Noelle Lothamer

Noelle + Beau Bien Fine Foods

“Beau Bien Fine Foods is a Detroit company that makes jams, preserves and condiments such as chutneys and mustards. Molly O’Meara and I met via Twitter and mutual friends in 2010, and quickly discovered our shared love of food and cooking. Soon after, Michigan passed the Cottage Food law allowing certain foods to be prepared in a home kitchen, and we decided to team up to start making jam out of Molly’s Lafayette Park home (conveniently near the Eastern Market, where we buy much of our fruit). Although we love making preserves and jams, neither of us has a huge sweet tooth, so we have focused on creating unique flavors that pair equally well with savory foods like a cheese plate or roast meat. For our fruit preserves, we’ve developed a naturally lower-sugar recipe that uses about half the sugar of a typical grocery store jam.”

Building her biz

“Build Academy helped us immensely as far as formulating a longer-term game plan for our business, and in getting a grasp on the ‘numbers’ side of things. We also really valued all of the feedback we received, both from the instructor and our fellow Builders, which reaffirmed that people care about and are interested in the type of product we want to provide.”

Beyond Build

“Since completing the Build course, we have begun selling our products at Eastern Market’s seasonal Tuesday market. We have also secured a commercial kitchen and have applied for our business license to enable us to sell in stores. (As of right now, we’re only able to sell direct to consumer.) We already have a list of stores and restaurants that are interested in carrying our products as soon as our licensing is complete!”

Future Building

“You will definitely be seeing Beau Bien products in shops around town before the end of this year. We are planning to expand our product line to include more savory spreads and a greater variety of mustards. We plan to grow at a slow and manageable pace, keeping in mind that doing things from scratch and not skimping on quality are priorities for our brand.”