Top 20 Food Entrepreneurs Under 40
Posted by: Ryan on: 07 Oct, 2008
I am honored to have received this award from Gourmet News. Read the press release here.
Here is my clip:
Ryan Montague, 24, owner Gourmet Business Solutions LLC, a web-based consulting and marketing company, Clearwater, Fla.
Describe how you got involved in the gourmet/specialty food/ business: I got my start in the gourmet industry when I had the opportunity to work for then-New Orleans-based GourmetFoodMall.com, a startup that launched in 2001. This is where I got my first real-world experience with web-based consulting work and both BtoC and BtoB online ad campaign management. Following Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was no longer a safe or economically sound living environment, so I decided to relocate permanently and start my own business based on the gourmet food industry experience I had gained.
Most valuable lesson learned:To embrace things that most people despise–failures, competition, and stress-inducing matters because I have learned and grown the most from them. I now find positivity in failed initiatives because I know that I will learn something to help me improve next time. I now build relationships with perceived competition because open doors can lead to new opportunities. I now find stress to be healthy because success and happiness wouldn’t be the same without it.
Describe how your business has grown and what your plans for the future are: My business started out with one basic website, one pro-bono client, and one employee (me) offering only a handful of consulting and web marketing services. Since our first year, we have now increased revenues by more than 400 percent, in part because of to our growing staff (now seven) and network of eight highly trafficked websites including a consumer shopping site, a discussion forum, an online business encyclopedia, a video site, a PR portal, and a business directory–all specifically for the gourmet food industry. Since launch, we have worked with more than 200 gourmet food companies and currently have roughly 60 active clients that we serve. In September, we launched FoodFunding.com, an online portal dedicated to connecting food companies with investors.