Noel Sims photo
At Wednesday's food entrepreneur showcase.
Tamales, cupcakes, hot sauce, and corn ribs were just a few of the locally made items on the menu at a Q House-hosted showcase of homegrown foodie talent.
That was the scene Wednesday at the Q House Plaza at 197 Dixwell Ave.
Visitors to the farmers’ market got to sample for free a host of culinary creations by six food entrepreneurs as part of the local CitySeed’s and Collab’s annual Food Business Accelerator alumni showcase.
The two local nonprofits work together to run the Food Business Accelerator program for New Haveners with a vision to help them turn their flair for cooking into a business. Ten applicants are accepted into each cohort and then go through a 12-week course in which they learn about marketing their businesses, getting the proper licenses, and procuring their ingredients locally.
CitySeed Food Entrepreneurship Director Cara Santino (left).
While Wednesday’s event saw the food entrepreneurs giving away their food for free “to build brand recognition,” CitySeed Food Entrepreneurship Director Cara Santino said, each participating entrepreneur was still able to make a profit at the event. That’s because CitySeed and Collab “covered the costs of them being” at the showcase.
Food Biz Accelerator Co-Director Ndubisi Okeke.
Ndubisi Okeke, venture manager for Collab and co-director of the Food Business Accelerator along with Santino, pointed out that these entrepreneurs are from New Haven and their success will help uplift the whole community. “They are community people,” he said. “And when some of these businesses go global, we want them to remember where they came from, to know what it feels like to be rooted.”
Kwame Asare (right).
A return to his roots was exactly what gave Kwame Asare, founder of Oh Shito!, the idea for his hot sauce company. Asare moved from his home country of Ghana to the United States at 10 years old and did not return until more than two decades later in 2019. While he was visiting Ghana, he ate shito — a common Ghanaian sauce — every day and decided on his plane ride back to the United States that he wanted to bring shito to the American hot sauce market.
Since joining the Winter 2020 cohort of the Food Business Accelerator, Asare has put his sauce on the shelves of 16 Stop & Shops in New Haven County, Fairfield County, and New York City, as well as six specialty stores. Asare sells four flavors of his sauce: beef, chicken, fish, and vegetarian. Each of the sauces include a mixture of ginger, garlic, onion, scotch bonnet pepper, and a secret blend of spices.
Asare told the Independent that he “came up with the idea for the name of the company in the shower. It’s a triple entendre.” Shito is the word for pepper as well as the sauce in Ghana.
Maxine Harris.
While Asare brought the heat, Maxine Harris brought something sweet to the showcase with her business, Je T’aime Cupcakes. Harris started baking cupcakes during the pandemic to bring joy to other people. “It’s therapeutic for me too,” she said. “Whenever I’m going through something, I fill up my kitchen with pastries.”
Though the mini cupcakes she served on Wednesday — the crown jewel being a pumpkin spice cupcake with vanilla frosting and cranberries — were for visitors of all ages, many of her recipes feature cocktail infusions, and even beer.
While she will keep making cupcakes, beer is what comes next for Harris. Having just completed her first brew, she said, Je T’aime is now the second Black woman-owned brewery in Connecticut (after fellow New Havener Alisa Bowens-Mercado’s Rhythm Brewing.)
Kismet Douglass (right).
Kismet Douglass had help from her mother running her booth, Momma Kiss Kitchen Cuisine. The pair dished up mac and cheese, jerk and barbecue chicken, collard greens, corn ribs, and cornbread dumplings. “I’m serving my customers’ faves,” she told the Independent.
Her mother wasn’t the only family Douglass had at the farmers’ market. She said that the other alumni of the Food Business Accelerator are like family to her, too. She got many of the ingredients for her menu from other vendors at the market and enjoys getting to support each other.
“Keeping it in the family,” Douglass said, is important to her. She hopes to keep her business “intimate”, but elevated, potentially opening a cafe or becoming a private chef. “When you get too big, you water down the authenticity,” she said.
Wonderful. When are they coming back? Asare's meteoric rise points to the expertise, excellence and effectiveness of the Food Business Accelerator Program. A sorely needed program.