Grown in Ghana: Santa Barbara startup makes African superfruit supplement
A Santa Barbara startup hopes to bring the rumored superfood qualities of the African baobab fruit to the U.S. market. The company said the product provides a highly-concentrated source of nutrition and has a sweet-yet-tart flavor that blends grapefruit, pear and vanilla, and an oil.
With merger and TechPitch win, SLO’s startups are on the fast track
In the past couple of weeks, Alex Minicucci has successfully merged his fast-growing mobile marketing company with a publicly traded firm out of Iowa. Meanwhile, an entrepreneurial emergency room doctor from Nipomo came up a with a brilliantly simple solution for holding an iPad one handed that swept the most comprehensive tech pitch night on the Central Coast to date.
Pumpkin patches are gourd mines: Specialty growers cash in on seasonal squash
The Golden State is No. 2 in the nation for pumpkins and last year produced about 93,500 tons of the crop on roughly 505,000 acres. Much of the crop is earmarked for commercial purposes and shipped out of state, but the growth of community-based pumpkin patches has accelerated over the past decade, according to California Farm Bureau Federation spokesperson Dave Kranz.
First coffee, then the world: Teeccino breaks into breakfast market
After spending the past 18 years growing the leading coffee alternative product in the country, Carpinteria-based Teeccino is expanding into the fast-growing health foods market.
Soda space race: Rocket Fizz goes national with franchising
Rocket Fizz founders Robert Powells and Ryan Morgan have built a nationwide soda-pop enterprise out of quirky novelty creations such as their best-selling bacon-flavored soda and glow-in-the-dark “Martian Poop” soda.
Strolling into a bigger market: SeaVees opens first company-owned showroom
As corporate relocations go, this was a minor one. SeaVees, the shoe company that resurrected a 50-year-old brand name a few years ago, recently moved its headquarters about a block and a half in downtown Santa Barbara.
To catch a hacker: Camarillo firm releases security system
A small Camarillo IT firm is making its stand against the avalanche of hacking attempts that slows down Internet access on a daily basis.
