Meaningful Marketplace Podcast

The story begins with the Peace Corps. Nhu, a native of Vietnam, was volunteering in Kingston, Jamaica. Craig was part of Peace Corps Jamaica’s administrative staff. They both have a passion for education and believe that education changes lives. Hurricane Floyd brought them together, as Craig visited Nhu presumably to bring her supplies, but actually to ask her out! They lived in Jamaica for year...

With two suitcases, $70 in her pocket and no English, Nong left her native Thailand and landed in the U.S. She quickly learned that her $70 was not going to take her far and hustled for a job and started picking up English as quickly as possible. Her work ethic had been cast in steel; her mother was the sole provider for her family and money was always a struggle. But that kept them close and beca...

CPG means Consumer Packaged Goods for the uninitiated, and Anna Bradshaw is a Black Belt in the art. If you are going to have your food product move off the grocery shelf, you have to tell a story to the shopper quickly and make them taste it before they pick it up and put it in their cart; and that isn't easy. And here's a great case study: Go to Episode #24, Josie's gluten free. She became a cli...

If you're old enough you remember milk in good old glass bottles. If you’re not, you’ve probably seen pictures. The Rising Sun Dairy has brought back those days with their family run dairy delivering fresh, pasteurized milk in a bottle to people in Oregon’s mid-Willamette Valley. Husband and wife couple Janina and Mark VanDam first met at a Bible retreat, Mark from Oregon and Janina from Canada. B...

She does one thing, one thing only, and she just crushes it. Or should we say bakes it. Andrea Ludlow is a one-product startup founder and Showstopper Cookies is her company. She has always loved chocolate chip cookies but wanted to make only the best, real showstoppers. Her journey is a typical entrepreneur's one. She owned and ran a school for 18 years and decided recently that she needed a chan...

Well, this episode is Sarah, Sarah and Sarah; try not to get confused. Sarah Marcus started her career in San Francisco, taking a job as cheesemonger for Cowgirl Creamery. She fell in love with cheese and developed her palate there. The company sent her to the processing plant where she learned the entire cheese making business and she wanted more. Her cheesemaking studies took her to England, Spa...

The body regulates a variety of functions including inflammation. CBD is a hemp extract that encourages things like controlling inflammation, relaxing muscles and other functions but is not, repeat not the same thing as THC, which makes people "high". That distinction has become more understood over time, so the people who sell CBD products have been able to distance themselves from the...

Gluten free? Paleo? Baked Goods? And they taste as great as they look? You've probably heard that one a million times and the pastries don't live up to the hype. Well - at Blondy's Baked Goods, they do. Donna Parker a big part of the Portland, Oregon food community, has been gluten free for ten years but only started Blondy's about one year ago (if you wonder where the name Blondy came from, check...

We make small batch, cold pressed, hand-crafted, fermented drinking vinegar concentrates, bitters, and health elixirs. Whew! Say that three times in a row fast. Sascha Archer does it all on an island right out of Portland, Oregon called Sauvie Island (pronounced Soh' vee or Saw' vee, your choice). Sascha suffered a lifetime of indigestion and heartburn and turned to a cider vinegar to ease her sym...

Robin Rosenberg became "Bobbie" for two reasons. First, no way could she trademark Boat Sauce without an added word, and secondly, she was "Aunt Bobbie" to one of her friend's children, so Bobbie just seemed right. An eight-week tour through the Inside Passage of the waterways of the Pacific Northwest by a friend gave Robin a chance to sail part of that tour. Starting from a re...

Jenny Affan and her partner Chelsea Benjamin were studying at the National University of Natural Medicine, Portland, Oregon when Jenny's psoriasis kept flaring up and she started treating it successfully with good old nutrition from natural foods. The way the two of them decided to treat more ailments naturally was with nutritionally-balanced broth. Distribution is as old-fashioned at broth; throu...

Indian fusion salsas. Sound new and tempting? Trust us, they are. Rippy and Sukdev have taken Indian spices and blended them with three vegan salsa recipes, classic, black bean and mango habanero. The literal meaning of Khalsa means honesty and is also the name of a religious group meaning the same and reflects honest, hard working way of life. And, as both of them say, it also rhymes! The ingredi...

Jill Kuehler is founder of woman-owned Free Land Spirits, a Portland, Oregon company producing distinct spirits in their distillery. An east Texas native, Jill grew up working the garden of her grandmother, Memah Freeland, and fell in love with fresh tastes straight from the earth. Her desire to offer that experience to consumers of spirits is the foundation of Pacific Northwest flavors inherent i...

Affouet M. Price of Portland, Oregon, learned how to prepare the traditional recipes of her native Ivory Coast from her mother and grandmother. Her greatest joys in cooking are the storied history of traditional recipes, and the connections that she sees people make when they enjoy those recipes together. Affouet also founded La Casserole Gourmet, a food and beverage social media presence meant to...

Most food producers don't know how to work with wholesalers and get their product sold after it hits the shelf. But Allison - Alli - Ball does. Her background was working with San Francisco based Bi-Rite, a family company since 1940, choosing the right products for a grocer and getting them to fly off the shelf. Her in the trenches work changed when the company expanded and she spent more time wor...

On their Instagram account, Laura Ellis and her family share the day-to-day experience of operating Mt. HopeFarm. Laura's parents also farm with them and being exposed on IG has been an experience they needed to get used to, but have adjusted. A great example of following them has been their recent grape harvest. They have documented how they take such care raising, testing and then harvesting the...

Serafina owner of It's a Boring Life and It's a Boring Life cafe, also owns a farm in - yes really - BORING, Oregon. Now for the journey. Our host, Sarah Marshall, actually grew up in the area and can relate to the life. A joint venture between Serafina and wife, Jennifer Johnson, Serafina started her career raising lots of money for non-profits. Starting a chicken farm to take wholesome chicken n...

Anna Hendricks' website introduction says it all, " My cakes and pastries are botanically-inspired, hand-crafted of the finest seasonal ingredients and decorated with Natural Flourishes". This business is a collision between a florist and a baker and a sculptor. Of course, even with these works of art, COVID has had an impact, specifically wedding business. With large gatherings not allo...

A varied background lead Amy Thompson to her food brokerage business, Full Shelf Foods. Starting as a cheesemonger, an amazing way to "learn about food" according to Amy. Talking with the consumer face to face and constantly sampling the goods and looking for new flavors gave her a great on-the-ground beginning. Cheese means talking about the entire chain, cow to process and all the agri...

Chile oils and peanut sauces, typically only served fresh, have been been engineered to be sold with a great taste in the store by Lisa Douangphoumy, of Sao Noi. Another student of our host, Sarah Masoni, Lisa and her mother, Marney, came to Sarah and the OSU Food Innovation Center to become one of the first peanut butter sauce brands to be sold in a grocery store cooler. The name is Lisa's mother...

Greens grown chemical-free and till-free. They're the most supple, freshest and delicious and LOCAL. Quinn and Theus, founders of Farm Punks started farming rather recently, they were not the usual siblings who grew up on a farm. Starting their business only a year ago, they are passionate about locally-grown and locally-supported farming. And they want you to enjoy the vegetables they grow so car...

As Director of Sales, Becky Westby steers Oregon Fruit Products, a 1935 icon. OFP's canned products are in over 25,000 grocery store outlets. DotFoods is a redistributor who has become a big and important partner over the years to help spread the great taste of Oregon fruit to the world. Headquartered in Salem, central to the fruit growing valley, OFP has a stunning processing plant and hopefully...

Frenzied, running three businesses simultaneously, Faith Dionne lost track of some of the basic things in life, including family. So J-A-Z stands for Jack and Zoe, her children. It was a deliberate move to get control of that balance between business and life. She started a healthy candy bar company, Bees and Beans, in 2010 that she subsequently sold, so Faith is an experienced entrepreneur, growi...

Aspiring chefs are hungry not only for good food, they're hungry for information and education. Yes, there are culinary schools - although fewer today than a couple of years ago - but they are localized and structured. What every aspiring student needs is a mentor, and Justine Reichman, founder of Next Gen Chef does that to the Nth degree. Pretty much the pastime of her family, connecting people w...

Found alongside the road and 24 hours from death, little Manny stole Cindy Anderson's heart and so she took him in and got him healthy. However, a few years later, Manny began having seizures, and Veterinary doctors couldn't seem to stop them. Cindy's degree from Oregon State University was in dietetics and nutrition, plus an MBA drove her to believe that Manny's diet was the cause. Taking Manny t...