Epicenter's Good Food Bootcamp will be held Jan. 24 through Jan. 28. Applications to participate in the virtual event run through Jan. 15.
It's open to food-related businesses that are currently in operation or will be in operation soon.
The first Good Food Bootcamp was launched in 2019 and works with food entrepreneurs who are looking to grow and sustain their ventures. It covers such areas of business as customer growth, human resources, marketing, and leadership and includes one-on-one meetings with local mentors.
Whitney Hardy is chief capacity officer at Epicenter and is a food entrepreneur herself with Hardy Beverages. Hardy designs the curriculum for the bootcamps. She recently spoke to Memphis Business Journal about the event.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
MBJ: Tell me about the bootcamps.
Whitney Hardy: We have so many amazing food businesses in Memphis. We already knew pre-pandemic that we needed more resources, mentors, courses, and workshops to really support the food coming here. So, we had the first cohort, pre-pandemic. We saw how beneficial these workshops were in the first and second bootcamp during COVID: those businesses survive. They were more competitive. They were able to pivot. They were able to get opportunities from grants and banks.
What businesses have you worked with in the past? Makeda's Cookies was one. Muggin' Coffeehouse, located in Whitehaven, is another one. Big Momma's and Granny's Catering in Bartlett. We've also worked with Vice & Virtue Coffee in the past. These are just some that we've seen grow over the last few years into just phenomenal businesses.
Give me an overview of the bootcamp. Some days are dedicated to finance and capital. Other days are related to retail experience and marketing; interior design and social media; [and] how you translate in-person to digital space. Human resources is huge. So, how do you grow your business and your culture, because we see in the food sector that a lot of people are getting into this out of passion. It's very family- and culture-oriented. And then we bring in mentors who are across all of those different areas, as well as fellow entrepreneurs, like Kat Gordon of Muddy's Bakeshop.
Do you cover the emotional aspect of running a business? That's one of the things that Epicenter does well. We actually have an entrepreneur-in-residence who's dedicated to mental health. This was something we had pre-COVID and has been further emphasized during COVID. We cannot expect entrepreneurs to lead in scale, if we don't address the entire entrepreneur, which is the mental health all the way down to the more technical business aspects.
By running the previous two bootcamps, have you found that you're zeroing in on certain questions that these entrepreneurs are raising? We take what we hear throughout the year at Epicenter. One of the big things that, of course, has come up in the last year or so in Memphis is construction, real estate. [They're asking about] PILOTs (payments-in-lieu-of-taxes). A lot of them don't know that information and what it means, or how they can take advantage of it. So we definitely look at what's going on in Memphis.
In dealing with all these different entrepreneurs, have you been turned on to various food and coffee spots? Absolutely. I joke that probably my weight fluctuates based on the food entrepreneurs coming by our office. Being able to see someone like Bartholomew Jones and his coffee company Cxffeeblack flourish to being nationally distributed — I was already into coffee but now I'm really, really into coffee because I've had to help and support these entrepreneurs grow. Being able to support and see that is huge. So I eat too much. I drink too much coffee.
