In 2018, Washington D.C.-based grocer Glen’s Garden Market created AccelerateHERdc to identify, incubate, and accelerate local, women-led, sustainability-oriented small food businesses.
“At Glen's Garden Market, one of our core values is that we grow small businesses along with our own,” founder Danielle Vogel told Specialty Food News. “I created the AccelerateHERdc program to connect sustainability-focused, female entrepreneurs with two things that are pretty tough to come by: money and mentorship.”
For two years, the program operated as a pitch slam contest, awarding Lotta Andonian of Eat Chic Chocolates and Mary Ackley of Little Wild Things Farm, grand prizes in 2018 and 2019, respectively.
Earlier this year, Vogel began to reevaluate the program. “As difficult as it already is to start a small business, it's often even harder for women of color, who have had a historically tough time accessing capital,” she said. “For that reason, we evolved AccelerateHERdc from an annual competition into a seasonal grant program to identify, incubate, and accelerate women of color, who are doing spectacular work in the sustainable food space.”
Now, each January, April, July, and October, $1,500 grants are awarded to the chosen company or companies. In addition to grant funding, awardees receive mentorship from Vogel and other key team members.
“To date, we've awarded four grants to women making delicious food sustainably in our region,” noted Vogel. “We now sell all of their products in our store, and our customers have already fallen in love with them.”
The founders of beverage companies LemonadeLove and Mocktail Club were the first winners of the new grant program in the summer of 2020.
Eee and Zee Arenas, co-founders of LemonadeLove, a beverage company that uses ingredients from women-owned farms, said, “When we heard of the AccelerateHERdc pitch competition, we jumped at the chance to finally get on Glen’s Garden Market’s highly sought after and limited refrigerated shelves.”
“As a BIPOC lady-led small business, it became increasingly difficult to break the barriers of race injustices at our local farmers markets,” the co-founders explained. “Winning this during the Black Lives Matter movement shows that Glen’s truly cares about elevating women, especially women of color, and not merely using us as a pawn as other companies were quick to do.”
In addition to securing a place on Glen’s shelves, LemonadeLove has entered into two additional local stores, and with Vogel’s guidance, is rebranding in hopes of being picked up by a small local distributor.
“The knowledge, connections, and relationships LemonadeLove has been granted through AccelerateHERdc has well exceeded our expectations,” the co-founders said. “We are so proud to have been given the opportunity to sell LemonadeLove first on the shelves of a grocer that is dedicated and committed to combat climate change...with love.”
Pauline Idogho, founder of Mocktail Club, which produces a non-alcoholic lightly-sparkling beverage and donates one percent of all sales towards clean water access in emerging countries, has also found success through the program.
“I chose to participate in AccelerateHERdc because of Vogel’s commitment and vision to support women and minorities that wanted to make a positive difference to their community and environment,” she said. “Through her mentorship, I have been able to secure distribution, which has helped me expand my footprint and continue to scale.”
For the fall 2020 grant cycle, Theresa Black of oat-milk based gelato company Amore Congelato and Ashleigh Pearson of chocolatier Petite Soeur were chosen to receive funding and mentorship from the Glen’s team.
According to Vogel, Glen’s Garden Market has helped launch nearly 100 small businesses, more than 50 of which were founded by women, and 20 founded by people of color. She intends to continue to give minority-owned businesses a competitive advantage in the store.
Related: The Empower Project Gives Black-Owned Businesses Elevated Platform; Schnucks Introduces Diversity Supplier Program.
Image: Glen's Garden Market
from Industry Operations https://ift.tt/37R6RWF
No comments: