Today we’d like to introduce you to Jenny Heman.
Jenny, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Honeycut Kitchen was born out of two of my greatest passions coming together – my love of fitness and my love of nostalgic, Americana snacking.
A few years ago, I got deeply into fitness and realized the power of healthy nutrition – not just on our bodies and how they look, but on our psychological and emotional health as well. While this revelation really cleaned up my diet and fridge, my pantry and my heart still missed the comfort and nostalgia of some of America’s favorite packaged snacks.
Food is so important to our cultural identity, and unfortunately in today’s America, many of our favorite foods aren’t delivering the benefits of healthy, quality ingredients. I wanted to create a product that brought these health-forward ingredients to one of my favorite, childhood snacks – the snack cake.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I still hesitate to call myself a baker, actually 😅. I developed our snack cakes out of need, but baking is not a hobby of mine at all. I had no experience in baking from scratch, and definitely no experience in developing a baked good set for commercial scale. I spent a lot of time frustrated at myself for messed up recipes and bad note-taking during the months I spent formulating. While I’m happy with our recipe now, I have accepted that it something that we will continually iterate on to improve.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Honeycut Kitchen – what should we know?
Honeycut Kitchen produces nutritious snack cakes. We currently have a dark chocolate and carrot cake flavor. Our cakes are familiarly packaged in portable and portioned containers (with two cakes per pack).
At the moment, I am most proud of our packaging which not only showcases our whipped topping and snack cakes but conveys our love of simplicity and quality. I think it’s going to be hit on shelves all across the US!
While I am so proud to see our product spreading a message of health alongside other natural CPG brands, I believe we are most unique in that we are reinventing a category of highly-processed snacks that has been gathering dust on grocery shelves for decades. I can’t wait for us to be one of America’s favorite snacks.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
We got stellar help on the branding/packaging I mentioned I was proud of from David Rygiol (http://www.rye-jol.com/).
My family and friends are huge supporters as well, and I wouldn’t have been able to get Honeycut to where it’s at without them (shout out to my sister and brother-in-law who let me live in their basement and use their kitchen to learn to bake!)
I’ve also found plenty of supporters and advisers in the food and beverage community. I have found it to be a very helpful and kind industry; I believe this is because we all found our passion from our own light-bulb moments on our personal journeys with health and nutrition.
I’m also incredibly grateful to Northwestern, my alma mater. The NU community has been an amazing place to return to for strategic advice and internships with fantastic students. I hope to continue growing Honeycut by connecting back to this community.
Pricing:
- Our snack cakes are available at $20 / 4 pack (on our site honeycutkitchen.com)
Contact Info:
- Website: honeycutkitchen.com
- Email: info@honeycutkitchen.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/honeycutkitchen/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/honeycutkitchen/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/HoneycutKitchen
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