When Olajumoke Elkana first moved to Salem, he couldn’t find the groceries he needed to cook Nigerian staples.
Tired of making long trips to Portland to buy the ingredients for jollof rice and egusi soup, Elkana founded Flourish Spices 10 years ago to import African staples like palm oil and fufu flour.
During the pandemic, she expanded her business to produce rice mixes, spice blends and other packaged foods that replicate the flavors of West Africa.
“I’m always buying other people’s stuff, so I should make my own,” she recalled thinking.
Flourish Spices is one of 20 small businesses being featured Friday at a Salem pop-up market aimed at showcasing local food and beverage entrepreneurs.
The event will be held from 3 to 6 p.m. at Chemeketa Community College’s agricultural complex, located at 4000 Lancaster Dr. NE, just east of the Salem campus.
This marks the second year that the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network has partnered with economic development nonprofit SEDCOR to host the event in Salem.
Kara Turano, the network’s president and executive director, said Salem is located in Oregon’s prime agricultural region, which means there is a high concentration of food entrepreneurs.
“Their products are consistently good and there’s a story of great food entrepreneurs coming out of Salem going all the way back to Kettle potato chips,” she said.
Customers shop at the 2022 Oregon Angel Food Marketplace in Portland. (Courtesy/Oregon Entrepreneurs Network)
Since the pandemic began, the market for packaged foods has grown as many food entrepreneurs have found time to launch ventures or have been forced to pivot their existing businesses.
“A lot of the food entrepreneurs that we’ve seen are people who ran restaurants or food trucks or some kind of in-person customer service venue and they’ve had to figure out how to continue their business when they can’t actually serve food in person,” Turano said.
The aim of the market is to expose small food businesses like Elkana to potential consumers, grocery chain buyers and other businesses who might sell their products.
The public can shop and meet entrepreneurs.
Starting at approximately 4pm, each entrepreneur will have the opportunity to take to the stage and give a three-minute presentation about their business.
While there’s no competition or investment money involved, Turano said the aim is to give food entrepreneurs a rare opportunity to speak on stage in front of hundreds of people.
“Tech entrepreneurs do this a lot,” she said. Last year’s event also included a pitch competition, which drew rave reviews from attendees.
“Our goal is to educate entrepreneurs and help them expand their skill sets,” Turano said.
Other participating businesses from the Salem area include Don Froilan Creamery, Annie’s Jammies, Max Booch and Nathan Lee Bitters.
Nathan Laughn began handcrafting bitters for cocktails at Laughn’s, an upscale restaurant he owns with his wife, in 2014. He closed the restaurant during the pandemic to focus on his own products, which customers were raving about.
“It just seemed natural to commercialize the bitters we’ve been making,” Laughn said.
He said bitters sold well when he attended last year and the market was a good opportunity to meet other business owners at a similar stage in their business.
“We’re getting ready to start growing and expanding our bitters business,” he said.
Elkana’s products are already sold in high-end Oregon grocers, including Market of Choice and New Seasons. She sells her wares at her market and hair salon at 1555 Hawthorne Ave. NE, to a diverse customer base that includes immigrants from African countries from Ethiopia to Ghana, Pacific Islanders who love fufu, and people who have traveled to Africa and miss the food.
“Some people bring in recipes and I help them get what they want,” she said.
In recent years, as West African staples like fufu have become popular on TikTok, customers have started coming to her who want to make fufu but aren’t sure where to start.
Elkana said he hopes to meet new customers and vendors who will carry his products at Friday’s event.
Her hope is to expand her business so that she can have her own commercial kitchen, rather than her current one, which she rents on an as-needed basis. Finding space to prepare food can be a challenge, she says.
But she’s not interested in mass selling rice mixes and spices.
“We don’t want to compromise the quality of our product just to be able to go anywhere,” she said.
Contact reporter Rachel Alexander at (email protected) or 503-575-1241.
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Rachel Alexander is the editor-in-chief of the Salem Reporter. She joined the Salem Reporter when it was founded in 2018 and covers city news, education, nonprofits and a variety of other things. She has been a journalist for 10 years in Oregon and Washington. Outside of work, she’s a skater, a board member for Salem’s Cherry City Roller Derby and an avid reader.
