Radish Farm Stop ready to launch with help from Elevate

Radish Farm Stop ready to launch with help from Elevate

Lily Gross, the founder of Radish Farm Stop, might still be working through some construction delays, but she says Elevate Hennepin advisors helped her feel ready to launch her business.

“I feel positioned to start this business and hopefully be super successful. I think a lot of that is because of this support that I've had,” said Lily. “Some of that is measurable, like a business plan or an employee handbook. But I think that what is harder to measure is the sounding board and confidence that comes from working with these advisors.”

She said multiple advisors worked on parts of what became Radish Farm Stop, a novel approach to a grocery store that Lily likens to a year-round farmers market. It looks and feels like a normal grocery store with a cafe, but instead of getting a truckload of food, she’s working with dozens of individual farms and other small food producers who all sell their food on consignment at her central location. After farmers deliver, Lily and her team market and sell the food on their behalf from their location in Southwest Minneapolis.

She got the idea from a similar business, Argus Farm Stop in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and had been thinking about the idea for years, but got serious about a strong business plan two years ago. She took a business planning class with Elevate Hennepin advisor Women Venture, then started working with other Elevate advisors. She said the support got her out of endless pondering and gave her action items to move her idea forward.

“Woman Venture and all of these other people helped make that real. I think otherwise I could have just spun my wheels for 10 years,” said Lily. “This support gave me concrete steps to figure out how to take an idea and make it real.”

Multiple advisors assisted with everything from legal paperwork, realistic financial projections, and an employee handbook. They also guided her through all the unknowns and bumps along the path to open a brick-and-mortar location.

“I have not opened a retail business like this before, and I'm learning a lot,” said Lily. “People say, it's always going to cost more than you wanted, and construction is going to take longer than you wanted it to. I'm beginning to realize what they mean by that!”

She’s still working through some of those challenges, including construction delays, but she hopes to open by the end of June. As she works toward opening the location, she said she’s building awareness everywhere she can.

“I worked with Jen Jones, who runs Whip Smart, for several months on building out my marketing plan,” said Lily. “Now that I'm in this stage where I am actually carrying out our marketing strategy and working with, local publications, I'm able to lean on Mary with Field Guide for PR help.”

Lily said she’s especially grateful to work with so many women business leaders.

“In our world, there's lots of systems that impede us and encourage us to feel small and doubt ourselves,” said Lily. “But I feel like I’m surrounded with powerful women and love working with them and admire everyone that I've worked with. I hope to someday be a mentor like that to someone else.”