan recalled. “I grew up playing ice hockey, and martial arts and things like that — and I was also eating vegetables. So I never...

Virtually all of the tea consumed by Americans comes from somewhere else, but Brian White wants to change that. White, who is from New Smyrna Beach, is the CEO of Yaupon Bros. American Tea Company. The business focus on selling “tea” made from the leaves of the yaupon holly plant. White said he got started about 12 years ago. At the time, he said there was no commercial supply of yaupon available....

Twenty-five years spent working in kitchens does not typically lead to a career inside the tech sector, but Ben Ellsworth managed to do it — founding a company aimed at helping restaurants deal with unexpected staffing shortages. Ellsworth is the founder and CEO of GigPro, which was recently launched in the Orlando area. GigPro allows people in the service industry to fill in on open shifts at bus...

Ashley D’Acunto, the co-owner of Phat Ash Bakes, says she has always enjoyed baking for fun — feeding her husband, Israel Erazo and her co-workers — but when the pandemic hit she suddenly found herself with more time on her hands. “I was working at Lululemon in Winter Park and the store closed for COVID. And it gave me time to, you know, actually make a website and focus,” D’Acunto said “And then...

Nathan and Jenn Clark have spent nearly 10 years churning out marshmallows from their business, Wondermade, in Sanford. However, they feel as though they are providing more than just sweet treats to the community. “What everybody fundamentally needs isn’t just a marshmallow, they really need to be loved and they need a place to love other people,” Nathan Clark said. The name for the business comes...

Chauniqua Major-Louis, who goes by Major, never really liked the name of her popcorn business, Major's Project Pop. “For the longest time, I wanted to change the name of the brand because I thought what is a Project Pop, like what is any of that mean? I just created it one day just (because) I needed to come up with a name, so I invented that,” Major said. It wasn’t until later it occurred to her...

Chef, restaurateur and author Richard Blais’ culinary journey started when he was just a teenager. “My first job was at McDonald’s when I was 14,” he said. “I was the poissonier there — which means fish cook in French — which is a very important position at a fast-food hamburger restaurant that arguably has one seafood item.” Blais said his family wasn’t big on fancy meals when he was a kid. Despi...

Dr. Amber Orman likes to practice what she calls “true healthcare.” She is a radiation oncologist and also a practitioner of lifestyle medicine “which is using food and movement, the way that you feel stress the way that you sleep, your relationships and your use of tobacco, alcohol and drugs, to really change your life in a positive way,” according to Orman. Orman takes that practice into the HEA...

Sandra Shorter, owner of The Naked Cupcake, started her baking career in a quest to find the “perfect cake.” At the time, Shorter was working in education and she used her fellow teachers as “guinea pigs.” After refining her cupcake chops in school, in 2016 Shorter took the plunge and bought a food truck off of Craigslist. At the time, the truck was covered in graffiti, but a little love and work...

Hinge is not normally where one goes to start a business relationship, but that’s how Ryan McKenzie and Stevie Andujar got their start. The pair did not stay together as a couple, but they have remained friends and business partners. They run Table Ghost Kitchen together. It is a venture that was born “out of boredom,” according to McKenzie. “We literally were in Ryan’s kitchen one day, and we jus...

Starting his own restaurant has been something of an uphill battle for Alex Diaz. Diaz is the chef and owner at Alex’s Fresh Kitchen in Casselberry. He said the location of his restaurant has been part of the challenge. Alex’s Fresh Kitchen sits at 1015 State Road 436 in Suite 109 of a strip mall. The restaurant is also sandwiched between several chains, including a Wawa and a Tijuana Flats, so it...

April Williams and her husband Dustin — the owners of À La Cart — are Central Florida natives, but their professional backgrounds are not in food and hospitality. The couple was working as teachers while living in Bend, Oregon. “Every time we would go out to eat, we almost always go to a food cart pod,” April Williams said. “My husband, I have very different eating styles and we can always both ge...

Vinay Rama — the CEO of Mandala Holdings, which owns Lime Fresh Mexican Grill — has been working in the service industry his whole life. After years of working in his family’s motel, and even living in it for a time, Rama’s parents sent him to live in India. It was there that he ended up with his first paid job, again working in housekeeping at a hotel. For Rama, the best part of this new work exp...

Shereece Mitchell transformed her life and her health and now, she wants to do the same for others. In 2015, Mitchell was working in IT in South Florida when she began her journey, losing 100 pounds in the process. However, it wasn’t until 2018 that she started making the most changes in her life — becoming a bodybuilder and a Christian in the process. The next year, she moved to Orlando, selling...

The pandemic hit Enas Gebaly and her family hard. Her husband lost his job and it prevented Gebaly from traveling to see her family, who still lives in Egypt. For her, cooking became a way to feel connected with her family and her home country. Food also became a way for Gebaly to help her family in Florida, her husband and her children. After her husband lost his job, Gebaly was told about Second...

Dino Ferri is the type of guy who doesn’t sweat when the heat is on. “It’s a rush. It literally is a rush,” Ferri said. The “it” in question here is capsaicin — the stuff in peppers that make them spicy. Ferri loves the stuff and downs it like a champ. He shares his love with the world through his own hot sauce company: Hotter Than El. In addition to loving spicy foods, Ferri is also diabetic. The...

Kaleb Harrell says his early days of opening Hawkers Asian Street Fare with his four friends was “best time I never want to have again.” Harell did not start out his professional career planning to open a restaurant. He was working in marketing after graduating from the University of Central Florida. In 2010, his friend Allen Lo, who is now the Brand Chef for Hawkers, called him up and asked if he...

A long-time food obsession became a business for Andrew Scala during the pandemic and now he’s getting ready to take that business to the next level. Scala is the owner of JAM Hot Chicken. The idea for JAM came from a trip to Los Angles. Scala’s brother brought him to Howlin' Rays, where he tried hot chicken for the first time. Like many people in the service industry, Scala found himself out of w...

Ricky Ly’s day job as a civil engineer has pretty much nothing to do with food, so he had to go online to express his passion for cuisine. Ly is the founder of TastyChomps.com, a foodie blog covering all the happenings in Orlando’s restaurant and dining scene. His love of food has a lot to do with his upbringing. He said he has a large immigrant family. In the latest episode Florida Foodie, Ly tal...

In the latest Florida Foodie, Frank Bailey talks about partnering with churches in the Orlando area to help build micro farms as part of his “Grow It Foward Program.” He also talks about how he is helping to teach his students business literacy as well as agriculture and landscaping skills. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of Florida Foodie, Francois and Alexis Hicks, the case manager for families, parks and recreation with Parramore Kidz Zone, talk more about what the kids learn while taking part in Black Bee Honey and how the program has grown since it began. out what the kids learn while taking part in Black Bee Honey and how the program has grown since it began. They also talk about the partnersh...