Kim Bryden wanted to be like Jennifer Garner in “Alias.” She was working for the Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration in Washington, D.C., because she was being screened to work for the FBI.
“Then, I started meeting all of these bar and restaurant owners because of the liquor licensing,” she said. “And it was around the Main Street versus Wall Street 2009 era. I kept hearing that rhetoric of, small business, backbone of the American economy.”
She’d meet small business owners who struggled with the complexities of opening a new business. Her work in understanding the complexity led her to a job at grocery retailer Whole Foods Market in Alexandria, Va., in marketing/community relations. She started there in 2010.
“Two weeks later the FBI called and said, ‘You’re cleared. When can you start?’” she said. “And I said, ‘I’m going to work at a grocery store.’”
Bryden said she chose her values, “listened to my gut and made a bold decision to … choose grocery retail instead of that path.”
She was promoted to work on a new store opening at George Washington University in downtown Washington, D.C. The rise of social media and its impact on store foot traffic led her to earn a graduate certificate in digital media management analytics at Georgetown University.
She spent two years at Whole Foods before joining a food tech company to help them launch new markets. Its product was to put chefs into people’s homes to cook for them. Her work with chefs and food entrepreneurs “lit the fire in my belly to start Cureate,” she said.
She founded Cureate in Washington, D.C., in 2014 and is CEO. She moved to Northwest Arkansas in July 2021, expanding her company’s presence here. In three to five years, she looks to grow the company in its existing regions and expand into a new market.
Cureate offers two key programs. Courses is its business education and technical assistance program for food and farm entrepreneurs. Connect is its local sourcing program, which connects entrepreneurs with institutional buyers.
“Now, 11 years in and having my 8-month-old daughter, being able to look backwards and be like, ‘Wow, you called it at 27 that this was your vision and how you wanted to grow the business,’” she said. “And you did it, and you’re doing it and that’s a cool thing … From a legacy perspective, to impart onto my daughter or future generations that want to learn about growing businesses, that’s what I hope.”
Company revenue is projected to increase by 35% to $2.7 million this year, up from $2 million in 2024. Cureate has four full-time and three part-time staff who work remotely, including one employee in Northwest Arkansas. This doesn’t include Bryden, who resides in Northwest Arkansas.
ROAD TRIP
In November 2020, Bryden took a month-long road trip to explore how other regions were supporting small businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Eventually, she came to Northwest Arkansas after a St. Louis chef recommended the area and Ozark cuisine.
“It was a lot of this dot connecting,” she said. “That’s when I feel in my most … flow state and ultimately why I created this business of … what are these connections between people and places that aren’t normally seen?”
She said the area reminded her of Washington, D.C., in 2015, before people started moving from the suburbs and into the district.
“I had this sense of…something’s about to pop here,” she said. “I felt it in the air … seeing the beginnings of — whether it was Northwest Arkansas Council doing that $10,000 and a mountain bike program, of which I was a recipient … Then, I toured AFIC before there was AFIC@MCO [Arkansas Food Innovation Center at Market Center of the Ozarks] … I started seeing, ‘Oh, wow, the foundation’s being laid here to help small business and entrepreneurship.’”
After her road trip, she accepted the council’s Life Works Here incentive and established a new hub for her company, aiming to connect small businesses in the region with other companies within a three- to five-hour radius of Northwest Arkansas and help them expand into new markets.
“Ultimately, what I solved for was how can you have a centralized procurement platform of a decentralized network of suppliers,” she said. “So you could more agilely purchase kombucha and cheesecake and bread and basil, but they’re coming from different suppliers.”
Cureate places orders on behalf of its clients, the institutional buyers. Cureate receives a percentage on the buyer’s invoice. She said this allowed clients “to take the chance on trying out local because they’re not beholden to any one supplier.” Through Cureate Connect, the company has become “this agile purchasing partner for them to take some more risks and innovation in their purchasing.”
CUREATE COURSES
Bryden said the first Cureate Courses cohort in Northwest Arkansas was completed in December 2021. The company has completed eight cohorts here, working with over 75 businesses that have received more than 4,500 hours of technical assistance and over $45,000 in prizes. Each Courses concludes with a pitch contest, where the winner gets $5,000.
Cureate collaborates with Forge Inc., a Huntsville-based revolving loan fund, and has offered Courses for free to selected food and farm entrepreneurs. She said 16% of the program’s graduates received loans from Forge. Cureate also offers Cureate Pro, which provides additional support for graduates.
She said through the 10-week Courses program, participants learn about business operations, supply chain and logistics, and the wholesale market. The participants set their own goals, and Connect is optional for those interested in wholesale.
Some Courses graduates get sales through Connect; however, the buyer is the client and determines whether to purchase products. She said Winslow-based farm Ozark All Seasons was a program graduate that sells lettuce to multiple clients.
Mallory Files, founder and owner of Ozark Charcuterie and Wine Bar in Fayetteville, is a Courses graduate. She opened a brick-and-mortar location in September after launching her business in 2021. She has 10 part-time staff. She said running the brick-and-mortar location has provided her with the desired experience.
“I’m not in it for the money,” she said. “I’m in it for the experience.”
During Courses in spring 2024, she was partnered with Allie Jones, owner and operator of JAML Jams. Jones makes her jams and jellies at AFIC at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. She was a $5,000 cohort winner and sells her products in area stores such as Honeycomb Kitchen Shop in Rogers and Marrs on Main in Bentonville, online, and through wholesale partnerships including an area hospital. She has one part-time employee.
A Sherwood native, Jones grew up making jams with her mother, and she began giving jams to volunteers as a gesture of gratitude, as well as to friends and family. In 2021, she started her business while living on a Georgia military base.
“I wanted to do something to spread some joy to my Army community,” she said. “I also wanted something to do outside of my mom and wife roles.”
JAML is an acronym for her family’s names, including her husband, herself and two children. In 2022, they moved to Northwest Arkansas, and she was introduced to Cureate through Gravette-based flower supplier Mount Olive Farms, which participated in a spring 2023 cohort.
Jones said since taking part in the spring 2024 cohort, “many doors have just opened, and we … started growing faster than expected.” She aims to expand her brand statewide and increase her impact with nonprofits.
Jones and Files said they still receive support from Bryden and Cureate.
“Cureate has opened up the world in resources,” Files said. “If I have a problem in my food entrepreneurship journey, the first person I think to call or talk to is Kim, and she will hook me up with the right people. And not only that, she’s created a community of food entrepreneurs.”