Belfast-based Red Kettle Foods makes traditional kimchi and other products using Maine ingredients such as daikon, cucumbers, carrots, onions and ginger.
Get Instant Access to This Article
Subscribe to Mainebiz and get immediate access to all of our subscriber-only content and much more.
- Critical Maine business news updated daily.
- Immediate access to all subscriber-only content on our website.
- Bi-weekly print or digital editions of our award-winning publication.
- Special bonus issues like the Mainebiz Book of Lists.
- Exclusive ticket prize draws for our in-person events.
Click here to purchase a paywall bypass link for this article.
As an Illinois native growing up in Texas, Ger Liang Tysk’s diverse background includes service in the U.S. Air Force and working as a cook on a historic whaleship during its passages.
In certain ports of call, it was hard to find groceries.
“I had been making kimchi many years at home,” she says. “So I started making it on the ship and it was popular because it goes with everything.”
Moving to Maine was only natural: Her partner owns a house in Appleton and many friends already lived in Maine because of the state’s fleet of tall ships.
Entering her 40s, she noticed the prevalence of food startups throughout Maine.
“I thought, I could start in my kitchen, no money down,” she recalls.
Thus began a journey to her own startup, Red Kettle Foods LLC, a small-batch maker of traditional Korean kimchi, Japanese pickles and other Asian ferments under the name Red Kettle Kimchi, using Maine ingredients such as daikon, cucumbers, carrots, onions and ginger.
The state walked her through setting up a fully licensed commercial kitchen required for fermented food, and how to get recipes tested in an FDA-approved lab.
Starting in a 200-square-foot kitchen in Rockland, she sold her first products in January 2023.
“Before I knew it, I was ordered out the door,” she says.
In May 2023, she moved to the Crosby Center in Belfast, at 96 Church St., which already had a fully licensed commercial kitchen and provided expansion opportunities.
She pitched to buyers, gave out samples and got into a couple of local general stores and Rising Tide Co-op in Damariscotta.
“Then demand skyrocketed,” she says. “I doubled my revenue in 2024 and I’m track to double it again.”
Two employees help make kimchi and two help pack it. Red Kettle is cranking out 20 to 30 cases per week — a case is twelve 16-ounce glass jars — and started offering a quart size for farmers markets. Much is sold wholesale through Native Maine Produce, a Westbrook-based food distributor, to 50 to 60 stores, co-ops and restaurants from Calais in Washington County to Lexington, Mass. For retail accounts, her husband is the delivery driver.
A community focus includes working with local food pantries and doing cooking classes with local nonprofits. The next phase is to open an Asian-focused retail store and community space for more cooking classes, pop-ups and events.
Selected for this year’s Top Gun Bangor cohort, run by the Maine Center for Entrepreneurs, Tysk continues to expand her business chops.
“I’m dedicated to supporting Maine agriculture,” she says. “I want to make sure our neighbors know they can get Asian food at their budget level.”