Company thinks its found secret to gluten-free snacks that taste good | Lifestyles

SAN DIEGO — Sydney Chasin has been ingesting gluten-cost-free since she was 7. That meant she could not grab just any bread or munch on just any sort of shop-bought deal with.

She described it as a time “well just before gluten-totally free is what gluten-free is currently,” so she started out experimenting in her family’s kitchen with balanced snacks that actually tasted fantastic.

This everyday living-prolonged craving for much better-tasting, gluten-free of charge snacks and a proclivity for organization, led the 26-year-outdated entrepreneur to start her personal snack organization identified as Chasin’ Goals Farms.

Her product “Tiny Pops” are hand-held packs of crunchy sorghum, an ancient grain that is air popped and arrives in 3 distinctive flavors — sweet and salty, cinnamon and cocoa. A handful of these appear like mini-popcorn and taste like munching on a nutty flavored rice cake, which can be eaten on their personal or as a topping.

These tiny treats acquired Chasin a initially-put earn and a $20,000 grant previous thirty day period from the FedEx Smaller Company Grant Contest — a national competitors that experienced a report of extra than 18,000 entries. She ideas on employing the grant to help fund inventory as properly as amplify the company’s on the internet presence — the 1st prize also arrives with companies to enable her organization audit its Search Engine Optimization, sustainability and marketing.

On top of that, she was the contest’s “Entrepreneur Preference Award winner,” a recognition appointed by past contest winners and little-company proprietors. This award is dependent on a selection of variables from product or service uniqueness to regardless of whether the small business has a beneficial affect on the surroundings or local community.

Chasin officially launched the company in 2018. But initially, she took out a credit score card with a $5,000 limit and the way of thinking of using the bare minimum amount to begin her business.

She was working at a cafe in New York Town and following her shifts, she’d appear back again to her Brooklyn condominium to make prototypes of the sorghum snack. Her mentality was to consider it step by move from incorporating the enterprise to generating a solid prototype to present buyers something true down the line.

“I consider a single of the most important drivers is that I required to be an entrepreneur and be a creative and do all these issues,” she stated of charting a route outdoors of a company task. “And, the restaurant occupation was a usually means to an end that could allow me to comply with that desire.”

In the United States, sorghum is a cereal crop made use of in animal feed, ethanol generation and for human intake in accordance to the Agricultural Marketing Useful resource Middle. It can be steamed, popped or employed as a flour replacement for the specific market of persons who take in gluten-totally free food.

There are corporations that use sorghum in crackers, chips and even offer you popped sorghum treats. But Chasin claimed the differentiator for her snack is that it is air-popped with out oil and she delivers sweet flavors with a tremendous-skinny, crunchy coating.

The brightly coloured packaging of each Chasin’ Dreams snack features a mouthful of overall health-food items phrases these as gluten-no cost, plant dependent, non-GMO, full grain, corn-cost-free and no corn syrup.

This vision to make a “better-for-you” snack enterprise is what relocated her to San Diego a couple of decades in the past. Chasin claimed San Diego is a good place to launch a brand name, be in a community of organic items business owners and hook up with Southern Californians who have a reputation for caring about health and fitness and wellness.

While there aren’t acres of sorghum crops increasing in the backyard of her Pacific Seaside apartment — she resources it from Kansas — there is a true place termed Chasin Dreams Farms.

It is where by Chasin grew up in Barnesville, Md., a compact city of roughly 150 individuals. That’s where she was raised by her mother, an artist who bred Shetland ponies, and her father, who was a race vehicle driver and a program engineer.

“It was a genuinely magical place that motivated innovation and creative imagination from simplicity, and it just was not your normal farm,” she mentioned. “In naming the company we really required to discover a name that captured who I am.”

Chasin has two personnel encouraging her operate the small business, and she’s continued to raise funds from mates, loved ones and crowdfunding.

Whilst the company is continue to in a startup stage and has nonetheless to create earnings, in September it raised about $62,000 via financial investment crowdfunding platform Republic.

The business has also gained backing from snack foods market veteran and angel trader, Kathleen King, the founder of Maine-based Tate’s Bake Shop, in accordance to Pitchbook.

Chasin’ Goals Farms is at the moment sold in 5 areas by way of a offer with Compass Team — a person of the greatest vending providers in the U.S. It is not available on store shelves in San Diego, but folks can purchase it specifically from the company’s internet site or on Amazon.

Chasin reported that the next steps in escalating the corporation will be increasing their distribution channels so far more individuals can get ahold of “Tiny Pops” snacks.