Brooke Navarro didn’t set out to be an entrepreneur. But Navarro, a Brookfield native and the founder of allergen-free startup Without A Trace Foods, has always had allergies. Her mom had allergies. Her daughter had allergies.
Allergies – inconvenient and, at times, scary – were a way of life.
But what if they didn’t have to be?
Navarro, who attended Milwaukee High School of the Arts, turned her own personal frustration surrounding the difficulty of finding on-the-go snacks into a startup. After 11 years at Wall Street firms such as Barclays (NYSE: BCS), she took the plunge. She moved her family and her new business to Raleigh, North Carolina in 2020, setting up in a manufacturing space in the area and going all-in on her idea.
Without A Trace Foods was one of five companies selected for the most recent cohort of the gener8tor Milwaukee equity startup accelerator program, which ran through February and came with a $100,000 investment from Wisconsin-based venture capital firm gener8tor Management LLC.
Navarro recently spoke with the Triangle Business Journal, a sister publication of the Milwaukee Business Journal.
What has been your biggest professional challenge? "I’ve always been a bit of an underdog. I am the first person in my family to go to college and always have found myself out of my element. I had a successful career in broadcast journalism, a highly competitive industry. I then pivoted to a career on Wall Street and faced a lot of skepticism as to how a TV news anchor could be successful in finance. I had one firm that took a chance on me and I leveraged that to build a decade-plus career in capital markets. I’m used to being consistently underestimated and figuring out a way to succeed."
Where do you see your company in five years? "I have no doubt we will be one of the leading allergen-friendly snack brands in the U.S."
What advice do you have for a first-time entrepreneur? "Everyone tells you it is hard. You know it will be hard. Now imagine how hard you think it will be and multiply that by 10 times. That’s not how hard it is going to be. It’s going to be way harder. If you still want to go for it, then do it."
What is something most colleagues wouldn’t know about you? "I’ve climbed a couple of mountains — I don’t talk about it much, but those experiences left a serious impression on my life. There is something truly impactful about going head-to-head with nature and realizing you have almost no power. Yet, seeing the view from the top of a summit is a perspective you’ll never get without putting yourself through that battle with nature."
Talk us through the trial and error process of creating your first prototype. "I set out to create a brand, not a single product. As such, it was a lot of back and forth with my chef on multiple items. We worked with Anna Helm Baxter, an amazing professional chef and former deputy food editor at Hearst Magazines, who would send the samples with her husband to work in Brooklyn (where I was living at the time). I would pick them up from him on my way home from work and then try them and share with friends. Anna and I would go back and forth with feedback, more samples with her husband, and more tasting parties with my friends for feedback. It took eight months before we had a line of products that we loved and did not taste like they were “free from” anything. Then we spent another year with a food scientist commercializing those recipes."
What’s the market opportunity for Without A Trace Foods? "Unfortunately, food allergies are only getting worse. Depending on the allergy, we’ve seen a more than 50 percent increase in the last 15 years. Besides the 10 percent of the U.S. population that suffers from food allergies, we are also targeting those who are impacted by food allergies. For example, my daughter and I have food allergies, but my husband and son don’t. However, no one in my household can eat peanut butter (one of my daughter’s allergies), so we are all forced to adopt an allergen-friendly lifestyle. One in four Americans shops for allergen-friendly foods for this exact reason! It’s a $19 billion annual market that is only growing."
What are the biggest hurdles for entrepreneurs in the Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina area? "I’m a Midwesterner and a transplanted New Yorker all in one. I know how the New York City and San Francisco areas — rightly or wrongly — are major centers of influence. While the [Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina area] is an amazing area for startups, there still are not as many resources and as many dollars funding companies here [versus] the major startup hubs in the U.S."
What are some opportunities specific to entrepreneurs in the Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina area? "This is an incredibly unique ecosystem. Outside of the major startup regions in the U.S., we are one of the most active areas for new companies, but without all the red tape of the big cities. We truly combine smaller town connectivity with world-class opportunities. There are so many ways for entrepreneurs to connect as well as such strong hometown support for startups, that you really get a leg up as a startup here [versus] a larger market."
How do you de-stress? "I’ve been a long-distance runner for almost 30 years. It is still my go-to activity."
What’s the next big headline for Without a Trace Foods? "We are working on some exciting new retail partnerships for later this year! Stay tuned."
