OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) – A Nebraska native has made her way back home to help others grow small businesses.
Tessa Porter is an award-winning candy developer and wants to help others become business owners.
The candy scientist who is offering this rare opportunity to small business hopefuls.
“I always loved working with food and creating things,” Porter said. “I used to say I wanted to be a food inventor but didn’t know that this was an actual job.”
For Tessa Porter, reality exceeded her wildest dreams. Tessa is from Albion, Nebraska. She went to college in Lincoln and then went right to work.
“I worked at the Hershey Company right out of college. After the Hershey Company, I went to Madison, Wisconsin and got my masters in food science.
After a stop in Chicago working for a major candy manufacturer, Tessa decided to come back to Nebraska to start her own company.
She calls it Sprinkk, a candy development and manufacturing company.
“My family’s here, my nieces and nephews are here, there’s not a lot of big candy manufacturing here and I love the manufacturing side of it.”
Right now Tessa is manufacturing a fruit snack she developed for her grandmother. The product wears her grandmother’s name. Tessa has plans to do the same for others who want to start a small business.
“Maybe someone wants to start a new candy company or new candy brand, doesn’t know where to turn. They come to Sprinkk and we help them write their formulas, we help them figure out their quality design, we help them figure out their processing, how its going to be made.”
“I have a couple of clients that are stay-at-home moms that are wanting to start up their own candy brands, and so I simplify it for them by writing their formulas and figuring out how to make it for them.”
Looking around the Sprinkk lab you can see there’s a lot of science involved in candy making, but very few scientists to help grow the sweet ideas of others
“There are very few candy scientists in the nation that would claim the term solely just candy science. There’s probably about five to 10 of us that I know rather well throughout the country.”
Tessa says if Sprinkk can’t manufacture the product in its small facility, they can connect their clients with other manufacturers in the industry.
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