Finding support, especially funding opportunities, is an uphill climb for entrepreneurs first starting out, as well as for those who have passed that first hurdle and are ready to grow. Wherever you are on those early rungs of the ladder, taking the next step is a challenge both in terms of effort and in finances.
As Northern Kentucky’s innovation hub, Blue North’s mission is to create a supportive entrepreneurial ecosystem, one that brings small businesses and founders together with resources, education and access to build strong connections.
To provide more opportunity for Northern Kentucky startups, Blue North partnered with Horizon Community Funds of Northern Kentucky to launch the Northern Kentucky Entrepreneurship Fund (NKYEF) in 2023. Both the Truist Foundation and the R.C. Durr Foundation donated to support and help build the fund.
“As a community foundation, this is what we do. It’s our bread and butter, partnering with donors for local impacts. When [Blue North CEO] Dave Knox got up and running and had an early conversation with me and our team about partnering, it was a no brainer,” said Nancy Grayson, CEO of Horizon Community Funds.
Cincinnati-based Main Street Ventures has since come on board as a partner. The organization distributes grant money to startups in the region, but its main focus had been north of the river due to an Ohio matching grant program.
With NKYEF now providing matching funds, Main Street Ventures’ impact in Northern Kentucky has grown, allowing it to expand its support for businesses throughout our region.
“What we do is find companies that are just above the ideation phase, still maybe pre-revenue or early revenue, and we provide them with a grant that helps them to validate a concept to then hopefully grow and scale more broadly,” said Sean Parker, executive director of Main Street Ventures.
“Since 2018 we’ve supported 190 companies with about $4 million in investment,” he said. “We had some presence in Northern Kentucky, but I would say that the partnership with Blue North and the entrepreneurship fund has really helped us to maximize the number of companies that we support.”
Main Street Ventures provides Launch grants of up to $10,000 for emerging pre-revenue companies and Leap grants of up to $30,000 for revenue-generating businesses looking to scale up.
By last cycle, Main Street Ventures had distributed $365,000 to Northern Kentucky businesses and has supported 38 entrepreneurs in Northern Kentucky.
Three recent NKYEF recipients — Body Bakery in Newport, Golden Gelato in Covington and 4 Mile Wine in Melbourne, demonstrate how the funding has helped them move to the next level for their business with a promise of sustainable growth in the future.
The Body Bakery
You could say Rebecca Southern started the Body Bakery because she wanted to have her cake and eat it, too. With a love of sweets, but a desire to eat healthy, Southern found she needed to create her own recipes to meet her health goals while also enjoying dessert.
The Body Bakery is a healthy whole foods baked goods company sold wholesale to retail outlets across the region and available online.
“As a kid I was picked on because of my weight and carried that into adulthood…It catapulted me into bodybuilding in 2013…I went from out of control and binging in college to total control and counting every macro. So I’ve seen the unhealthy side of both,” Southern said.
When she was bodybuilding, she had to watch every morsel. She still craved sweets, so Southern said she began experimenting with recipes. One of her early successes was a carrot cake recipe. Her baked goods were a hit with friends and family, and people began asking to purchase them.
Southern started an LLC in 2016, baking in her own kitchen. Soon, however, she needed more space. She joined the Incubator Kitchen Collective in Newport to use the facilities for production and storing of her inventory. While there she began selling her product to local retail outlets including Fresh Thyme, GNC, Better Blend, as well as local gyms and other small businesses.
Being a part of a community of food-related businesses, gave her a network of support and access to information about developing her business, she said. It was there that she first learned about Blue North and the Northern Kentucky Entrepreneurship Fund. She applied and received the maximum amount for the grant.
With the grant she purchased merchandise freezers. This, she said, allowed her to answer an important question for her grocery store customers. Where does her product go? Groceries typically have a baked goods section, a frozen section and a desserts section. Body Bakery goods could fit in any of those spots. And, for Southern, there was another question: How can she make her very specialized product visible and attractive to customers?
“I wanted to fix that and make it very easy. And so we got 44 standalone freezers…They’ve got covers on the side with our picture and our logo…And, so, we’re easily seen and noticed,” she said.
With the branded freezers, stores have been able to put her product in the protein bar aisle, near the self checkout section or in the middle of bakery sections. Wherever the freezer is placed it tells customers what’s inside is a healthy choice.
“We’ve been seeing huge amount of success, but without the grant, we wouldn’t have been able to do that. It was about a $20,000 undertaking, and we used money from the grant to help do that. I would have never been able to even dream about doing it if Blue North and the Northern Kentucky Entrepreneur Fund didn’t help.”
The Body Bakery production facility is at 1024 Saratoga Street in Newport. To order or learn about their wholesale, go to thebodybakery.net.
Golden Gelato
For Vanessa and Joe Jones, the owners of Golden Gelato, it’s all about community.
Vanessa Jones said it was during a trip to Italy that she and her husband, Joe, fell in love with gelato and started making it at home. The couple both have backgrounds in the food service industry and had long wanted to have a business in their community of Covington. They decided bringing the creamy homemade treat to the city was a perfect opportunity, she said.
They found a suitable location on Pike Street and opened their business in January 2021. It was the middle of Covid, but Jones said there was enough space for folks to distance themselves, stop in, grab some gelato and go. It was not an easy start, but the slow down in that period allowed them to take their time with opening and easing into the business.
“We live in Covington so it was really important for us to be in Covington,” Jones said. “We love the location. We are on a part of Pike Street that hasn’t really been developed yet. It’s mostly businesses that are offices. So it’s nice to be somewhere where there’s some daytime business. And we are very close to Seminary Square, the Mutter Gottes neighborhood, a nice neighborhood to be in,” said Jones.
They learned about the grant opportunity from friends in the industry and applied through Main Street Ventures. As part of the application process, the business was tagged as a Northern Kentucky venture eligible for the NKYEF program.
Jones said they wanted the funding to purchase a mobile gelato cart to get out into their community. Upon receiving the grant, they were able to order a custom built cart that enables them to take their gelato out to weddings and other events around Covington and beyond.
Jones said the grant process introduced them to the opportunities presented through the Blue North community as well as education and other services available through Main Street Ventures.
Golden Gelato is a seasonal business open from March first through January 10. Find them at 130 West Pike Street in Covington or visit goldengelatocov.com.
4 Mile Wine
4 Mile Wine is not really “wine” in the classic sense. It’s wine made from honey, more commonly known as “mead.” The idea of mead may evoke an image of medieval kings hoisting tankards in a stone castle, but founder Ben Studer brings a modern sensibility to this ancient beverage.
Studer explained, as with grape varietals, different honeys bring different characteristics. Local honey comes from wild flowers. Orange blossom honey comes from bees in California. He experiments with blends and with a variety of fruits and spices. He also notes, despite the honey base, mead can be very dry as well as extremely sweet. It’s all in the choices one makes in the process.
Studer started making beer with a group of friends in college and became fascinated with the fermentation process. After college he started experimenting with wine making and set up shop in his grandmother’s basement. After all, wine making has a long history in his hometown of Camp Springs.
One day, he decided to switch out cane sugar for honey in the process, and within a week he became a beekeeper. By 2016, he had moved operations to his own basement and had become serious about started his own business. He tapped resources at Northern Kentucky University to learn all he could about business planning and the ins and outs of licensing and certifications for alcoholic beverages businesses.
By 2023, Studer, now with his wife Holly involved, had turned his own basement into a full winery and started producing small batches to sell. They approached a neighbor, artist Keith Neltner, to help them with branding their product. Neltner also happened to own the nearby historic Camp Springs Tavern. The tavern became the Studers’ first retail outlet and tasting room.
They had been doing events around the region, but when their second son was born in 2024, the Studers wanted to stay closer to home. It was a good time to begin reaching out to retail outlets. They were able to begin relationships with Party Town in Florence, Party Source in Bellevue, Uncorked, Verona Vineyards, Jungle Jims; the list was growing.
Neltner was very familiar with Blue North and shared their newsletters with the Studers. They applied for and received a NKYEF grant soon after launching their first batch.
“It was perfect timing…..We found we needed help on how to grow production, scale it up…It was a huge boost for us. We got equipment to help our processes be more efficient and equipment that helps us with quality control, making sure our produce is stable…the level of quality and accuracy is way better. We were able to buy more tanks to expand production,” Studer said.
He’s also taken advantage of business education and networking opportunities through Blue North.
“This has literally 3X’d us at least in terms of production, equipment and expansion,” Studer said. “It’s truly a huge resource in many ways, allowing us to be ready and to take on more.”
4 Mile Wine is available at retail outlets and through the Camp Springs Tavern located at 7009 Stonehouse Road, Melbourne, or visit 4milewine.com.
For more on Main Street Ventures go to mainstventures.org. To learn more about the Horizon Community Fund or to donate to the fund, go to horizonfunds.org.
To learn more about the Northern Kentucky Entrepreneur Fund, contact Blue North at hey@bluenorthky.com or see their website at bluenorthky.com for more information.
