The Business of Food with Steve Alexander

One would expect Jones Dairy Farm, a seventh-generation farm in America’s Dairyland, Wisconsin, to be all about milk and other dairy products. It isn’t, and hasn’t had cows on its farm since the 1980s. But it’s big in bacon and other pork products and is one of the vendors passing out samples of bacon at […]

We’re all feeling the pain of egg-flation but it’s one thing to wince when we buy a dozen every week or two. The House of Cakes Bakery in NW Chicago buys 90 dozen a week in order to make the fresh, made-from-scratch pastries, donuts, pizza bread, coffee cakes, their famous cheese sticks, cookies, and more […]

Stefania Marzelia has these words of advice for kitchen creators who want to turn their creations into a business: “Just go for it.” She went for it, working as a barista in Chicago coffee shops, starting at age 16 at Starbucks, and later at Cafe Umbria, where she learned about making coffee syrups. When the […]

GloBowl founder and CEO Erica Bethe Levin flipped the equation: Instead of necessity being the mother of invention, she’s a mother who invented something–a new type of baby food–out of necessity. Levin shares some dos and don’ts for people hoping to turn a product dreamt up in a home kitchen (or spare bedroom, or closet, […]

One of the most famous graduates of Glenbard West High School in Glen Ellyn is pitching in to help raise money for the Glen House Food Pantry in that town. In the audio clip below, Hayes relates a touching story about how hard his mother worked as a single mother of five and a staff […]

20-year-old Nathan Spangler doesn’t wear a cape and leap tall buildings with a single bound, or shoot spider webs out of his palms. No, he’s just a western Illinois farm boy who grew up on the family farm between Macomb and Canton raising corn, soybeans, and beef cattle. And he has proven you don’t need […]

For Baja Foods CEO Art Velasquez, the thought of seeing his company’s Mexican dinners in the frozen food aisles of Costco stores didn’t cross his mind. “It was never anything on my radar to try to do,” he tells WGN’s Steve Alexander. For nearly 25 years, the Southside Chicago company has been making enchiladas, burritos, […]

If you spend a lot of time in urban traffic jams and you are putting on unwanted pounds, a new study says the two may be connected. In the audio clip below, author Becca Taylor, assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University […]

If egg prices have you clucking, you may be thinking about building a coop in your backyard and raising your own hens. Before you buy the lumber and chicken wire, take a listen to what Brooke Bestwina of The Feed Store in Summit, Illinois, tells WGN’s Steve Alexander about what’s involved in being a backyard […]

TikTok is full of videos from people preaching the virtues of juice cleanses. Three-day cleanses seem to be the most popular, but there are people hawking 10-day and even 30-day cleanses. Don’t do it, says  Dr. Melinda Ring, director of the Osher Center for Integrative Health at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a […]

With the high cost of eggs, perhaps you’ve cut down some on how many you buy. In the audio clip below, Rebecca Lupesco, Marketing Director for Duke’s Mayonnaise, tells WGN’s Steve Alexander that business is good, Duke’s is selling more mayo than ever after it expanded to all 50 states, and is buying more eggs […]

Symbol of food inflation: Expert on four reasons why egg prices are so high.

Lincoln Park mom shares her experience and gives a warning if taking the drug.

At age nine, Heather Van Vorous was playing in the yard when she doubled over with tummy pain and passed out. Her parents rushed her to the pediatrician, who couldn’t find anything wrong with her and told her to quit whining. In the audio clip below, Heather tells WGN’s Steve Alexander how that moment led […]

If you’re in the camp that Thanksgiving is for turkey, but Christmas is for prime rib, a Chicago restaurant pro is here to give us tips on how to make your home-roasted rib just as succulent and flavorful as the ones served at restaurants. Marc Lupino is Chief Executive Chef at Chicago’s Steak 48. Here’s […]

While farmers, mostly men, get well-deserved and needed attention when it comes to studies about mental health, farm spouses deserve some recognition, too. They are dealing with their own stressors as they are often the ones doing the heavy lifting, both physical and emotional, when it comes to keeping the farm home and family going. […]

Sarah Frey was the youngest of 21 children in a blended family, and was the last of her siblings left on the family’s 80-acre farm near Keenes (population ~ 100) in southeastern Illinois. In elementary school, she would help her mother sell homegrown produce to local grocery stores. As a teenager, Sarah expanded the business. […]

“He doesn’t even think Taylor likes football,” jokes Sharon Pferschy, co-owner of Garlic Breath Farm in suburban Chicago, about her 14-year-old pet pot-bellied pig Kevin Bacon’s jealousy of Travis Kelce’s relationship with Taylor Swift. What is not a joke, is how hard people work to put on farmers markets each week across the country. In […]

Two of the hot button issues regarding motherhood are being addressed on a 45-foot-tall billboard in Times Square: breastfeeding in public and using formula instead of mother’s milk. It’s a billboard for Bobbie, a formula company started and run by moms. On the billboard is Molly Baz, whose previous huge billboard in the square was […]

In 1916, a beautiful Mediterranean Revival building was finished at what became the South Shore Country Club. The 65-acre site on Chicago’s Lake Front at 71st Street was created as a social and recreational haven for white Protestants. No Blacks, no Jews, and for many years, no Catholic Italians. Times changed and the country club […]

There are many efforts to find work for people who are autistic or deal with other neurodivergent challenges, such as ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, and related disabilities. But Stannum Core Solutions, a Chicago-based company, focuses on finding those people careers, not just jobs. In the audio clip below, Stannum Core Solutions founder Ben Schatzel tells […]

Farmer John Moody marked National Farm Health and Safety Week (September 15-21) by remembering the winter day when he drove his tractor to a pasture to feed the cows on his Crockett, Virginia, farm. It was the day after his 70th birthday. On the front and back of the big tractor were huge, round bales […]

It is common for immigrants to Chicago to bring with them something from home; a custom, a food, etc. In the mid-1880s, Carl Jeppson emigrated from Ystad, Sweden, to Chicago’s Swedish area at that time near the intersection of Clybourn Avenue and Division Street. What he brought from home was Malört, a liquor with a […]

It started with a TV camera catching Iowa State football players Tommy Hamman and Caleb Bacon standing next to each other on the sidelines, the names on their jerseys reading: “Hamman Bacon.” A fan posted it and tagged the Iowa Pork Producers Association asking, “Can we get an NIL deal for these guys?” In the […]

When Michelle McBride saw the drink choices available for her children as they began getting involved in sports, she was dismayed at the amount of artificial ingredients and sugar. She tried giving her kids “natural” sports drinks, but they wouldn’t drink them, plus Michelle discovered they weren’t any more effective at rehydration than water. So, […]