Tag: regional support Q2 2021

Advancing San Diego Company Spotlight: Misadventure & Co.

By San Diego Regional EDC,

The Advancing San Diego (ASD) Internship Program launched in Summer 2020 in a remote-capacity amid the COVID-19 pandemic and aims to provide up to 100 San Diego-based employers with fully subsidized interns. This program targets small employers with 100 employees or less, which comprise 98 percent of all businesses in San Diego, employ nearly two thirds of San Diegans, and account for 70 percent of job growth. A key issue for these companies has been a lack of time and resources to recruit the skilled talent necessary to continue their growth.

As students close out their Spring business internship experiences, EDC has rolled out this blog series to highlight the innovative local companies that comprise the third cohort of the program, and the interns they hosted. To date, ASD has placed 93 student-interns in local businesses, with $455,000 in total wages and support services paid. 

In this edition, we sat down with Romi Rossel, Content Marketing Manager at Misadventure & Co., a leading provider of vodka production and sustainability.

Read on for more about ASD intern host Misadventure & Co.

Romi Rossel, with Advancing San Diego interns, Andreapaola Loda (right) and Michelle Bodi (left).

Tell us about your company.

Misadventure & Co. is the world’s first carbon negative distillery, and the first and only to upcycle excess baked goods into an award winning spirit. Our vodka is smooth and upcycled certified. The best part? Consumers get to help save the world just by having a drink! Our tasting room and production facility are located in Vista, and we are known for our delicious craft cocktails, sustainable vodka, and wonderful atmosphere.

Why was your company founded?  

It all started in 2013 with a chance meeting at a North County San Diego bar between the two founders. Whit Rigali, the bartender, wanted to create local craft spirits as tools for other bartenders. Sam Chereskin, the Agricultural Economist, wanted to find ways to improve food systems and show that doing good can also be viable. Their conversation over a glass of whiskey led to the creation of Misadventure & Co. Our vodka is not just a product of four years of R&D, but lessons learned through the San Diego brewing and distilling communities, and our wonderful friends and family. We desire to make quality spirits and create them sustainably. With food waste prevention being the number one solution to climate change, we are focusing on educating our community on finding creative ways to help the environment, and choosing products that can help make the world a better place.

What does growth look like over the next few years?

We are excited to further develop both our hospitality and distribution channels. Increasing our production would allow us to make a bigger positive impact on the environment.

How has your company pivoted as a result of COVID-19?

As a result of the pandemic, we expanded our forecasting capabilities beyond traditional weather variables like temperature and relative humidity, as we were involved in a project in collaboration with NASA scientists to understand the effects of COVID-19 in the upcoming forest fire season. Further, Misadventure pivoted into producing hand sanitizer to support the uptick in sanitation needs amid pandemic. That experience not only allowed us to stay in business through 2020, but also opened up a whole different set of possibilities for us. We realized that we are not only a distillery producing high quality spirits, but also a sustainable ethanol manufacturer that can be used in many other industries from food production to cosmetics.

Tell us about your experience building a small business/startup in San Diego. 

We have been extremely lucky to work with other amazing organizations and companies that support what we do. San Diego has a very tight sustainable community as well as a great distilling and brewing community that encourages collaboration and assistance. CAL Recycle has been extremely helpful in providing grants to fund pieces of equipment that have helped us increase and improve our production. We also love working with other anti-food waste organizations such as Kitchens for Good and Oceanside Kitchen Collaborative, and we are proud to say we are founding members of the new nonprofit organization Sustainability is Sexy.

The most special thing about the San Diego business community is that is a very collaborative community. There is always a genuine interest from people to help each other and grow together, especially when it comes to making positive changes in the world.

How did you find out ASD and how has your experience been? Tell us a little bit about your interns and the value they bring.

We found out about ASD through a contact at California Manufacturing Technology Consulting (CMTC) who shared the internship opportunity with us. Our interns provided strong support for our marketing campaigns by doing market research that allowed us to grow our social media presence and bring more foot traffic to our tasting room.

Learn more about Advancing San Diego and our internship program.

Company contact info and additional information:

  • Website: misadventure.co
  • Social Media: @misadventureco
  • Email: info@misadventure.co

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Advancing San Diego Company Spotlight: Benchmark Labs

By Bree Burris,

The Advancing San Diego (ASD) Internship Program launched in Summer 2020 in a remote-capacity amid the COVID-19 pandemic and aims to provide up to 100 San Diego-based employers with fully subsidized interns. This program targets small employers with 100 employees or less, which comprise 98 percent of all businesses in San Diego, employ nearly two thirds of San Diegans, and account for 70 percent of job growth. A key issue for these companies has been a lack of time and resources to recruit the skilled talent necessary to continue their growth.

As students are closing out their Spring business internship experiences, EDC has rolled out this blog series to highlight the innovative local companies that comprise the third cohort of the program, and the interns they hosted. To date, ASD has placed 93 student-interns in local businesses, with $455,000 in total wages and support services paid. 

In this feature, we sat down with Carlos Gaitan, CEO and Co-Founder at Benchmark Labs. As part of the third cohort of host companies, Benchmark Labs is a leading provider of IoT-based weather forecasting solutions for the agriculture, energy, and insurance sectors.

Read on for more about ASD intern host Benchmark Labs.

Tell us about your company?  

Benchmark Labs provides asset-specific environmental forecasting for the agricultural, energy, and insurance sectors. We do so by incorporating in-situ IoT sensor data, machine learning techniques, and weather information to provide actionable forecasts tailored to specific locations and sensors. We recently moved our headquarters from San Francisco to San Diego with the help of EDC, and our main office is at UTC, courtesy of The BlueTech Incubator.

Why was your company founded, and what are your current points of focus?  

We founded Benchmark Labs to improve operational margins of farmers by bringing state of the art environmental forecasting technologies to farmers all over the world. We understood that although microclimates create substantial environmental differences between farms, those differences are not reflected in the weather forecasts available to asset managers, as the current generation of weather models divide the world in grids and everyone inside a grid box receives exactly the same forecast.

How did you find out about Advancing San Diego and how your experience has been? Tell us a little bit about your interns and the value they bring.  

We became aware of Advancing San Diego thanks to the great team at The Maritime Alliance and the Bluetech Incubator. ASD’s Internship Program aided us in finding local talent in the areas of software engineering and business research. From the company perspective, we believe in giving back to the community and in providing those first training and work opportunities to local students, and we couldn’t be happier with the human and technical capabilities of our current and past interns. Our interns have made us a better company by bringing new voices and experiences to solve our technical challenges.

What does growth look like over the next few years?

We are excited about future opportunities for Benchmark Labs and for the region. We were recently awarded a highly competitive National Science Foundation Small Business Research Grant to further develop our forecasting technology and to bring it to market. We will soon have job openings in market research, software engineering, data science, marketing and sales.

How has your company pivoted as a result of COVID-19?

As a result of the pandemic, we expanded our forecasting capabilities beyond traditional weather variables like temperature and relative humidity, as we were involved in a project, in collaboration with NASA scientists, to understand the effects of COVID-19 in the upcoming forest fire season.

Tell us about your experience building a small business/startup in San Diego. 

We are very grateful to EDC for their support during our company relocation and with the internship program. Benchmark Labs has been fortunate to find great mentors, organizations, and local resources during the last few years. We want to highlight the support of Cleantech San Diego, the Southern California Energy Innovation Network, The Maritime Alliance and the The Bluetech Incubator, and the services provided by Connect and the San Diego and Imperial Small Business Development Center.

What is special about San Diego’s business community, and the talent that drives it? 

San Diego’s business community is special as there is substantial collaboration between founders, government, and academia. We strongly believe that San Diego’s workforce can support cutting-edge research in environmental science and that the academic programs offered by local institutions provide skills that are directly transferable to work in the private sector.

Learn more about Advancing San Diego and our internship program.

Company contact info and additional information:

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5 COVID-19 resources for San Diego small businesses – April 2021

By Heather Dewis,

Note: San Diego County is currently in the state’s Orange Tier, which increases indoor restaurant capacity to 50 percent, increases indoor gym and brewery capacity to 25 percent, and removes retail capacity limits. California plans to eliminate the tier system on June 15 if current trends continue—more updates and resources to come.

With continued changes to COVID-19 relief programs, it can be challenging to sift through what’s available. Below, EDC has outlined new and ongoing business resources available in April 2021 as your small business or manufacturer navigates the impacts of COVID-19.

1. Shuttered Venue Operators Grant (SVOG)

Open NOW: Via SBA’s Office of Disaster Assistance, the SVOG will distribute $16 billion in grants first come, first served to venues closed due to COVID-19. Apply now.

  • Award: Grant of 45 percent of gross earned revenue up to $10 million, with $2 billion reserved for applicants with up to 50 full-time employees
  • Application period: Today (April 26) until funds are depleted
  • Who’s eligible? Live venue operators/promoters, theatrical producers, live performing arts organization operators, relevant museum operators, zoos, and aquariums, motion picture theater operators, talent representatives, and more
  • Applicants must not have applied for or received a PPP loan on or after December 27, 2020

2. California Small Business COVID-19 Relief Grant Program

On April 28, the State of California will open a final round for its California Small Business COVID-19 Relief Grant Program. Prepare to apply.

  • Award: Grant of $5,000 to $25,000 per business
  • Application period: April 28 to May 4
  • Who’s eligible? Small businesses or nonprofits with yearly gross revenue of $2.5 million or less
  • Awards are needs-based, not first-come, first-served
  • Those who submitted their application and all documentation in earlier rounds do not need to reapply

Watch San Diego and Imperial Small Business Development Center’s on-demand webinars or contact EDC to learn more.

3. Paycheck Protection Program (PPP)

PPP loans are designed as direct incentives for small businesses to keep workers on payroll. Both first and second-time borrowers may apply for a loan, with priority to companies that haven’t received a first loan and those in heavily impacted sectors.

For all PPP applications

  • Application period: Ongoing through May 31, 2021
  • PPP loans are nontaxable and will be forgivable if employee retention criteria is met
  • Companies may receive both a PPP loan and EIDL loan without compromising PPP forgiveness

First Draw PPP

  • Award: Loan size dependent on business, with a 1 percent interest rate
  • Who’s eligible? Small businesses that meet SBA’s size standards, businesses with fewer than 500 employees or meet SBA’s industry size standards, or businesses with a NAICS code beginning with 72 with more than one physical location and fewer than 500 employees per location

Second Draw PPP

  • Award: Loan of up to $2 million with a 1 percent interest rate
  • Who’s eligible? Businesses above that have previously received a First Draw PPP loan and will or have used the full amount only for authorized uses, have no more than 300 employees, and can demonstrate at least a 25 percent reduction in gross receipts between comparable quarters in 2019 and 2020

Get expert help applying at no cost: 
Contact our team via the San Diego Small Business Development Center.

4. Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL)

EIDLs are available to businesses, private non-profits, homeowners, and renters who have been negatively impacted by COVID-19. Apply now.

  • Award: Loan up to $500,000 with 24 months of economic injury
  • Application period: Ongoing
  • Who’s eligible? Small business owners, qualified agricultural businesses, agricultural businesses with 500 or fewer employees, agricultural businesses engaged in food and fiber production, ranching, and raising of livestock, aquaculture, and more

5. Targeted EIDL Advance

Businesses and non-profit organizations that received a previous EIDL Advance in an amount less than $10,000 will have first priority to apply for the Targeted EIDL Advance. The SBA may reach out directly to you via email with instructions to determine eligibility and invite you to apply.

  • Award: Grant amount dependent on business
  • Application period: Ongoing
  • Who’s eligible? Non-farm businesses with 300 or fewer employees, that are located in federally identified low-income communities, and can demonstrate a reduction in revenue of more than 30 percent during an eight week period beginning on or after March 2, 2020
  • All communications from SBA will be sent from an official government email with an @sba.gov ending

EDC is here to help. Request our help finding resources, applying to relief programs, and more, at no charge.

Request EDC assistance

 

For more COVID-19 recovery resources and information, please visit this page, or see how we can help your company free of charge.

 

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