WHAT INSPIRES ALBINA CUSTOMERS?
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Livin' Spoonful - www.livinspoonful.com
Gluten-free, vegan, sprouted sunflower seed crackers - Serve with hummus or fresh salsa
Taste the Love.
Coconut curry. Pesto pumpkinseed. Sunny Garden Herb. Serve with hummus or fresh salsa. You can actually taste the love in Livin Spoonful's gluten-free, vegan, sprouted sunflower seed crackers made with all organic ingredients.
You don't have to have gluten-issues or really care about health at all to love the healthy crackers. Then there's approximately 17% of the population that is gluten-sensitive. This population can thank Jim Brosseau and Sue Nackoney, the husband-wife founders of Livin Spoonful in Portland, Oregon, a small family-owned business that believes in a healthy, organic and active lifestyle. In addition to ordering online, Livin Spoonful crackers can be found in health food stores in 40 states around the country, including New Seasons, Whole Foods, Food-Front Co-Op, People's Co-Op and Alberta Co-Op, locally.
Bring Your Heart Along The Way
Teach your children to garden. Let them name your chickens. Explore your own personal path. Taste life's full flavors. And bring your heart to everything you do . . . Including starting your own business.
Livin Spoonful owners have explored various organic, vegan and raw-food diets and wellness studies for over ten years. With an educational background in biology, Sue has always enjoyed growing healthy food. Both Jim and Sue are Master Sufi teachers in the Shadiliyya Sufi tradition, and graduates of the University of Spiritual Healing and Sufism.
Start Your Own Business
With a perfectly blended raw hummus recipe, a personal quest for inner maturity, and an offer to sell the product in the local organic produce company where he worked, Jim and Sue began their business ownership journey in 2004. It wasn't long before the business established other local retailer relationships and started to think about expanding their product line, along with their expanding family. Given their previous dietary explorations, Livin Spoonful's gluten-free, vegan, organic and sprouted sunflower seed crackers was a natural transition.
"Having a partner that believes in you, the product, and spreading of healthy living throughout the world was key to starting Livin Spoonful," credits Jim. "Sue's support and encouragement convinced me that starting our own business was worth a try." In 2009, Livin Spoonful provided 3 local jobs.
Banking Doesn't Have To Taste Boring Either
As part of their business development effort, Livin Spoonful participated in Mercy Corp Northwest's program of small business development services, including the Individual Development Accounts program (IDA). Albina Community Bank is the bank of choice for this IDA program, and the Livin Spoonful chose the bank from a list of Mercy Corp's NW's partner financial institutions. In 2007, the bank provided a microenterprise loan to help the business expand.
Albina Community Bank's Microenterprise Loan Fund (MLF) was started with a grant from the Oregon Economic and Community Development Department (OECDD), and additional funds from the bank in 2005, to provide lending opportunities to entrepreneurs who may not have the established capital needed to start or grow a business under traditional financing - but who have an exceptional product or service.
In its first round of funding that ended in 2008, Albina's Microenterprise Loan Fund awarded 68 loans totaling over $1.7 million to local businesses. These loans helped inspire 23 new jobs, which helping retain an additional 138 jobs in Portland neighborhoods. Albina received an additional $250,000 grant in 2009 from the OECDD to continue this loan fund. The bank is currenty looking for qualified applicants. For more information about Albina's Microenterprise Loan Fund, please call your Albina neighborhood branch.
