Originally published in Carroll Capital, the print publication of the Carroll School of Management at Boston College. Read the full issue here.
Can-Do Attitude
Kat Kavner ’14 was taking note of booming sales of canned beans during the pandemic as people stocked their pantries for extended stays at home. As an on-again, off-again vegetarian, Kavner already knew how versatile beans could be when it came to cooking, but she felt that canned food could use a bit of a makeover for a new generation of grocery shoppers.
Kat Kavner '14
Her company, Heyday Canning Co., which launched in Winter 2022, sells a line of canned beans in chef-inspired sauces. With bold, eye-catching branding and inventive flavors like Kimchi Sesame Navy Beans and Harissa Lemon Chickpeas, Heyday’s products are made for millennial and Generation Z consumers looking to get delicious meals on the table quickly. “If you look at Campbell’s ads from the 1950s, they were selling the same thing that we’re selling, which is easy home cooking,” she says, but Heyday’s products are tailored to its customers’ modern palates and busy schedules.
The company had difficulties starting during the pandemic, due to manufacturing challenges. Now, Heyday’s beans—and a new line of canned soups—can be found in grocery stores nation-wide. “There are all of these different categories with no innovation,” she says. “We want to reinvent canned food for a new generation.”
Sweet Success
After graduating and moving to New York to start a marketing career, Joe DeCarle ’09 stumbled across the story of a family-run coconut farm in Sri Lanka that fundamentally changed his goals. “I realized I wanted to connect this network of small farmers to consumers in America,” he explains. Inspired, DeCarle started Sweet Origins, a wholesale import company that works with farmers globally to source tropical products like coconut water and sell them to smoothie bars, juice shops, and more.
It’s no small feat to navigate a small business with a global footprint. “When you’re moving goods across the world, so much is out of your control,” he says. “We had the pandemic with ballooning costs, then the issues in the Red Sea ... political, economic, and otherwise, so many things can impact what’s happening on these trade routes.”
DeCarle has to maintain good relationships with shipping companies and farmers while managing customers’ expectations, he explains—and do all that outside his day job as a marketing director for American Express. He recently introduced new products to Sweet Origins, including açaí berries and dragon-fruit puree. “I’m trying to position the company as the expert at importing tropical ingredients,” he says.
Fit and Full
Fitness enthusiast Nikki Elliott ’14, cofounder of gut-friendly snack company ELAVI, met her future business partner Michelle Razavi while teaching early-morning workout classes before her day job at PwC. The pair quickly bonded, and when Razavi started developing a collagen-rich protein bar, Elliott offered up her accounting and consulting skills to help develop a business plan. “It was so fun to tangibly think about this amazing product,” she says.
Their first product, a chocolate and goji berry protein bar, launched in January 2020. When the pandemic began just a few months later, a massive surge of people ordering groceries online meant that ELAVI, which launched as an online brand, could get their products into the hands of consumers. Even so, a fundamental marketing challenge remained: Elliot and Razavi had imagined their products being perfect for on-the-go snacking, but no one was leaving the house. As daunting as it was to reconceptualize their core product, ELAVI went all in on a new line of dessert-inspired vegan cashew butters instead, a product ideal for an at-home treat. “They've become our hero product,” Elliott says. “We're continuing to move forward with this new direction and toward these indulgent desserts that are good for you.”
Cold Comfort
Matt Fonte ’94 thinks it was about time someone shook up the ice cream industry. “It’s been the same since our grandparents were eating ice cream as children,” he says. In 2018 Fonte created ColdSnap, a rapid freezing appliance churning out ice cream and other frozen treats from single-serving pods in about two minutes—like a Keurig coffee maker, but much cooler.
Matt Fonte '94 with a ColdSnap Machine
When his daughters Sierra and Fiona (then nine and seven years old) pitched him an at-home ice cream maker, Fonte explained that it already existed—the machines just required multiple, intensive steps to use. A serial entrepreneur, Fonte’s wheels were already turning. What if there was a machine that could produce fresh ice cream in just minutes?
ColdSnap hit the commercial market in Spring 2024. At the company’s factory in Billerica, Massachusetts, machinery has been sourced from around the world to produce and package the product mixes—like salted caramel ice cream, mango smoothies, and frozen margaritas—into shelf-stable pods. Doing this work in-house means that ColdSnap can keep proprietary technology protected. “We’re building a picket fence around our intellectual property,” Fonte says—ColdSnap currently holds 105 issued patents. This strategy also ensures that supply chain disruptions, like those that arose during the pandemic, won’t derail the business.
With ColdSnap currently available for sale to businesses, Fonte is already thinking about how to get his product in homes so other families can have ice cream on demand. It’s a goal that unites his team, he says. “We want to do something that has never been done before.”
