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Twenty-one year old Jake Wollner had a dream about starting a successful business. After investigating numerous ideas, he settled on opening a vegan-organic wholesale bakery with his partner Lauralin Williamson. Enjoying vegan food and knowing a lot of others that do as well, Jake and Lauralin decided that what the industry needed was a good wholesale bakery that was able to meet eating expectations while holding true to the vegan philosophy. They opened in a commissary kitchen and began producing unique cookies, muffins, and other treats using only organic, vegan and wild ingredients. They quickly outgrew their time allotment in this space and had to move to another kitchen that had more time available. Having industry knowledge and participating in the vegan food market gave Jake and Lauralin a much needed edge when developing products and marketing them. The two divided the work so Jake became the marketer and Lauralin was the head cook. They developed the new products collaboratively, bringing their own perspectives to the process. Within six months, they had more than 20 good products and were working on more. The goal was to have superior products than what were currently on the market in taste, texture, and packaging. They succeeded rather quickly as evidenced by more than 25 clients in the first year including, Zupans and New Seasons. Along the way, Jake and Lauralin decided to dissolve the partnership and agree to terms that allowed Jake to have sole ownership of the firm. David Wright Tremaine assisted in creating a corporate structure for the new entity and dissolving the partnership. Buddha Belly Bakery had again outgrown the time allotment at the second commissary kitchen and needed to find another space that allowed them to take even more time for production. Jake had relations with another whole foods producer that was not making as much product as it had in the past. Jake worked out a verbal agreement where he would convert the exiting facility to a new commissary kitchen space. After putting growth of the firm on hold for several months to take care of setting up the commissary kitchen space and putting his faith in verbal agreements, Jake had a falling out with the property owner which resulted in a tremendous amount of stress, frustration, and breaking of verbal agreements. Even the pro-bono assistance of Kelly Struhs at Davis Wright Tremaine could not get a timely settlement without Jake paying the remaining balance because there was no written contract and he had paid in cash. After a month of looking for a new space and dealing with a very unreasonable, existing landlord, Jake was able to locate a facility that only his firm would occupy. The firm moved to the new space December 1st. In the first two weeks of December, Buddha Belly added four new clients to the list of wholesale customers for a total of 33 current clients. Now that Jake can focus strictly on growing his firm, there are new opportunities and connections with another BOP client, Dragon Fly Chai. As it turns out, they share numerous clients and they are in the early stages of trying to figure out how they can work together on joint marketing and product placement. Along the way, the BOP helped Jake secure an $8,000 loan form those fabulous folks over at Mercy Corps NW (thanks Dan and crew!) and some pro-bono assistance from Davis Wright Tremaine valued at $4,000. Buddha Belly has grown sales from $15,000 in the first quarter of 2004 to $34,000 in the third quarter and now employs seven full-time staff. This is a prime example of niche marketing and the success that comes from focusing on one market segment. Congratulations to Jake for surviving this learning curve and being a successful young entrepreneur!
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Core
Sponsors City
of Portland, Bureau of Housing and Community Development Program Sponsors Davis
Wright Tremaine Annual Luncheon Sponsors U.S.
Bank
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