GARY: Next on "Start Up," we head to Baltimore, Maryland, to meet up with Meaghan Carpenter, one of the owners of HEX Ferments, a company that uses traditional fermentation to preserve and transform local organic ingredients into nourishing foods.

All of this and more is next on "Start Up."

♪ ANNOUNCER: Spectrum Business recognizes the importance of small businesses to local communities, so we're investing $21 million to help small businesses access funding to help them grow.

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♪ The first time you made a sale online was also the first time you heard of a town named... MAN: Dinosaur.

We just got an order from Dinosaur, Colorado.

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♪ My name is Gary Bredow.

I'm a documentary filmmaker and an entrepreneur.

As the country continues to recover, small business owners everywhere are doing all they can to keep their dream alive.

So we set out for our 10th consecutive season to talk with a wide range of diverse business owners to better understand how they've learned to adapt, innovate, and even completely reinvent themselves.

♪ ♪ This is "Start Up."

♪ In food processing, fermentation is the conversion of carbohydrates to organic acids using microorganisms, yeast, or bacteria under oxygen-free conditions.

The science of fermentation is known as zymology.

The origin of fermented foods has been lost in antiquity, as fermentation is one of the world's oldest food preservation methods.

It became popular with the dawn of civilization because it not only preserved food, but it also gave it a variety of tastes and forms.

Slowly, people have realized the nutritional and therapeutic value of fermented foods and drinks, and this has made them even more popular.

Today I'm traveling to Baltimore, Maryland, to meet up with Meaghan Carpenter, one of the owners of HEX Ferments, a company that uses traditional fermentation to preserve and transform local organic ingredients into nourishing foods.

I grew up around canning, and I absolutely love fermented foods, so I'm really excited to meet up with Meaghan and learn more about HEX Ferments.

♪ ♪ Teach me about kombucha.

MEAGHAN: Okay.

So kombucha is a living beverage.

It's made with a tea base and then the mother.

And you don't want to... Yeah.

[laughs] You want to try to keep kombucha refrigerated.

You don't want to let it sit on your counter too long, because it will kick up the fermentation and... GARY: Turns into alcohol?

MEAGHAN: Builds CO2 and turns into a little bit of alcohol.

GARY: Mm-hmm.

MEAGHAN: This is our seasonal.

So right now it's our spirit berry, and it's highlighting local strawberries and then actually some watermelon that we saved from last year.

GARY: Can we try it?

MEAGHAN: Yeah.

♪ GARY: It's delicious.

MEAGHAN: Thank you.

GARY: I mean, it's very strawberry forward.

There's certain kombuchas that I've tried before where it's very, very potent, like vinegary.

This is... this is really enjoyable, like, really, really good.

MEAGHAN: Thank you.

♪ This is our traditional sauerkraut.

It's what we're making today.

So, this is our kraut, it ferments for no less than 90 days.

And then this is a seasonal, it's called pizza kraut.

It's obviously really good on a piece of pizza.

GARY: What makes it... Oh, okay.

I was gonna ask what the tie was to pizza.

So you put that right on the pizza, and it adds a little crunch to it?

MEAGHAN: Yeah, it's so good.

♪ Yeah.

GARY: It's really delicious.

MEAGHAN: Thank you.

[laughs] My favorite is a big piece of pepperoni pizza.

Fat and acid.

GARY: There you go.

MEAGHAN: Fat and acid.

GARY: I can so see this on pizza.

I will see this on pizza is what I meant to say.

I want to get into a little bit deeper dive into gut health.

MEAGHAN: Sure.

GARY: And why people should care about fermentation.

MEAGHAN: Oh, my gosh.

I mean, do you care about your body?

You know, do you care about what you put in your body?

Food is medicine.

I've always believed that.

And fermented foods are going to, purportedly they do a lot of things.

So, they're going to help populate and repopulate your digestive system with good bacteria.

What you're getting, essentially, is a vegetable that's been fermented in a blanket of bacteria that's indigenous to our bodies.

So lactobacillus.

And so when we take antibiotics or we take a lot of these medications, it erodes that microbiome that we've basically been cultivating since we were infants... GARY: Sure.

MEAGHAN: ...ever since we were born.

And the fermented foods are gonna help replenish.

And you have to eat fermented foods or something fermented every day, because our bodies eliminate that every single day.

GARY: Okay.

I never knew that.

MEAGHAN: Yeah.

So you have to, you know, consuming...

I like to say you need to consume a symphony.

So yogurts and kombucha and krauts and kimchis, tempehs and misos.

All those things are gonna help contribute and repopulate your gut microbiome.

GARY: How did you get into doing it yourself?

MEAGHAN: I've always fermented in some shape or form since I was little, either with my grandmother or with my dad making salsas or pickles.

And eventually discovered kombucha in Ireland when I was there studying and making art at the Burren College of Art.

When my husband and I decided, "Okay, we're gonna put roots down here in Baltimore.

Let's try growing as much food as we can."

I was like, "Well, let's, let's dust off the fermentation zine from Sandor Katz and kind of like, dig back into making some sauerkraut with all this food that we're growing."

GARY: Sure.

MEAGHAN: And we just started re-dabbling, and we decided to go to see Sandor Katz and hear him speak.

Sander's first book had just come out, and then his "Art of Fermentation" came out.

We spent this four absolutely magical days in his fermentation cave.

I remember driving home and thinking, "My life is never going to be the same."

And as soon as we got home, our house just exploded with crocks and carboys, and everything we could find was filled with different experiments and stuff.

GARY: Wow.

MEAGHAN: And we haven't looked back since.

GARY: You and your husband had turned your house into a Sandoresque experiment?

MEAGHAN: Yeah.

[laughing] GARY: Okay, so what from there?

MEAGHAN: We were at the same time helping build a big community garden in our neighborhood.

And as a teacher from, you know, I was teaching at MICA.

I was like, let's, let's bring some people over from the garden that are really curious, because I was really interested in the fact that they didn't actually know what to do with the food they were growing.

And so I was like, "Come over to my house, I'll make you a kombucha cocktail and we can hang out, and I can show you how to do some basic preservation techniques."

GARY: Okay.

MEAGHAN: That quickly just kind of like nosedived into they just want to drink kombucha cocktails and ask me questions about everything that was brewing around them.

So I just started doling out samples to people and asking what they liked.

And from there it kind of snowballed into... GARY: Did people like it?

MEAGHAN: ...orders in our mailbox for, "Can I get the purple kraut?

Can I get the pink kombucha?"

GARY: Really?

MEAGHAN: Yeah.

GARY: Okay, so, so you built it and they came.

MEAGHAN: Yeah.

Not really thinking we were building anything.

GARY: The demand just came naturally just from tasting from you.

MEAGHAN: Just from tasting.

And like, I think being open with people and showing something that really has been taken out of our culture for so long, you know.

And so people are like, "Oh, wait, this is the safest form of food preservation?"

Yeah.

And it's something that every single one of our ancestors did before we had a refrigerator.

GARY: It's scary to think about if, if that convenience goes away, are we gonna have a society of people incapable and watching food rot right in front of them?

MEAGHAN: I think we already do.

GARY: Yeah.

MEAGHAN: If you look at the average family, throws away, what is it, 1,200 pounds of food a year?

GARY: That's nauseating.

MEAGHAN: It is, yeah.

It's almost a ton of food.

It's a lot of food.

So if people were really, I think their minds were blown by the fact that something could be mixed with salt and spices, sit on a counter unrefrigerated and turn into something absolutely delicious and good for them... GARY: Yeah.

MEAGHAN: ...that essentially they would never have to refrigerate.

♪ GARY: Okay, so explain the process.

What do you do?

For an example, with one cabbage?

ELSA: Every week we process different krauts.

Sauerkraut is simple, just cabbage and salt.

GARY: That's it?

ELSA: Easy.

Yeah.

GARY: Okay.

ELSA: It's 360 pounds for each tank.

GARY: 360 pounds?

ELSA: Yes.

[Gary whistles] This week we only process two tanks, but usually three or four tanks.

GARY: That's a lot of cabbage.

ELSA: Yeah.

That's a lot of cabbage.

Here is the cabbage in pieces.

GARY: Okay.

ELSA: We take the whole cabbage and we cut it in half and then in half again.

And right here add the salt and the spices.

GARY: So then you transfer over to the tank?

ELSA: Yes.

GARY: Okay.

And what happens in here?

Is this where the magic happens?

ELSA: Yes.

And then it's sitting for three months.

GARY: Three months?

ELSA: Yes, three months.

GARY: In this?

ELSA: In this.

Yeah.

GARY: Fascinating.

Okay.

What is that thing?

I just like the way it looks.

ELSA: This one?

GARY: Yeah.

ELSA: The name is Big Linda.

GARY: Big Linda?

ELSA: Yeah.

GARY: Okay.

ELSA: That's for kombucha.

GARY: Okay.

ELSA: Yeah.

They use it when they're bottling.

GARY: Talk to me about Meaghan and Shane.

Like, what type of people are they?

ELSA: They both are amazing.

They are not only, you know, the boss, they are a friend.

Yeah.

They care.

They make me feel like, oh, I'm special for them.

You know?

GARY: And that's important, isn't it?

ELSA: Yeah, it is, it is, it is.

We really like that we work in a family.

GARY: Yeah.

ELSA: Yeah.

GARY: And you feel part of the family.

ELSA: Yes.

GARY: The proof of concept was there.

People wanted what you were making, right?

MEAGHAN: Yeah.

Yeah.

GARY: What happens next?

Did you think at that moment, "I have a business here"?

Or, "This is cute, and I'll kind of mess around"?

MEAGHAN: I was on a track to become a professor of art.

That's what I was doing.

I was working in the provost office at MICA and teaching two classes a week.

GARY: You didn't even think at this point that that was an option?

MEAGHAN: Not at all.

Not at all.

GARY: Okay.

MEAGHAN: And it wasn't until a friend of mine came over for dinner one night, and she had just opened up a bar in town, and she said, "You know, you could really make a living off of this."

And I was like, "But I love it, and I don't want to see my love of it disappear."

GARY: True.

MEAGHAN: And she's like, "I don't know.

I really think you could."

So, I was like, next day at work, I'm like, "How do you become a fermented foods business in Baltimore?"

GARY: Oh, no.

You start dabbling.

MEAGHAN: Nothing.

Nothing.

So I called the health department.

They didn't even know what fermentation was.

They asked me who the first name of this person was.

I said, "It's not a person.

It's a process."

And I basically got the phone hung up on me.

GARY: What?

MEAGHAN: So I don't take no for an answer.

GARY: Yeah.

MEAGHAN: I was like, "Okay, now I got to get to the bottom of this."

[laughing] GARY: Right.

Now it's a mystery.

MEAGHAN: Now it's a mystery.

GARY: You're a sleuth.

MEAGHAN: This took three years.

I'm working a full-time job.

I'm applying to, you know, professorships all over the country trying to, you know, figure this out.

But I'm, like, determined, right?

GARY: Yeah.

MEAGHAN: And so then I went to the state, and that's when the doors started opening up.

GARY: Tell me about your experience with the state.

MEAGHAN: Wonderful.

They were so helpful.

So she's like, "You have to have a commercial kitchen."

I found that there was a church kitchen in Hampden.

I got it all set up, and the state came in.

He sat with me for three and a half hours and went through my entire plan and told me what I needed to correct, what I needed to do.

GARY: Awesome.

MEAGHAN: And that I was approved, but...

But the city won't approve you because the city wants you to be in what's called an M-1.

And you are not in a manufacturing zone.

You are in a residential neighborhood.

But he's like, "I know.

I know what you're doing.

And in the state, you are licensed to do what you were doing, but the city won't have it."

My heart kind of simultaneously like leapt for joy and also cried.

[laughing] GARY: Yeah, I hear you.

MEAGHAN: You know, and I remember leaving, leaving the church after he left and thinking, "Now what?

I just signed a lease with this church.

I am about to start a farmers market in a couple of weeks.

I'm just gonna do it."

GARY: Okay.

Good for you.

Rebel.

MEAGHAN: I just did it.

I just did it.

I quit my job.

GARY: When did you decide you were done with that?

MEAGHAN: I decided when I could not keep up with the orders that were coming into my mailbox at my house.

And my friends really just pushing.

Pushing, pushing, pushing.

And my husband being like, "I'll help.

We can do this."

He... GARY: So it was a conscious decision.

I'm going all in.

MEAGHAN: Going all in.

Yeah.

GARY: Good for you.

Okay, so you're doing it.

You're a rebel.

MEAGHAN: I'm doing it.

GARY: You're like, "Heck with it."

MEAGHAN: Heck with it.

So I just took what was really successful with my community, and I made a bunch of it.

We popped up at our first farmers market, and we sold out within the first hour.

GARY: An hour?

MEAGHAN: An hour.

GARY: Was it a big confidence booster after that?

MEAGHAN: Huge!

GARY: I can imagine.

MEAGHAN: Huge.

I mean, it was like figuring out a lot of stuff, but also leaving... "Oh, my gosh, we might be able to maybe make a living at this.

And maybe I won't be broke.

Maybe?"

We have a really unique bent.

You know, we're, we're sourcing locally as much as we possibly can.

We're making it locally.

We're not outsourcing all those things.

GARY: Yeah.

MEAGHAN: And so people were really into that.

GARY: Now you sort of have this mentality, you've proven the concept, you know it's gonna work, you're all in.

What happens next?

MEAGHAN: The summer just kind of rolls on.

You know, we start meeting a lot more farmers, and then I got a call from our state inspector saying, "I got good news.

We are going to approve what's called, um, it's called on-site food production."

GARY: Okay.

MEAGHAN: Or retail food processing.

So it means you'd have to find a place that you can sell direct to customer and make your goods there."

GARY: This is such a roller coaster.

MEAGHAN: Oh, my God.

So then I was like, okay, so now we have to find a retail space that we can sell out of... GARY: And make.

MEAGHAN: ...that A) we can afford and make stuff in in a way that works with our process.

The restaurant that actually started the farmers market was working with a developer in the city to revamp Belvedere Square Market.

And they were looking for vendors to do pop-ups in the marketplace.

And so we were approached by Belvedere Square, and they said, "We'll build it out to your specifications and you'll sign a year lease."

GARY: They really wanted you.

MEAGHAN: I was like, "Oh, my God, really?"

They're like, "Yeah."

GARY: Wow.

MEAGHAN: "Does like, say, early next spring work for you?"

And I was like, "Yeah, it does."

So things just kind of started clicking into place at that point.

GARY: The universe was working alongside you at this point.

MEAGHAN: It was conspiring with us.

♪ GARY: What was happening with your husband at this point?

MEAGHAN: So my husband... GARY: And he's your partner in all this?

MEAGHAN: Yeah, he's my partner in all this.

He actually is a wedding photographer, event photographer, at the time, and had his own business.

And has always had his own business since he was 18.

So he knew a lot of, like, what we should do legally and working on a lot of, like, that back-end stuff, financials, getting things like that set up.

GARY: How did you finance all of this?

MEAGHAN: Self-financed.

GARY: Everything self-financed.

I love that.

MEAGHAN: Everything's self-financed.

You know, I saved up a little bit of money from my job, and we just, we did it real scrappy.

GARY: What does a fermentation tank roughly cost?

MEAGHAN: So, a stainless steel fermentation tank costs $500.

GARY: That's it?

Okay, that's not bad.

MEAGHAN: But compared to other indus-- like other fermenters, they're using $50 plastic barrels.

GARY: Okay.

MEAGHAN: So 50 versus 500.

GARY: 500.

Yeah, it's advanced, but... MEAGHAN: But you don't throw away a $500 stainless steel fermentation... GARY: It's attainable, though, is what I'm saying.

MEAGHAN: Oh, yeah, I mean it's definitely doable.

GARY: Sure.

MEAGHAN: And like you're not then wasting the money throwing away a barrel if it gets scratched up or compromised.

GARY: Yeah.

♪ A lot of people have heard of, you know, LLC, maybe even an S Corp, but I understand that you're a B Corp. MEAGHAN: Mm-hmm.

GARY: I would love for viewers to have the opportunity to understand what that is and what it means.

MEAGHAN: So B Corporation stands for benefit corporation.

It's a worldwide movement to do business for good.

And so you're rated on a point system between environment, community, employees, and governance and how you run your business.

And so for us, it was just kind of a no-brainer to become a B Corporation because we wanted to do things sustainably.

We wanted to create good jobs, and we wanted to benefit the community and remain a local family-owned business.

And so B Corp helps support that in giving you guidelines and helping you grow into becoming even better.

We have to track how much trash we throw away, so how much trash you accumulate, much trash you throw away, and you have to run data on that.

How much carbon are you putting into the atmosphere, and what are you doing about it?

What kind of benefits do you offer your employees?

How are you making sure your staff are being taken care of?

What's your role in the community?

How many volunteer hours are you doing every year to benefit the community?

Things like that.

GARY: That's, well, congrats on getting B Corp status.

MEAGHAN: Thanks.

GARY: Was that a goal from the beginning?

MEAGHAN: It was.

We had been kind of eyeing it up, kind of thinking, "Okay, this might be a good, you know, bellwether to see like where we fall into the category."

So we just went through the assessment.

We're like, "Oh, we scored 102 points.

Okay.

Cool."

GARY: Wow.

MEAGHAN: "All right, let's actually do it and see what happens."

And we actually just got re-certified a week ago for our next three years.

GARY: That's awesome.

MEAGHAN: So... GARY: Fantastic.

MEAGHAN: Yeah.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ GARY: Tell me your name and a little bit about where we are right now.

CONNOR: Yeah, my name is Connor Horne, and we are here in Parkton, Maryland, in northern Baltimore County at Kitchen Girl Farm, which is a vegetable and laying hen farm that I run with my wife Christy.

GARY: Talk about Meaghan and Shane, how you first met them and came to be introduced to what they're doing with, you know, fermentation, et cetera.

CONNOR: Yeah, I mean, they're kind of a big deal in the Baltimore area.

GARY: Really?

CONNOR: Yeah.

HEX Ferments is the best fermented goods you can get around.

All their good sauerkraut and kombucha and things like that.

So they'll order some vegetables from us.

I mean, they make such a diverse array of products that it really, it changes throughout the year.

For years now we've been taking food scraps from them to feed to the chickens that they just go nuts for.

They love it.

GARY: Explain what that means.

You're taking food scraps from them.

CONNOR: So, you know, they process many, many pounds of vegetables to turn into various fermented products like sauerkraut.

So they'll end up with kind of the scraps from that food processing, um, be it cabbage leaves, you know, stems from various crops, um, all of that would be food waste, something that needs to be thrown away or composted.

So they collect it in bags or bins.

We bring it back here, and chickens love foraging on all kinds of stuff like that.

So we're able to just kind of lay it out in the chicken pasture, and they just tear it apart and find what they want from it.

GARY: Sort of closes the loop in a way, too... CONNOR: Absolutely, yeah.

GARY: ...because you're not really, you're not contributing to any sort of waste form at that point.

CONNOR: Yep, yep.

Yeah, that's exactly what we love about it.

GARY: And how are they as people?

CONNOR: Oh, wonderful.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, they're just really sweet, nice people and, um, just, you know, running an excellent business that I think all of the other small businesses, farmers included, in the area, look up to as just like a success story of a local business that really is offering something unique and high quality.

GARY: What does the future hold?

MEAGHAN: Well, so we're sitting in our new space, and the new future holds a whole new business, which is delving even deeper and more rooted into our local food system.

So this fall we're opening up a retail local marketplace called HEX Superette with a kombucha taproom, small plates, and a very large-ish local marketplace.

GARY: Talk to me about this incredible, natural light-abundant space that we're in right now.

MEAGHAN: So this is going to be HEX Superette, and it's going to be a local food marketplace with a kombucha taproom and little small eats.

To answer the question, "How do I eat this?"

Because after ten years of making fermented foods, we often get that question.

GARY: This has to be such an incredibly exciting feeling for you.

Like, I feel it's like early stage, sort of do you have jitters a little bit about opening up like this?

MEAGHAN: Oh, majorly, but more so excited.

Excited to welcome people into the space, teach fermentation classes.

And not just fermentation classes, but all sorts of different courses and just show our community all the great abundance that our region has to offer and all the great makers nationwide that are doing incredible work.

GARY: So this is gonna be, obviously, like a sitting room, bar area.

MEAGHAN: So this is going to be where we'll be merchandising local goods and then other goods that kind of meet our specifications of sustainability and growing practices.

GARY: Okay.

MEAGHAN: We'll teach classes in here.

We'll also be hosting pop-up dinners as well, so the whole space can be converted into a dining room.

This is gonna be our kombucha bar and tasting room.

So we'll have kombucha cocktails and mocktails, local beer and wine.

And then we'll also be serving small plates.

GARY: So you're gonna get a liquor license as well?

MEAGHAN: Mm-hmm.

GARY: I am so thrilled to see what the future holds for you guys.

I can't wait to come back here in a year and just hang out, walk in and go, "Whoa."

MEAGHAN: We would love that.

We would love that.

Please let us know.

GARY: Yeah, I'll be back.

[Meaghan chuckles] Like Meaghan, I also grew up around fermentation.

And although I didn't have a concept of what was actually happening, I remember my grandparents in their basement canning everything from pickles to green tomatoes and just about everything in between.

This was a common practice for their generation, and I can only assume that it was derived from times of food scarcity, something that our generation could hardly understand until COVID hit.

We all learned quickly that our modern-day conveniences could suddenly be challenged.

But more importantly, have we learned our lesson?

Our ancestors planned for the future, knowing that self-sufficiency can mean the difference between life and death.

Maybe it's time to revisit the skills that allowed past generations to live with less fear and reliance on a system that always seems to be on the brink of collapse.

I love what Meaghan and Shane are doing.

They're not only offering up incredibly tasty and healthy foods, they're reminding us how important it is to learn this lost craft before it's too late.

Which is why soon they'll be offering up fermentation classes to the Baltimore community.

To me, this is real purpose.

A focus on doing well and doing good for the world around them.

A sustainable practice with minimal waste and the benefits that go far beyond profitability.

At some point, you need to ask yourself why you do what you do.

And if you're unsure, then just follow Meaghan and Shane's sound advice and just go with your gut.

For more information, visit our website and search episodes for HEX Ferments.

♪ Next time on "Start Up," we head to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to meet up with Alex and BK, the founders of The Rounds, a company that refills your non-perishable pantry items and picks up your empty containers.

Kind of like the modern-day milkman, but for sustainable household staples.

Be sure to join us next time on "Start Up."

♪ Would you like to learn more about the show or maybe nominate a business?

Visit our website at startup-usa.com and connect with us on social media.

♪ ♪ We got a long road ahead of us ♪ ♪ A long road ahead of us ♪ ♪ A long road ahead of us before we pay our dues ♪ ♪ We got a long road ahead of us ♪ ♪ A long road ahead of us ♪ ♪ A long road ahead of us before we pay our dues ♪ [beep] WOMAN: Like no, no, no... GARY: Oh, for you.

Yeah, okay.

MAN: Oh, that's cheating!

GARY: Piggybacking off my bull.

[woman laughs] ANNOUNCER: The first time you made a sale online was also the first time you heard of a town named... MAN: Dinosaur.

We just got an order from Dinosaur, Colorado.

MAN: No way!

ANNOUNCER: Build a website to help reach more customers.

WOMAN: Wait, wait, wait, wait!

One more.

ANNOUNCER: GoDaddy.

Tools and support for small business firsts.

Spectrum Business recognizes the importance of small businesses to local communities, so we're investing $21 million to help small businesses access funding to help them grow.

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More than an internet, phone, and TV provider.

♪