About Mackenzie's Entrepreneurial Journey
I come from a long line of entrepreneurs and food entrepreneurs. My grandma on my mom’s side made bento boxes and sold them to farmers in Hawaii. My grandfather on my dad’s side opened up one of the first Chinese take out restaurants in Stockton, CA, a relatively new idea at the time. My mom launched Team CFO, a small business providing financial services and fraction CFOs to small and mid-size businesses. After graduating college, I was looking for a way to build a career that has a direct impact on the populations I care about, and eventually went back to grad school for my Masters in Public Policy. Prior to grad school, I began baking and selling cinnamon rolls from my apartment. While I realized that cinnamon rolls were not my business, I also recognized a universal challenge for small food entrepreneurs – being able to share their products beyond their immediate network and build a consistent, high-volume pipeline of orders.
While pursuing my MPP and MBA, I began researching how to leverage the cottage food business model to enable people to transform their current resources (home kitchens) and talent into viable businesses. I evolved The Homemade Marketplace from a cottage food incubator to an online marketplace offering corporate catering and custom gift boxes. I focus on cottage food entrepreneurs and those working out of commercial kitchens who don’t yet have brick-and-mortar. The idea was to create a platform that streamlines finding new customers, sourcing high volume, consistent orders, and facilitating deliveries – thereby empowering food entrepreneurs to focus on their products and growing their business. Our mission is to close the racial and gender wealth gap through food entrepreneurship. To achieve our mission, we envision a Homemade hub in every city, and are excited to share our mission, solution, and highlight the amazing food entrepreneurs we work with at the Minority Women Lead pitch competition! We would love this to be the beginning of a Homemade in Long Beach!
About Mackenzie's Pitch
Prior to grad school, I baked and sold cinnamon rolls from my apartment. I recognized a universal challenge for small food entrepreneurs making amazing food is being able to share one’s products beyond their immediate network and build a consistent, high-volume pipeline of orders. I also loved learning about cottage food businesses, the stories behind these businesses, and turning family recipes and an expense (your housing) into an income- generating asset. While pursuing my Master’s in Public Policy and MBA, I started The Homemade Marketplace. We are an online marketplace offering corporate catering and custom gift boxes, all sourced locally from women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ entrepreneurs operating as cottage food businesses or working out of commercial kitchens. Our first hub is Homemade in DC, with a growth plan to scale by city. Our mission is to close the racial and gender wealth gap through food entrepreneurship.