Welcome to a place that offers business strategies and stories for makers of those crave-worthy, sustainable food products you seek out in specialty food shops, farmers markets and at farmstands.
Cutting my teeth in the chocolate business; cutting into chocolate bunnies with my teeth.
The FoodStarter blog is brought to you by Susie Wyshak, residential and commercial Realtor® with Keller Williams and author of several books:
- Good Food, Great Business: How to Take Your Artisan Food Idea From Concept to Marketplace (Chronicle Books)
- TJ’s Then & Now: How Trader Joe’s Changed the Way America Eats
- Chocolate Chip Cookie School, teaching Critical Thinking Through Cookies
A California native based in Oakland, Susie connected the dots to combine her loves of supporting food entrepreneurs and marketing to become a Good Food business strategist and real estate agent for food entrepreneurs and people aspiring to live large!
Susie sourced artisan food for several online marketplaces (like Foodzie), planned (and scrapped) her own snack-food business, co-chaired the Good Food Awards Confections committee, kicked off the U.S. Fair Trade cocoa program early on, was the Food & Beverage Industry Expert on The Balance.
sold specialty foods at a local shop, and wrote her MBA thesis on Consumer Attitudes Toward Giving Chocolate as a Gift.
Dreams begin by talking to strangers. Let’s talk!
A few other highlights of Susie’s food-filled life:
The moment I decided I’d rather consume goat cheese than raise goats. Although the novelty of milking goats is undeniably fun. Once. 🙂
- Packing hundreds of chocolate boxes at a family-run candy store / factory (when the only day she got to skip high school was to see Julia Child.)
- Helping Copia as a culinary docent at (where she and Julia Child again crossed paths) and volunteer at SF’s 18 Reasons
- Hawking for various food producers at farmers markets
- Hosting local homemade food barter exchanges
- Co-founding Epicuring.com, a culinary travel blog for California and beyond
- Relentlessly spotting trends at industry and consumer food and agricultural fairs around the world
