Fare thee well
Photo/Carol Coultas
Igor Rakuz
A conversation with Igor Rakuz, founder of GRO Café in Portland
Founded: March 2009
Employees: 2, plus 3 volunteers
Startup costs: $50,000
Projected revenue, year one: $50,000
Projected revenue, year two: $600,000
Contact: 541-9119
437 Congress St., Portland
www.grofoods.com
What is GRO?
GRO is a café, chocolatier and smoothie bar. We’re not a raw food restaurant, what we do is we minimally process foods, we don’t heat anything up too much. Some of our foods are fully cooked like our quinoa and soups, and most of the foods we prepare don’t have any processed ingredients. The concept here is to keep the food as close to its natural state as possible; we’re trying to lower the level of nutritional loss that occurs when you cook foods. Everything we do at GRO is designed to create a symbiotic relationship between the customer and the environment. We grow some of our foods inside the restaurant, some come from local farms through Crown of Maine and what they don’t have, we order from different organic and fair trade distributors.
Why did you start this company?
Because I felt like there was a lot of misinformation in nutrients and nutrition and that people who did know about healthy foods really had no place to eat in the city of Portland, and I was one of them. When I went to the juice bar and wanted a smoothie, there were [genetically modified] and processed foods, so there were just a couple spots I could eat at and I thought there were other like-minded individuals who needed a place to go, so I took the initiative. Right now we’re trying to market ourselves in a way that’s acceptable to the buffalo-wing eating guy, and I was that guy for many years.
How have you expanded your business?
We have our website up and I’ve been meeting with people in food manufacturing, and we’re going to start distributing foods that we grow in the store both locally and around the country. We’ve developed three products for distribution: organic fruit leather, the GRO nutritional bar and then GROnola, which is our sprouted buckwheat granola. We’re also starting classes to educate people about nutrition and healthier ways to eat and those have filled up quickly. We’re also developing an online store that will sell some of our food products and we’re also expanding our catering.
How do you market your business?
Right now GRO is different than other businesses because it’s a real niche market, so we’ve created a menu and flier that focus on being 100% organic, vegetarian and gluten-free and we have an extensive dessert rack. The flier is going out to yoga studios, Maine Med and to massage, chiropractic and naturopath offices. Now we’re starting to move toward a new marketing angle focusing on delicious healthy food, fast. One of the ways we’re marketing to the average citizen is on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays there will be GRO staff or volunteers in Monument Square handing out free food samples. We market on Facebook, Twitter and Google Ad Words and other applications to draw more people to our website.
What’s been the biggest challenge running this business?
The biggest challenge is trying to break into the 80% of the market who don’t know as much about nutrition or may not be drawn to us and get them to try something new. Our plan is to teach classes and also offer a menu that’s simple for people to understand and to get out in the street with samples, particularly of our chocolate cakes. We’re the only chocolatier in the state that I know of who make our own chocolate from scratch; we buy raw cacao beans directly from Costa Rica. Once we’ve designed the menu in a way that’s super accessible to the average Joe, we’re going to direct people to our website, café and catering through print media and flier distribution and samples by our street team.
How did you finance this business?
Through personal savings.
What are your business goals?
To be more sustainable and grow more of our own food by opening a local farm and by building relationships with local farmers. I also hope to expand locations and open a store in Boston hopefully within the year and expand our website and online store distribution as well as our employee base.
Interview by Mercedes Grandin
New Ventures profiles young businesses, 6-18 months old. Send your suggestion and contact information to editorial@mainebiz.biz.
Most Recent
Most Recent
Comments