How a mini food creator, a pepper farming duo, and other Iowans are accelerating their businesses - Video

The Drake University Business Clinic is fostering a wide variety of new businesses from underrepresented entrepreneurs in Iowa with the help of a Wells Fargo grant. Read more at https://stories.wf.com/how-a-mini-food-creator-a-pepper-farming-duo-and-other-iowans-are-accelerating-their-businesses

Transcript:

(voiceover)
What do mini tacos, a metal band drummer, an aerial circus performer and banging chicken and waffles have in common? Drake University.

Wow.

Bill Adamowski, Drake University’s Executive Director of Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Human-Centered Design:
The Drake Business Clinic offers different services from one-on-one counseling workshops — primarily to underrepresented underserved — but it's open to all comers.

Charlie and Celestino Ramirez, Sweatshop Pepper Farm:
We make custom spices. We specialize in super hot chili peppers and wacky hybrids that we make with some of the absolute hottest peppers that there are currently.

(person speaking)
Oh, my Goodness. Give me some milk.

Karel Howell, Karel the Girl Minature:
I love miniatures. I love doing YouTube. I love being in front of cameras. We gonna to make some strange cookies, ya’ll. I like to cook. And so I figured if I'm go in there and cook, then, you know, I should be able to make it on there.

Garrison Goodlett, G.G.’s Chicken & Waffles:
The chicken fumes. They open your pores.

My chicken and waffles are delicious. I know I sound biased, but flavor is what you're going to taste when you come into G.G’s. You're not just going to have flavor in the chicken, but also the waffles.

(person speaking)
How is it? Very good. That good? Awesome.

Adamowski:
We actually require our participants in the accelerator to go out there and actually talk to potential customers. Are they really solving a problem? How big is that problem and really getting into the depth of it instead of just looking at how do you incorporate? How do you do accounting?

Howell:
The Drake program has helped me, you know, the business model part, and I also learned how to connect with people.


Ramirez:
It took everything that we had been kind of doing by feel, and it derived a formula for it.

Goodlett:
It talked to me about what values do we bring as a company, not just the flavor, not just the food, but the connection that we want to make with our customers.

Adamowski:
I mean, really, the birth of the Drake Business Clinic was from the Wells Fargo investment. They said, ‘Hey, these are kind of interesting. I see what you guys are trying to do here. I see the need in the community. Can we pull this together?’

Goodlett:
We're trending towards a food truck.

Ramirez:
We are in the process now of trying to move into commercial grocery stores and do wholesale of our peppers as well.

Howell:
I'm not just trying to sit still. I'm trying to build wealth. Food is love. People come together with food. And I will see all y'all in another video.