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June 7, 2017

Good To-Go wins $50K LaunchPad grant

Photo / Lori Valigra Jennifer Scism and David Koorits, owners of natural dehydrated meals company Good To-Go in Kittery, won the $50,000 Gorham Savings Bank Launchpad competition Tuesday night. They will use the money to buy a second dehydrator machine so they can double production.
By Lori Valigra

Good To-Go, the Kittery maker of natural dehydrated meals for active people, won the $50,000 grant top prize in the fifth annual Gorham Savings Bank LaunchPad live pitch competition held Tuesday night. The company's owners plan to buy a second dehydrator that they said would double production. 

“We made 14,000 meals per month last year and now we’re making 53,000 per month,” said nationally-recognized chef Jennifer Scism, co-owner of Good To-Go with husband David Koorits. While Koorits is an outdoorsman, Scism is a renowned chef who once defeated Mario Batali on Food Network’s “Iron Chef.” Scism said the company is on track to sell close to half a million meals this year.

When asked by WEX President and CEO Melissa Smith, who along with Winxnet CEO and co-founder Chris Claudio and Pro-Voke founder and CEO Steven Campbell judged this year’s competition, what the biggest factor was in holding back the company’s growth, Scism and Koorits said they needed a second dehydrator to scale up production.

“When we load our dehydrator, our two kettles sit idle,” Koorits said. “With a second dehydrator we will immediately double production.” Good To-Go plans to buy the second dehydrator from Nyle Systems LLC of Brewer.

Stiff competition

The company, which also was a finalist last year, won out of an initial pool of more than 300 applicants, up from 200 last year, and against four other finalists: Jellux of Saco, which makes advanced marine and outdoor lighting; North Spore of Westbrook, which produces gourmet mushrooms and mushroom span for retail and commercial use; STARC Systems of Brunswick, which makes modular, telescopic wall systems to prevent debris and noise from spreading through hospitals and other buildings during construction or renovation; and UniteGPS of Portland, which has a GPS solution to track students and driving behavior of school buses and which also was a 2016 competition finalist.

The finalists each had seven minutes to pitch their product and company before the judges and a live audience of more than 200 people at the University of Southern Maine’s Hannaford Hall in Portland, and the judges had a few minutes for questions after each presentation.

Just before Chris Emmons, Gorham Savings Bank’s president and CEO, announced the winner, the judges gave one last piece of advice to each of the five contestants about their presentation. Good To-Go, for example, which had a relaxed presentation, was advised to bring more numbers about the company’s performance into its discussion earlier and more frequently.

Here come the junior achievers

Photo / Lori Valigra
Teacher Jeffrey Kozaka's seventh/eighth grade class at Mahoney Middle School in South Portland won first place in the inaugural Gorham Savings Bank Launchpad Junior competition for their project to work with local colleges to learn to make healthy food and help stem obesity. From left: Anna Malone, Avery Hamor, Serigne MBow and Henry Falatko.

There were a couple firsts at the contest. American Unagi LLC of Walpole won the inaugural Emerging Idea Award to support promising early-stage companies. The company, which will get a $10,000 grant from Gorham Savings plus another $10,000 in in-kind professional services from Chris Philbrook, Creative Imaging Group, iBec and Pro-Voke, produces eels using aquaculture.

The crowd showed a lot of excitement for the second new program called Launchpad Junior, through which three Maine schools got $1,000 each in a partnership between Gorham Savings and Junior Achievement’s “JA — It’s My Business!” program.

Three schools each showed a 3-minute video and answered questions from emcee Michelle Neujahr, director of Southern Maine Community College’s Entrepreneurial Center, after which the audience voted via cell phones on which schools came in first, second and third.

Mahoney Middle School in South Portland won first place — and the largest trophy — for its plan for a “Five-Star Teen Center” which, in collaboration with culinary students from Southern Maine Community College and the University of Southern Maine, would teach healthy eating and try to stem obesity.

“They will teach us to cook and provide teens with healthy food options,” said Anna Malone, who along with seventh/eighth grade classmates Avery Hamor, Serigne MBow and Henry Falatko represented the team from teacher Jeffrey Kozaka’s class.

Gorham Middle School came in second and Lincoln Middle School in Portland third. Both had created centers where teens could go after school and learn new skills, hang out or study.

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