Entrepreneurs


11/27/2015

This story was originally published in the Fall 2015 Scene. We share it again in celebration of Mission Week and the St. Ambrose core values.


His friends had a hay day cracking jokes about hairnets and often referred to him as the reincarnation of Chris Farley's dancing lunch lady character on Saturday Night Live.

Today, though, Shane Jones '05 is the one laughing – and owning the character – as a co-founder of Fooda, a fast-growing enterprise that makes good food easily available to more than 70,000 businesspeople in half a dozen major-market cities each month.

The seeds for this entrepreneurial concept weren't sewn, however, in Lunch Lady Land. Instead, Jones credits the critical-thinking and problem-solving skills he gained under the oaks.

"I was working for Echo Logistics, a transportation logistics company in Chicago, and the management was noticing a couple of things about staff productivity: people were leaving a lot to go to lunch, and they were smoking a lot of cigarettes," Jones said. "I couldn't stop people from smoking, but I thought perhaps I could fix the lunch issue."

So he pounded the pavement, partnering with restaurants in the Cabrini-Green neighborhood where Echo's headquarters were located and invited them to sell their food in Echo's cafeteria.

"In many ways, it was like a 'pop-up restaurant.' People from other companies in the building, like Groupon, were sneaking down to eat on our floor," Jones recalled. "One afternoon, a restaurant threw me $20 for bringing them in."

"Thanks for doing this," they said. "We did over $2,000 in sales today."

And then it dawned on him. He could make money doing this.

A Grounding In Liberal Arts Helps Build Ambrosian Entrepreneurs
Fooda actually was germinating in Jones' mind long before it became a reality. As a business management student at St. Ambrose, he wrote a business plan titled "Who's Hungry?" for a finance course taught by Professor Bill Lynn, PhD. The plan would enable lazy college students to call in an order for burritos at Taco Bell or beer at Kwik Shop and, 30 minutes later, have it delivered to their door.

Five years after earning his SAU degree, Jones found himself working with partners to write a business plan again-but this time to convince venture capitalists to invest an initial $1.2 million into a "hot dog stand" he hoped to take nationwide.

Soon after, Jones left Echo and took the president and vice president with him. Together, they co-founded Fooda – which today boasts 85 employees in six markets and serves more people each day than the total population of his Princeton, Ill., hometown.

The transition from college graduate to entrepreneur is becoming more and more commonplace. In 2014, 27 million Americans either started or were running new businesses-the highest level in the 16 years the data has been collected by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor.

Owed in no small measure to skills fostered through the liberal arts, numerous St. Ambrose alumni rank among those creative self-starters. Jones, for example, isn't even the only recent St. Ambrose graduate for whom food has been a recipe for entrepreneurial success.

Angelo '09 and Phillip Campos – the latter attended St. Ambrose as a freshman before transferring – started Tres Mentes Salsa because they were "sick of sub-standard salsa," Angelo Campos said.

"We're huge food fans – Mexican food fans especially," Angelo added. "We loved our salsa, but weren't sure the market would."

So they tested it. The brothers each took samples of their homemade salsa to their respective corporate jobs in Des Moines, Iowa, and placed them in break rooms on every floor, along with an email address.

Within the hour, their inboxes were filled with requests on how to buy it.

"That's when the light bulb went off," Phillip Campos said, "and we began to figure out how to slap a label on it, scale it, and sell it."

alumni

Today, the Campos brothers offer four different types of salsa and sell between 500 to 1,000 units each week as they quickly build a following. Currently, they are only in the Des Moines market, but hope to reach the Quad Cities and points between in 2016.

Tres Mentes' success, the brothers said, is a direct result of mistakes that called for problem solving. "And there have been plenty of them," Angelo Campos acknowledged with a sheepish laugh. "But we kept going. The first labels we made were on an ink jet printer, and after putting them on the mason jars we noticed the ink was sweating off. We were literally sitting there with a blow dryer to keep them from smearing."

That's what a liberal arts-educated entrepreneur does, the Campos brothers were quick to note. The liberal arts taught them to get creative, to be diligent in their endeavor, and to never give up. It also raised questions about how salsa-yes, salsa-could be a force for good in the world.

"The company is still young, but already we're asking ourselves why we are doing what we are doing. Do we want good salsa? Yes. But we also want to give back to St. Ambrose and to others," Angelo Campos said.

Already, they are doing that-sharing their experience launching a company with other young entrepreneurs through Iowa Food Startup, a food consulting company they started to help bring new food businesses to market. "We've learned a lot," Angelo Campos said, "and we want to bring that knowledge to others."

For Emily Starr '01, education is good business. She built a company that extends knowledge-and technology-to teachers and students alike. The former elementary school teacher is founder and CEO of an online learning company that offers over 5,000 different digital content lessons for elementary school teachers, students and parents.

Starting a business was not on her bucket list when she graduated from St. Ambrose, but after a few years in the classroom, she realized she was destined for something different.

"As teachers, we're given projectors and interactive whiteboards and iPads and ChromeBooks - and most often we have no idea what to do with them," she recalled. "I was given a projector, and noticed that all I was doing was taking lesson plans we had on paper and showing them up on a larger screen. Clearly, that's not using technology effectively. I knew there was a better way, and I knew there were teachers like me doing the exact same thing."

Starr had an idea in her head and a flyer for a Boot Camp for Entrepreneurs course at the Iowa Small Business Development Center in downtown Davenport. Suddenly, everything started moving into place - and fast. StarrMatica Learning Systems was born, and today, she is writing and offering digital content for classrooms as far away as Virginia and New York.

"Teachers today are required to do more than just teach, and often have limited resources to do so. We offer a service that helps make their lives in the classroom a bit easier," Starr said. "We curate content, write curriculum and offer technology to teach in ways you just cannot do with paper and a pen. Want to teach a biology class about plant life but don't have a greenhouse to do so? StarrMatica can bring that greenhouse to the classroom digitally."

Like the Campos' brothers, Starr isn't just looking to cash in. That wouldn't be true to her St. Ambrose roots. She said would love her growing enterprise to one day become a nonprofit so that every student and every teacher can gain access to the resources.

As the founder of Modern Thrive, Cassie Boorn '10 has infused her SAU philosophy degree with a passion for online media. Her unique platform is geared to encourage entrepreneurialism.

"My philosophy degree helped me to think about the world in a new way, and find innovative and meaningful ways to connect people and solve problems," the mother of two said from her home/office in Peoria, Ill. "Modern Thrive offers a place after college to enhance your worklife and in many cases, pursue the career you want."

Through online workshops, free webinars and other learning tools, Boorn joins various experts with people looking for a path to do something new with their life. "When you have the freedom to create a business around your life, you can also find methods to do it in a way that works for you," she said.

Back at Fooda, Jones and the team is preparing for another round of funding to bring the company to new markets and, down the road, toward a potential public offering or sale. As director of partnerships, business development and client management, his focus is squarely on the future.

"I'm often asked why I'm not the CEO," he said. "But here's the reality: that's not what I'm good at. I'm great at pitching our concept, bringing in new business and making things happen for Fooda."

Toward that end, he continues to lean on those foundational liberal arts skills - critical and creative thinking, as well as understanding, reaching and networking with people.

"The spider web of Ambrose is vast. I got my job at Echo because a friend from Ambrose called me and told me to come check it out," Jones said. "Today, I hire graduates from Notre Dame and Northwestern, and proudly, from St. Ambrose University. Here's the thing: You really don't know who your next opportunity is going to come from, but you do know how to treat everyone with respect. Make no enemies. Foster friendships. Do good work."

That's the St. Ambrose way. And, just maybe, it's the recipe for starting a successful business.

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