From Baby Food to Bold Flavors: Aiye Akhigbe’s Sticky Spoons Journey

Marty: 00:00:00

It is my great pleasure to be here today with Aiye Akhigbe, owner and founder of Sticky Spoons llc, which is a jam company, right?

Aiye: 00:00:10

That's correct.

Marty: 00:00:10

Based in Niles, Michigan. So welcome to Rooted in Reaching.

Aiye: 00:00:13

Thank you for inviting me. This is amazing. I'm looking forward to chatting with you and you can learn more about my company.

Marty: 00:00:19

Yeah, and that's exactly what we want to do. So without getting too deep into it, like we do, I think the audience wants to know. Sticky spoons, jam.

Okay, we get that part, but tell us a little bit more. Like, what is the company? What do you do?

Aiye: 00:00:33

Well, I started the company actually started by making baby food. My son was born. I did not want to feed him anything off the shelf.

So we grew a huge garden, went to grandma's, got a lot of vegetables, and made baby food. He's about two. Looking at daddy's peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a store brand on it, and I was like, no, we can't do that.

Two years of hard work. We're not going that way. So I attempted jam making. If you can't tell from my accent, I am originally not from America. I was born in Nigeria.

And jam was literally sold in the import store so experts could get it expatriates, for those who don't understand that. But I attempted jam making. Attempt is a good word. So first two batches, very runny. We had lots of pancakes and waffles that year. Trust me.

We had so much syrup. And then it set. I have what some people may call obsessive attitudes. And I made a ton of jam. I mean, when you get. Want to get this right?

Marty: 00:01:33

Want to get this right.

Aiye: 00:01:33

And I started selling it. And fast forward, I think it's been like 10 years now. And sticky spoons exist.

Marty: 00:01:39

Yeah. That's amazing. So you started making baby food, which actually starts to make sense, right?

Because you were already trying to feed your kids healthy stuff that was homemade. And so they were getting to an age where jam started to make sense as to introduce into their diet, right?

Aiye: 00:01:53

Yes, that's right.

Marty: 00:01:53

You were looking at what was on the market and thinking, I don't know if I want to serve this to my kids.

Aiye: 00:01:58

Not at all. I mean, when you spent time feeding them the right things, it's like, why would I want to go backwards? And so we've kept it the same way.

We actually still use the same recipes that we've always used. And it's use real fruit, real sugar, no fillers, no preservatives, no coloring, no high Fructose corn syrup.

And if you're lucky enough and you get like a strawberry based jam, you may get a whole strawberry in your jar.

Marty: 00:02:25

Nice.

Aiye: 00:02:25

That's our good luck. Yeah.

Marty: 00:02:27

I was curious. So obviously jam is not. I shouldn't say obviously, but jam is not a traditional part of Nigerian cooking.

So you did not grow up eating jam, I'm assuming, or unless you bought it at the import store.

Aiye: 00:02:38

We bought it at the import store. And every once in a while we'll get these gift baskets for my mom's clients and they'll be jam in it. So we got to experience jam.

But it wasn't made in a traditional Nigerian home or I don't think any Nigerian home.

Marty: 00:02:52

Is there a Nigerian equivalent to jam?

Aiye: 00:02:56

No, I don't think so.

Marty: 00:02:57

Like a fruit based. Something that gets spread.

Aiye: 00:02:59

We eat. No, we eat fruit straight. Yeah. We don't puree it. You get fresh guava, you get fresh oranges and you just eat it.

Marty: 00:03:09

Yeah, yeah. So it's interesting because I think a lot of folks, immigrants, they lean back on their cultural history for food preparation.

And in your case, you didn't have that to lean on when it came to jam. So you started from scratch, learning a brand new process.

Aiye: 00:03:24

Yes. And it was a fun process to learn. And as we've grown, the company coming up with new recipes is kind of based on the way we cook in Nigeria.

We don't measure things. So when I go to create a new recipe, yes, I do have to measure it now. But when the idea starts to build in my head, it's more. Okay.

If I take apple and I take grape and I take orange and I put it in a pot and I add just a little sprinkle of sugar, what will it taste like? And that's how we come up with new flavors.

Marty: 00:03:54

Yeah. Yeah. I did notice looking on your website, you have a lot of. You bring a lot of creativity to your creations.

So, like, tell us about a couple of your favorites. Cause you're not just. It's not just strawberry jam. Blueberry jam.

Aiye: 00:04:04

No, we are not that boring. My favorite of all time is the blueberry lavender. It's also been our bestseller for four years.

Marty: 00:04:12

Okay.

Aiye: 00:04:13

Currently it's in the running. It's a finalist at the Good Foot Awards, which is handed out by.

I don't remember the name of the foundation, the Good Food foundation out in California. So I hope we win because then I get to go to California. But let's say something like Scarlet. Scarlet. Took me five minutes to come up with.

I Had strawberries. I had red raspberries. And I just sat there and went, okay, if I put this amount, this amount, that amount, that would make a good jam.

And what will I call it? I like Scarlett o'. Hara. So we called it Scarlet.

Marty: 00:04:43

Yeah.

Aiye: 00:04:43

But then we go to something like apricot rosemary. That took me four years to build. It was okay, I need apricots. They have to be fresh apricots. They have to be Michigan apricots.

But how much sugar, how much rosemary do we need to infuse into it? What is the balance? And after, like, the second try, we actually got it right. But that took years to come up with.

Marty: 00:05:03

Years to get it there. Yeah. Who's your number one taste tester?

Aiye: 00:05:07

My kids. If you've never been judged by a child before, are you even an adult? Because they're very honest.

So we have the thumbs up, sideways, thumb, or thumbs down. Luckily, I've had a lot of thumbs up from them.

Marty: 00:05:20

Yeah.

Aiye: 00:05:21

A few sideways, but there've been one or two downs, and those flavors don't exist.

Marty: 00:05:25

Yeah. Okay. So you take it seriously. If the kids don't like it, probably not going to. Probably not going to sell.

Aiye: 00:05:30

Nope. Because clients are usually moms. Our number one shoppers are moms in their shopping for their kids, because. Peanut butter and jelly sandwich, anyone?

So a kid's opinion is more important to me than an adult's.

Marty: 00:05:43

Yeah. Yeah. And so the business got started. You were making baby food. You weren't selling baby food. You were just doing that for your own children.

Aiye: 00:05:50

Yes.

Marty: 00:05:51

But something changed with the jam. Where it went from being something you did for internal home use to something that other people were also interested in.

Aiye: 00:06:00

That's correct. So I just had too much. I made too much. I still do. And, I mean, that's how I got to 150 flavors. Was just making and making and making.

Although now we no longer make that many. We make about 36. But the baby food transition was easy, and selling it was okay. Now I have a hundred jars of jam on my shelf.

What am I going to do with it? We cannot eat through that. So I asked people at work when I still worked if they would be interested.

And luckily my then boss, Laurie, said, oh, I used to make jam when my kids were younger, and I don't have time to make it anymore. So I would buy it from you. How much do you want? We set a price, and she became my first major customer.

Marty: 00:06:41

That's great. Yeah, that's great. At what point did you realize, oh, I can Quit my day job and start doing this full time.

Aiye: 00:06:49

That took three years of planning. Yeah, it took three years of planning. At that point, we were selling out every year of the number of jars we made.

We're making between 4,000 and 6,000 jars out of my home kitchen.

Marty: 00:07:02

Amazing.

Aiye: 00:07:03

And so it was okay. We. We've reached the cap using the cottage food law. There was a cap on how much you could make.

Also, my kids were tired of me moving things so they could eat lunch in a little tiny spot. So it was okay, we've kept it. Now what. What can we do at that point?

Also, we had three restaurants and four stores that were interested in buying our jam and selling them and serving them, but we can't do that via cottage food. So you can only sell to a customer.

Marty: 00:07:36

You can't sell to a restaurant or to a store under the cottage food law.

Aiye: 00:07:39

Not at all under cottage food law. So it took three years of okay, what would happen if I quit my job? What would happen if we rented a kitchen? What would happen if we built one?

What would happen if we went into partnership with someone? It was a lot of planning, and so it was very well thought through of what would be the best step moving forward.

And we decided to parcel off a piece of our farmland and throw our building on it.

Marty: 00:08:04

Okay. You grow any of your own fruits?

Aiye: 00:08:07

We only grow gooseberries right now. We stopped trying to grow our own. Yeah.

I mean, it would take years for us to actually get the crop growing and it would take too much time to pick it.

Marty: 00:08:18

Right, right, right. And you have such.

I have a question later about your partners, but obviously you've got a lot of great farmer partners in the region, and southwest Michigan is known for its fruit production. So. So you took the plunge. You just.

At some point along the way, I guess you were successful enough that you thought, okay, I want to change this from a hobby to a full time job.

Aiye: 00:08:38

Yes.

Marty: 00:08:38

And that's when you.

Aiye: 00:08:39

Yeah, I like the idea of taking the plunge. It was more, I think the night before we signed the. The mortgage agreement, I looked at Ty and I said, what am I doing?

I think I should go back and get a job. I don't want to be anyone's boss. I don't. I don't want to get this mortgage. What am. And he said, well, think about it.

You literally just have to make enough to keep the business running, because that's what you've been doing for years at this point. And he took me off the ledge. So I didn't really have to jump that high more like I was slowly brought back down to earth of the possibilities.

So the biggest thing for that was planning. It took three years of planning. I see a lot of people who are like, well, you did it, and I'm just going to quit my job.

And I always say plan it out first.

Marty: 00:09:28

I think that's so important for other entrepreneurs to hear.

Aiye: 00:09:30

Yes.

Marty: 00:09:31

Because there is, you know, you read the stories, you see the clips on TikTok or reels or something. It seems easy and fast a lot of the time, but if you talk to an actual entrepreneur, it was years of hard work.

Aiye: 00:09:42

Yes.

Marty: 00:09:43

A lot of risk.

Aiye: 00:09:45

Lots of risk. And no one on TikTok or Instagram ever talks about the risk.

You know, taking out a mortgage for building and a business that's larger than the mortgage for my home was very scary. But finding the right bank to work with, finding the right. No, I do have a mentor I work with.

Find the right mentor to say, okay, this is how much risk you should be looking at. This is how you should look at cash flow and things like that. I said, find the right resources. If you want to do it, it's possible. I did it. Yeah.

Marty: 00:10:14

That's actually a great segue because I wanted to ask you about your relationship with esos, or entrepreneur Support organizations, because over the years, I don't know exactly what the timeline is, but you've worked with a lot of organizations who have helped you along your journey.

Aiye: 00:10:27

Yes.

Marty: 00:10:27

Right.

And some of the ones I looked up here were Michigan State Product Center, Cornerstone Alliances, Women's Business Alliance, Michigan Small Business Development Center, Michigan Economic Development Corporation. So there were a lot of entities that at certain points on your journey, were able to provide some kind of assistance to you?

Aiye: 00:10:44

Yes.

Marty: 00:10:46

Tell us about that. Like, how did those relationships come about? How did you find them? How did they find you, and how important has that been to your success?

Aiye: 00:10:55

I would say if there's a free organization out there that can support my business, I will find them and I will reach out to someone and I will work with them. My first relationship was with the women's Business center, Cornerstone Alliance.

I reached out to them, and Brandon and Christine met with me, and they said, but what do you want to do for your business? I said, well, my dream is to really have this license kitchen be on all the store shelves and all this stuff. They say, okay, here's a lean canvas.

Fill it up.

I didn't know what a lean canvas was, and so I filled it out and working with them, and I've still remained a client of theirs because I can easily call and say, hey, I'm working on this project. I'm looking at this grant. I'm looking at this funding opportunity. How can you support me? And can you just review my application?

Then the next step was score. I ended up with a SCORE mentor. And score, of course, comes through the sba, and my mentor has been my mentor for five years.

Marty: 00:11:51

You're still working with us?

Aiye: 00:11:52

Yes, I am. John Keplinger. And I adore John. I can never stop talking about John to people now. My kids are always like, are you talking to Mr. John?

I said, yes, I am. And so it was. The next transition was to go through school. And after school, I found the sbdc. SBDC was also John John Schmidt.

And he was the one I first sat down with and said, okay, I want to fund this building, and what's the best way to go through that? And Joan was like, well, you have these options. I would recommend this one. This one you kind of want to be iffy with.

This one's probably going to cost you a lot of money because of fees with the medc. How did MEDC even come around to.

I don't even remember how relationships started, but I know that over the last three years, they've really been impactful in getting me noticed statewide. So through the medc, they featured my business in Michigan Voices. And so people who are not in southwest Michigan heard about my business.

Marty: 00:12:55

I started to hear about your business.

Aiye: 00:12:56

They featured us on their website, and through that, the governor highlighted sticky spoons twice for small business Saturday. So that was also really impactful. Sbdc. When I applied for.

For Demo day through stock garden, a $20,000 prize, SBDC did some research for me, which, by the way, your local SBDC is capable of providing you with research to support your business growth. A lot of people don't know that, but the truth is, all those organizations that I work with are all free.

Marty: 00:13:28

All free.

Aiye: 00:13:29

All free. 100% free. You don't have to pay a fee, except one. The MSU Product Center. You pay $100.

Marty: 00:13:38

Oh.

Aiye: 00:13:38

And that covers you for a lifetime of support through the product center. I got my process authority, by the way. He's based out of Pennsylvania, because nobody locally could help me at that point. They were booked.

But they do product testing, labeling. They actually provide support for going to store shelves.

Marty: 00:13:58

No kidding.

Aiye: 00:13:59

They host events where they invite, you know, Horrocks and Maya and Martins and all these companies to come out and meet with food entrepreneurs. And so you. You have to be willing to do some work.

Marty: 00:14:13

Yeah.

Aiye: 00:14:14

A lot of people aren't.

Marty: 00:14:15

What kind of. What do you mean by that? Like, what work so needed to be done there?

Aiye: 00:14:19

So, for example, with the product center, they're like, okay, you want to do your process authority, we'll help you find one person. But you're going to need to standardize your product, your measurements.

That way, when you send it to the process authority, you're not giving them, you know, two cups of strawberries, three cups of sugar. That doesn't work. You also need to be able to standardize your weights for your jars.

So our jars get weighed in fours, and each one is the same weight. That's preparing for the next step. With the sbdc, it was okay. How far. Far do you want us to reach this report, this research for you? Market research.

And so it was okay. But then we're going to provide you this giant. It was a giant spreadsheet. I'd never seen an Excel spreadsheet that big before. Never. It had.

I don't even know what it ran to at the end of the sheet, and then another sheet, of course. And you have to get this data and you have to go through it. Yes.

I could schedule time to meet with them and say, okay, I need someone to break this down. But I wanted to learn more about

Marty: 00:15:27

what was going on in yourself before you met with them.

Aiye: 00:15:30

Yes. So that's a big part of wanting to succeed is, yes, there are organizations that will support you, but you also have to do legwork.

You have to participate in your own rescue.

Marty: 00:15:41

Yeah, it makes sense. The esos are never going to do the work for you.

I mean, they can be there to support you, they can be there to provide information, but it's always the entrepreneur doing the real work. Right. Bringing the creativity, bringing the energy, and putting the hours in to make it happen.

Aiye: 00:15:56

That's true. Lots of hours. Lots of hours. But you have to be willing to.

Marty: 00:16:01

So this actually also leads me to my next question, which is about storytelling, because it's pretty obvious if you Google sticky spoons, you start to see a lot of stories on what you've done, what you've built, how you've built it. And some of those, I think, came through your relationships with the. With the different esos.

But then it seems like you've garnered attention beyond that as well in recent years, like Edible Michiana, and like some other ones on my list, Michigan Business News, the Michigan Good Food Fund, a lot of local news stories even too, like wnbu And Fox News and so on and so forth. Had stories about you. Like, was that intentional on your part to say I need to tell my story more or more frequently?

Or is that something that just sort of happened because of the compelling nature of what you were doing?

Aiye: 00:16:49

It sort of happened, and then it became intentional.

Marty: 00:16:52

Okay.

Aiye: 00:16:53

So the first time I had to be on the news, I was on the morning show. Oh, gosh. See, now I'm on spot. So I forget, and I hope they'll forgive me.

Marty: 00:17:05

It's a Fox morning show here in South Bend in Elkhart.

Aiye: 00:17:11

Oh, my gosh. It's the one here in South Bend. And I was just on there a

Marty: 00:17:14

few months ago, maybe Hometown Living.

Aiye: 00:17:17

Thank you. Oh, my gosh. I'm sorry. Jackie and Craig, you were my first host, and I love you, Craig.

It was Hometown Living, and I had to be on there because I'd been selected to pitch at the Veterans Business Battle. It was my first pitch competition. They gave you this whole thing. They wanted you to promote yourself.

And so I was like, okay, let's reach out to a local news station and see what happens. I reached out to Hometown Living and wntu, but Hometown Living even jumped on it, and they invited me out, and I was like, oh, my gosh.

What you don't recognize is how hot those lights are. You know, I'm like, okay, breed. And I think if you see the first video of me, I'm kind of rocking. I'm rocking.

Marty: 00:17:57

Oh. First time doing that, you know, it's.

Aiye: 00:18:00

You're on live tv, You. It's hot.

The lights are on you, and the person's asking you questions, and I'm kind of rocking because I'm like, okay, you gotta soothe yourself, girl. Don't pass out. Just be calm. And then people actually watched that, and they messaged me and said, where can I buy? Where are you at?

And things like that. I was like, okay, this is working. Then I applied for the next pitch competition at Michigan Women Forward.

And part of that was they also promoted you. So I realized that I can own the narrative. I can go out and tell my own story about how my business started.

And I actually tell people, you have to tell your story, authentic story. Don't make stuff up. It's easy to make stuff up. But this is how I started my business. This is who I am. This is what I do.

And so it kind of just grew from there. And since then, like I said, the edible Missiana write up. When they reached out to me, I said, yes, I don't Say no to publicity.

Marty: 00:18:57

Right.

Aiye: 00:18:57

You want to ask me about my business? Come on. And don't ask me about my personal life. I won't talk about my kids and my home life, but I will talk about my business all I want.

And people don't often want to respect that. But I've been lucky in the fact that people respect that when they approach me.

And so I'm willing to talk to you for hours if you respect the boundary of my business is separate from my personal life. And it just. It's grown from there. And sometimes I go out and I seek it.

Marty: 00:19:27

What have you. Like if you were giving another entrepreneur advice about story, like, what have you learned about storytelling over the last few years?

Aiye: 00:19:34

It sells your business. It does.

If you can put into words the emotion, the thoughts, the actions you have behind creating this idea that is growing, that you want to be successful and you're authentic about it and you're truthful about it, people truly want to support you. Even people who don't eat jam support me.

Marty: 00:19:58

Have you changed the way you tell your story over the years?

Aiye: 00:20:01

Not really. I'm still the same person. I'm still the same person. My story has stayed the same. And I just. I guess I'm more comfortable with it.

You know, I'm not as nervous. I mean, the last time I was on tv, I had my legs crossed and I was able to talk. There was no more rocking, the lights were hot.

Marty: 00:20:18

But, you know, you're a pro now.

Aiye: 00:20:20

Yeah, I'm a pro now. Well, mostly, I think, except if Oprah interviews me, then I think all hell will go through the roof.

Marty: 00:20:26

Fair enough.

Aiye: 00:20:27

But. But it's. It's being true to who you are, what your story is, understanding what your business idea is.

If you can tell that to anyone, trust me, people are willing to listen and people are looking to support you. You just have to tell them.

Marty: 00:20:45

Yeah. And people are looking for authenticity. Right. And if you're bringing an authentic story about your business, that's.

People like it, people are drawn to it.

Aiye: 00:20:52

That's true.

Marty: 00:20:52

I don't doubt that at all. Yeah, one of the stories I read about you, you were talking about supply chain issues.

And I think all of us, you know, post Covid have a better understanding of supply chain issues than we ever thought we would. Because I certainly never even thought about supply chains before that.

But of course, now you're in this business that requires a supply chain, and you probably. I'm assuming you also didn't like, fully understand what that supply chain looked like. When you started, you're also a Navy veteran.

Aiye: 00:21:24

Yes.

Marty: 00:21:24

Right. And so it made me think a little bit about how important supply chain issues are for the military.

chains in Your business since: 2020

Aiye: 00:21:43

Supply chain literally became the core. So I work with a lot of local farms, I know them by name. They see me coming, they smile, they know they're getting a hug no matter what.

But we're in southwest Michigan where no one day is 80 degrees, the next day is 22.

Marty: 00:22:02

We've certainly seen that this summer.

Aiye: 00:22:03

We saw that this. Yes. It's not even. Microsoft won't remind me.

It's not spring yet, but in: 2020

Can we make something for the person who likes peaches but will understand that we don't have peaches this year?

Marty: 00:22:40

Yeah. Wow.

Aiye: 00:22:41

It didn't really work because those who are peach fans are peach fans. So we decided, okay, instead of just sourcing from a 10 mile radius, what would happen if we extended that to 30 miles?

What would happen if we extended that to 40? What would happen if we extended to 100? The key for us remains that we want to source Michigan grown.

Marty: 00:23:00

Okay.

Aiye: 00:23:02

And in an effort to source Michigan grown, based on the way the climate is changing, we're expanding our reach, but we're sticking to Michigan grown for our jars.

We were sourcing from a place out of New York and then we had a source out of Wisconsin one year and then we had a source out of somewhere else the next year. And I said, okay, what would happen if I could find one distributor here in Michigan who would be my go to person?

I just say, okay, I need a pallet of 8 ounce regular mouth jars delivered in 5 days. I don't care what the price is right now because I have an order I have to meet. Can you make that happen versus me?

Have to take 20 cases from Wisconsin, 100 cases from here and we found that.

Marty: 00:23:46

And how did that did work out for you?

Aiye: 00:23:48

Worked out perfectly. We work with a supplier out of Detroit right now and I can text her today and say, hey Taylor, I need a pallet of 8 ounce jars or 4 ounce jars.

How long will it take you to get them to me?

We've sourced enough from them, we've built enough of a relationship that they don't actually have to go to the manufacturer in Arkansas to pick it up and deliver it to me anymore. They stock it so they have it in their warehouse Nova. Knowing that I will be placing an order this year, maybe one.

But they always keep one pallet stocked for me, so that's perfect.

Working with people that you want to do business with, like my local farms, they will call me and say, okay, it's going to be a hard year for strawberries, that is. So how many flats do you think you'll need versus before where I would show up and say, Well, I need 20 flats.

And they're like, well, we can only give you five today. So it's starting the relationship early enough.

And we have sourced from most of the same farms since we started starting the relationships early, talking to them even in the off season. Season.

Marty: 00:24:52

Yeah.

Aiye: 00:24:52

I'll call Mr. Fred and say, hi, Mr. Fred, how are you doing? Yes, we'll be back this year for red raspberries and blackberries. I will call him. Let's see, it's March, so in April I'll say, how the crops looking?

Marty: 00:25:03

Right. How is it looking right now? How's the, how was the winter, spring looking like? Yeah, right, because that's going to impact your business 100%.

Aiye: 00:25:09

If we want to keep sourcing Michigan Grown, we know it will be impacted by our crazy weather and so we keep those conversations going with our suppliers to ensure that they always keep us in the forefront of their thoughts too.

Marty: 00:25:22

So you've got fruit, you've got jars, what else are you having to source on a regular basis? Sugar.

Aiye: 00:25:27

Our sugar comes out of Zealand and Tracy knows I need 2,000 pound tote delivered every thinks, like every four to six months, depending on our orders.

We get our labels sourced, we order a lot of them ahead of time, but we can change them as soon as we want to because we're ordering 20, 30, 40,000 labels.

Marty: 00:25:47

Oh, wow.

Aiye: 00:25:48

At one time you have a machine

Marty: 00:25:49

that puts them on?

Aiye: 00:25:50

Yes, we have a label machine. I won a grant for that, so that's been amazing. But it's.

Yes, it may seem overwhelming to build those relationships at first, but if you build them just right and you keep in touch with your suppliers long enough, you can kind of buffer that panic of, oh my gosh, what's going to happen today, what's going to happen tomorrow? And when they get used to your call. Like, my person I get my pectin from. I call her once every.

I think it's like 16 to 18 months and the minimum she sees my phone and she goes, hey, ie. She'll pull up my old order and say, this is what you got last year. Do you want the same order?

And sometimes I'm like, no, we're going to drop two of those. Give me three of those. And she's like, okay, we'll be out to you by the end of the day. And we do get it in three days.

Marty: 00:26:35

It sounds like those personal relationships are really important to smoothing out any potential supply chain bumps.

Aiye: 00:26:41

100%.

Marty: 00:26:42

Yeah. Yeah.

Aiye: 00:26:43

It's not just supply chain, it's relationship building.

Marty: 00:26:46

Yeah. Well, that's great because I was also going to ask you about collaborations. So it's one thing.

So you're ordering supplies from people, but you're also collaborating with some of the folks that you work with, I think. Right. Is that true?

Aiye: 00:26:59

Yeah, a little bit.

Marty: 00:27:00

Some restaurants or.

Aiye: 00:27:02

Yeah, we work with, like, Iron Choux. They have the Back to School burger, which they serve our BlackBerry jam on. They have the Sweet Tooth burger. They serve our blueberry jam on that.

Um, we've worked with Niles Brewing Company. They made a few beers with our jams.

Marty: 00:27:18

Oh, that's cool.

Aiye: 00:27:19

The best one was the one with red raspberry. I don't remember the name now. You know, with Apotheca Teas, she serves that jam with all her scones and clotted cream. And so it's.

It's not just a sales relationship for us. We are like, okay, what would you like to do? Our biggest collaboration was with Olga's Kitchen.

Most people around here don't know about them, but they're a huge restaurant and they reached out and said, we would like to create a sauce with your jam. So send us a few jars, different flavors. They picked blueberry, lavender, and it made up 80% of the sauce. That was for me. What just happened?

Marty: 00:27:57

Yeah, I bet it was.

Aiye: 00:27:59

How did this just happen? How's this happening?

Marty: 00:28:01

Was that a licensing agreement or something? So they made the sauce, Was it?

Aiye: 00:28:05

It was a one year agreement. It was. They would order how many they needed and we will send it off to them.

It was my first time palletizing anything, and they got to serve it in all their restaurants. We saw an increase in traffic on our website from that. Yeah, that's amazing. I also got to go eat at an August kitchen for the first time.

Marty: 00:28:24

Okay.

Aiye: 00:28:25

Yeah. I got to order the Mac and cheese bowl with the sticky spoon sauce on it.

Marty: 00:28:29

Sticky spoon sauce on it. I bet that was a great day for you.

Aiye: 00:28:32

Yes, it was. I drove all the way to Kalamazoo for that.

Marty: 00:28:35

Yeah, that's really exciting.

Aiye: 00:28:37

Yeah.

Marty: 00:28:37

You've been a little unusual in the sense that you've had a lot of luck at pitch competitions and you've won a lot of awards.

Sometimes with entrepreneurs, that can be a bit of a red herring because they can spend a lot of time trying to win a pitch competition instead of focusing on their business. But somehow you've been able to pull it off. Can you tell us about that? Because you've gotten really good at it and it's worked for you.

Aiye: 00:29:00

Oh, gosh. I love pitch competitions. Yeah, It's a great way to fund your business when in non diluted funds, let's be very specific. Non diluted funds.

When you're starting up, you have to find the balance between how much work it takes to apply and what the pot is. So if you're going to spend 20 hours applying for $1,000 pitch competition, don't do it.

Spend that 20 hours trying to find 10 more clients or something like that. 10 more customers, something like that.

But once you start, what you'll find is if you build your story right and you build your storytelling and your slide deck right, you can use the same slide deck forever. Or you have to change literally your market size and your financials and your use of funds.

That said, I would say, of course, the most tasking ones are the ones that require pages and pages of applications every once in a while. I still apply for those because I have to keep my skills going.

But what I've done is in the last two years, I've transitioned more from pitching to pitch coaching.

Marty: 00:30:08

Yeah, you mentioned that. So you've gotten so good at this that you're able to help others now?

Aiye: 00:30:12

Yes, I have. I now have my own company called the Pitch Coach llc.

And in the last two, I think it's two years, two and a half years now, folks I have coached have won over $150,000.

Marty: 00:30:24

That's remarkable.

Aiye: 00:30:25

It's pretty fun for me because I get to yell at people a little bit, little drill sergeant at them, like, no, tell your story right. You know, put emotion into it. I don't believe your business story.

I don't believe that your business can be successful from the way you're talking about it. Be more impactful, be honest, know your financials.

That's the biggest one is a lot of people think when they go to pitch that if they just tell their story, they would win. Truth is, nobody cares. I take that from Paul of Stock Garden. I'm putting junk on blast. Paul, Paul, like nobody cares. Tell us about your business.

What is the business idea? Who are your true customers? Who's going to pay you? How are you going to make money? How are you going to reinvest that money in your company?

What growth do you see if you say, well, right Now I made $1,000 and in two years I'm going to make in $3,000. That's a hobby, not a business. Tell me how you're going to make big money. Tell me the impact of a $10,000 non dilutive fund in your business.

Where is that going to take you? And so it may seem like a lot of work for a lot of people, but trust me, it's work that's worth it.

Marty: 00:31:36

Yeah, that's good to hear because I sometimes I'm not sure how to advise entrepreneurs on that because for some I do think it can be theoretically a distraction for them instead of focusing on a customer. Right. Like the customer is so important.

But I'm glad to hear the story that you're telling here too, where you can use the pitch competition to sharpen what you're doing. Get really good about talking about what you're doing.

Aiye: 00:31:57

Yes.

Marty: 00:31:58

And you can win money. Right. In your case, you've won a fair bit of money, which has allowed you to keep moving your business forward.

Aiye: 00:32:04

Yes, it has. And it's, I do have entrepreneurs that I know qualify for certain competitions and they'll say to me, I don't want to waste my time on that.

Then they come back to me three months later and say, well, how do I get funding?

Marty: 00:32:15

I said, well, guess what, maybe you should rethink.

Aiye: 00:32:18

The only way to get funding is either you have a rich uncle or you put yourself out there. Because even if it's not a non dilutive pitch competition, when you go to pitch to investors, you still need that information.

Marty: 00:32:31

Yes.

Aiye: 00:32:31

You still need your storytelling. You still need to convince them that investing a million dollars in your product is worth it.

And my first competition, actually one of the person who won, they did get their million dollars invested and they are doing great. Yeah, you know, I got 200, I got $2,500.

But that got me hooked because I was like, if someone will give me $2,500 to just talk about my business, huh? Yeah, how much can I get? You know, if you're in Michigan listening to this, I would Say, I highly recommend you apply for demo day.

It's Start Garden 100. It's $20,000. It's seven weeks of your life that you may never get back. But the win from that is not just the $20,000 non dilutive investment.

It is to be in the ecosystem that is stockgarden and all the support you will get for your business.

Marty: 00:33:26

There's something magical about being in a good cohort of people moving together towards a goal. You learn a lot from each other. Yeah, I mean, that's good. I'm glad to hear that was a good experience for you.

Aiye: 00:33:35

Oh, it was. It definitely was. And I always encourage people, work with esos, get a mentor, apply for pitch competitions, apply for grants.

Well, what if I don't win? Who cares, right? Win, lose or indifferent, someone who's never heard about your business.

Marty: 00:33:51

And hopefully you're using that as an opportunity to sharpen your skills. Right. Get tighter on your financials, get better about talking about your financials. Right? Yeah. So what does the future hold?

When I see a business like yours, I think two things. You can expand and sell in more places. Or. Or you can change your product line and add new products that are jam adjacent.

There are probably other ways too. But what are you thinking about your future here?

Aiye: 00:34:18

I don't want to do jam adjacent. I love making jam. Yes. We could add new flavors. And people keep asking me, what's coming next? What are you going to make next? Is it going to be spicy?

Is it going to be sweet? Is it going to be savory? I'm like, I don't know. I have 100 flavors on my phone. I've never made.

Marty: 00:34:35

Amazing.

Aiye: 00:34:36

I've never made. So there are options available for me. What I want to do is I want to grow my corporate gifting program.

Marty: 00:34:45

Okay.

Aiye: 00:34:46

So right now we have three product lines that we offer. We have this giant, beautiful gift box. We have a 12 pack and a three pack. And we can, we can customize how you gift.

What we do with those is we actually source from other small businesses. So we fill out the gift box. Yes.

We fill the box with products from other people who we feel or we believe in, we see are trying to get themselves out there.

Our one insistent is that if we source from you, you have to provide us with business cards because we put the business cards with your product in our gift box because we want to help people discover you. You know, it's not about us anymore.

Marty: 00:35:26

Sure. It makes sense.

Aiye: 00:35:27

People know about sticky spoons. So how do I help Other people come up just the way someone helped me. So that's a big part of what we do in product adjacent.

Who knows, we may go into making syrups because that's of course where we started from.

Marty: 00:35:42

Yeah, there you go. Going all full circle back to you.

Aiye: 00:35:45

Full circle. Because strawberry syrup. You know what? Now that I'm thinking about it, I think we should do that. We'll go full circle, make a strawberry syrup.

Yeah, I think I can do that.

Marty: 00:35:55

Could work. It's exciting. I mean, my kids love strawberry syrup on their ice cream. And I'm sure there's a million other uses for strawberry syrup. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

That's kind of neat. It is kind of funny. Would you want to expand out of Michigan?

I think you've mentioned wanting to move to other parts of the Midwest or grow in other parts of the Midwest.

Aiye: 00:36:13

Yeah, we would love to be on more store shelves. We are pushing our direct to consumer sales this year. So order from our website. So Sticky Spoons, jam. Com, you know, follow us on social.

See some of the things we do, we do have some stores out of the area that carry our products, but we want to expand that. We don't work with large retailers just because we like to keep our margins within reason.

We want to work with small mom and pop shops, artisanal shops, other small businesses. That's very important to keeping our mission the way we want it, which is support other small businesses.

Marty: 00:36:49

Yeah, I love that about you.

Aiye: 00:36:50

That's what we want to do.

Marty: 00:36:51

Yeah.

Aiye: 00:36:52

Yeah.

Marty: 00:36:52

it's what now we're March of: 2026

Aiye: 00:37:04

For us, to keep us going, to keep us thriving, we need more corporate accounts. We need people to, to come out, come check us out. We have our own storefront. Come check us out. I know we're only open Saturdays and

Marty: 00:37:19

Sundays and that storefront is where, sorry,

Aiye: 00:37:21

11801 Parker street in Niles, Michigan. Niles, Michigan.

Marty: 00:37:25

Don't go to Niles, Ohio or Niles, Illinois.

Aiye: 00:37:30

We've had people get lost and say, well, I, I know we're not that far out, but come see us. Come see what we do. Come support the other small business is that we carry in our store. We don't carry anything that's largely made.

It has to be handmade. That's part of what we do.

And you know, if you have a small, medium, large scale business and you're looking to gift your clients, gift your guests, reach out to me, and we'll come up with a great package for you, and that's what we want to do.

Marty: 00:37:59

Yeah, that's. That's fantastic. So you're already doing that, right? So you have corporate clients right now.

You just love to expand that to a wider variety of corporate clients who could use those gift boxes as part of their offerings.

Aiye: 00:38:11

Yep, that's correct. We've already done it.

You can go to our website and see some of the packaging that we do, but if you want to customize stuff, we're the people to do it for you.

Marty: 00:38:19

Yeah, that's great. That's fantastic. So, last word for other entrepreneurs. You talked about pitch competitions. You've talked about mentorship.

Is there anything that we missed to talk about that an aspiring entrepreneur should hear from you?

Aiye: 00:38:33

Find a support friend, human person who's also an entrepreneur.

Marty: 00:38:40

That's great.

Aiye: 00:38:40

Your family and your friends will always hype you up, but you need someone to keep you in check. You need to have a fellow entrepreneur who can say, girl, please. No, I have two of them, Vanessa and Ashley. And they keep.

I will call Ashley and say, okay, I need your business Sprint. She goes, okay, I'm ready. Give it to me. And so I would ask her at the business question, she always has a calculator.

She's the financial end of, you know, that thought process. And she's like, okay, it makes sense financially. Anything else? I'm like, no.

Then I'll hang up and then call Vanessa and say, okay, this is what Ashley said, and this is what she wants me to do. And she's the emotional side. And she goes, okay, you have to have that. So, yes, it's great that, you know, my family can say, you're doing great.

We're so proud of you. But I also need someone to keep me in check. Between my mentor and. And my friends, my entrepreneurial, specific friends, I get a lot of support.

I get a lot of check in. That's why those hundred flavors remain on the phone.

Marty: 00:39:40

Yeah. That is fantastic advice. I thank you for being with us here today.

Aiye: 00:39:44

Thank you for having me.

Marty: 00:39:45

It was a great conversation. I am excited to try your jam. I'm embarrassed, as I haven't tried it yet, but the horror. But. But I am really familiar with Niles. My.

My mom grew up actually not far from Pucker Street. It turns out a little bit north of there. So I'm definitely going to swing by next time I'm up there and check out your Saturday and Sunday.

Aiye: 00:40:00

Saturday. Right now. Saturdays, we're going to be closed until. I don't know when this airs, but we're taking spring break off.

Let's just say after April 7th, we'll be open Saturdays and Sundays. Yeah, great.

Marty: 00:40:13

Well, best of luck with everything, and so glad that you're part of the regional entrepreneurship work. Thank you.