Start Garden Demo Day is legendary. The Grand Rapids-based business incubator holds an annual pitch contest, beginning with a 100-second video pitch and ending with a raucous celebration, where 10 entrepreneurs are each awarded $20,000. The contest is open to everyone.

In 2023, Northern Initiatives partnered with Start Garden to provide low-interest loans to all the winners – ensuring each entrepreneur has access to up to $40,000 to start their business. Half the winners took us up on the offer.

The Start Garden/Northern Initiatives partnership worked out perfectly for Gilma de la Cruz and El Caribe Empanadas.
Gilma hadn’t thought much about the nutritional makeup of the cassava, plantains, and fish she ate growing up in the Dominican Republic. She just knew the food was yummy.

Now, as an adult and a trained chef, she’s realizing the delicious foods of her childhood are gluten-free – and there’s a giant market for them. A giant Meijer market, to be exact. The supermarket chain, with 260-plus stores throughout the Midwest really, really wants Gilma’s gluten-free, vegetarian empanadas in the frozen food aisle.

The thing is, it takes about an hour to make 30 empanadas.

Enter the Maquiempanadas MGE. The Colombian-made machine has increased production twentyfold. “Two people can make 600 empanadas in an hour,” Gilma said.

Gilma bought the machine with some of her winnings from Start Garden’s Demo Day. And that sweet new machine needed some sweet new digs, so the additional capital from Northern Initiatives, using funds from the MI CDFI Funding Program, is helping turn the basement of Gilma’s family restaurant into an empanada kitchen. New freezers, equipment, and shelving are finding their place as Gilma strategically paces the growth of her business.

“We’re going to start in Meijer’s five neighborhood markets, including Grand Rapids’ Bridge Street Market,” Gilma said. The smaller format stores, introduced in 2022, are now open in Orion and Macomb townships with more in the works. That savvy business decision appears to be second nature for this chef, but only because she’s put in the work. Before, during, and after she trained at Grand Rapids Community College’s culinary school, she soaked up every business tip, training, and education she could get. She’s still soaking it in. In her current course, her homework is to call 50 packaging vendors for quotes.

Gilma, with her husband Edward, her mother, and seven employees, also runs the beloved El Caribe food truck, serving authentic Caribbean cuisine all over West Michigan, as well as the Rincon Criollo restaurant on Cesar E. Chavez Ave. SW in Grand Rapids. She worked with the Michigan State University Product Center on her labels and packaging for El Caribe Empanadas, went through classes with GROW, a CDFI and entrepreneur supporter in Grand Rapids, and continues to work with Start Garden and Northern Initiatives.

El Caribe on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ElCaribeFoodTruck