Food Startups

Developing businesses often look to the big, well-known support organizations in Michigan like TechTown, because these big support organizations often do a great job of marketing themselves and getting their name out to the public.  They also often have a history of success with business development, so they spring to the top of the mind.

In looking across the breadth of the economic development landscape, there are so many other smaller resource providers that you may have never heard about, and they offer some interesting options to assist with your business development.  In the city of Detroit, where The MORE Program is based, you can find dozens of local economic development groups and neighborhood associations that support business development in their own ways.  For example, two partners of The MORE Program, The Brightmoor Alliance and The Warren/Conner Development Corporation, both offer commercial kitchen facilities to support the development of food-based businesses in and around their communities.

A commercial kitchen is used for preparing food for the legal sale to the public or membership of an organization that uses the kitchen.  These kitchens must usually be inspected by the local health department or another authority before it can be used for commercial purposes.  The kitchens also often include very expensive kitchen equipment that assists with the bulk production of foodstuffs - equipment you would almost never find in a traditional private kitchen.

Take advantage of what is out there!  You can create your food product legally and efficiently, without purchasing an entire commercial kitchen yourself.

To find more business support resources, check out InsYght

Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center (MMTC)

The MMTC is a non-profit group, partially funded through federal dollars via the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership.  Their mission is "to improve the global competitiveness of Michigan's small and mid-sized manufacturers through innovative training and consulting services."  They have six regional offices around the state of Michigan.

At The MORE Program, we regularly speak with burgeoning and established entrepreneurs about their challenges as they seek assistance with a variety of business challenges.  Many of these entrepreneurs are involved in the manufacturing industry or are trying to figure out how to have their product produced in large quantities.  These discussions are fascinating and exciting, but there are too many instances where these individuals are not aware of the MMTC or the breadth of its services.  Assistance from the MMTC could have been the difference between business success and failure.

Their courses cover the important topics of lean manufacturing, quality management, six sigma, and manufacturing environmental impact.  This organization will also do an extensive on-site analysis of your manufacturing operations, prepare and present cost-saving recommendations, and perform on-site guidance and training to ensure these recommendations are correctly incorporated.

This just starts to touch on the capabilities and resources of the MMTC, but for a state so heavily reliant on manufacturing and creating new manufacturers from this expertise, every business with some reliance on manufacturing should be aware of the Michigan Manufacturing Technology Center.

To find more business support resources, use InsYght

Supporting Michigan's Defense Industry

There are many activities going on around Michigan in support of our burgeoning defense industry.  Many of these support activities are bolstered by the U.S. Army Tank-Automotive Research, Development, and Engineering Center (TARDEC)  in Warren.  One such unique resource can be found at the Fire-Testing Facility at Lawrence Technological University.  Lawrence Tech claims to be the only private university in the state of Michigan to have such a high-tech research facility set up with federal government funds. 


At this facility, researchers can test things like armor, vehicles, vehicle components, and construction materials by subjecting them to simulated conditions of blast and fire on the battlefield.  My basic understanding is that the test subject is first massively heated in their fire-testing furnace, and then structural components are tested and measured with the equipment available at this facility.  This is not the kind of equipment you can tinker with in your garage.


Most educational institutions like Lawrence Tech are always looking for opportunities to interact with the business community through leveraging their facilities and know-how.  If you have a product that you are developing and need to test it under these intense conditions for the defense (or other) industry, you should probably give Lawrence Tech a call to see if you can work with them.


To find more resources, check out InsYght

Northern Lakes Economic Alliance

Because of the population concentration in southeast Michigan, there is a corresponding concentration of entrepreneurial support organizations in southeast Michigan.  However, this does not mean there are not other groups performing outstanding economic development work throughout the entire state.  Take, for example, The Northern Lakes Economic Alliance (NLEA).

The NLEA provides resources for communities and entrepreneurs to create and retain jobs in the northern Michigan counties of Antrim, Charlevoix, Cheboygan, and Emmet.  The NLEA provides business planning and counseling services through its partnership with the Michigan Small Business & Technology Development Center (MI-sbTdc).  The NLEA also heads up a Business Resource Center Network in northern Michigan with ten locations throughout the aforementioned counties.

Dearborn was largely farm land before Henry Ford moved in.  Kitty litter was invented by Ed Lowe - who grew up in Cassopolis, Michigan.  We don't know where the next great idea is going to come from, and it is important that entrepreneurship be actively supported throughout the state.  This is exactly the kind of work being done by organizations like the NLEA.

To find more business support resources, use InsYght

Michigan Municipal League Convention

At The MORE Program, we partner with economic development groups throughout the state of Michigan to ensure that all their resources are known to the public.  For our purposes, the phrase economic development groups includes municipalities (cities, villages) around the state because municipalities offer a great number of resources for entrepreneurs and businesses.

This week, several members of our team attended the Michigan Municipal League (MML) Annual convention in Grand Rapids.  We spend our time there meeting with municipal leaders like mayors and city managers, and partnering with them to promote the resources their communities have to offer for business development.  Until recently in my life, I have never spent more than a couple minutes ever thinking about my city's mayor or city manager, but now that I have had the opportunity to meet so many of these individuals, I am astounded at the hard work they do to support their municipality.  In addition to simply keeping everything running, these individuals are working individually and together to identify mechanisms to strengthen and grow Michigan's economy.  At conventions like this one, among other important items, they meet to discuss and learn about entrepreneurship and methods and approaches to support it.

The reason I mention all this is to highlight some of the different and sometimes obvious ways the state works to promote entrepreneurship.  For example, the City of Novi offers a Business Assistance Team that can assist your business in Novi with marketing, operations, and finance and accounting.  There is no cost to take advantage of this resource.

Mayors, city managers, and public officials are certainly working hard to keep your town running, but they are also working to make Michigan a better place for business.


To find more resources, check out InsYght

Invest Detroit

By a country mile (was this phrase used with any consistency before Tiger's color commentator Rod Allen?), entrepreneurs are seeking money above all else.  Ask anyone in a developing business what they need, and they will tell you money.  The thinking is that money can solve every problem they have through spending on R&D, talent, equipment, space, workforce, etc.

A big part of our focus at The MORE Program with the InsYght network is to direct entrepreneurs toward resources in the state that are meant to take the place of direct cash infusions, or what the cash would have otherwise been spent on.  As I've mentioned before, there are thousands and thousands of these free or heavily discounted resources available to entrepreneurs, and we bring them into the open at MORE.

However, there are times when nothing but money will do, and there are also some great opportunities to find the necessary funding.  If you agree with Ted Balowski in his post Why Detroit? (and I certainly do) then you are looking to develop and grow your organization in the city of Detroit.  If so, and you have some specific financial needs, you should take a good hard look at Invest Detroit.

Invest Detroit is a unique source of private sector gap financing through managed for-profit and non-profit targeted funds to support economic development in under-served communities primarily in the City of Detroit.  They offer loans for equipment, neighborhood retail pursuits, real estate financing, and for many other purposes.  They cater to businesses small and large, including funds for some of the major redevelopment deals in Detroit like the Broderick Tower (the one with the whales painted on it that you can see from Comerica).

Let me know if you have any specific areas in which you are interested in finding out about resources; otherwise, I'll just keep throwing out there whatever is interesting to me.

The Fraunhofer Center

In my last post, I mentioned that Michigan has some very unique organizations offering amazing resources to help with your business development, and that I will be highlighting some of these groups and resources in this blog.  To give you a sense of the breadth of some of the business support organizations in Michigan, I would like to direct you to an interesting group that a member of our team, Bonnie Fahoome, pointed out to me last week - the Fraunhofer Center for Coatings and Laser Applications.

The Fraunhofer Center is a non-profit group that has a close partnership with Michigan State University.  They offer resources like Laser Processing Services, Coating Services, and Characterization and Testing Facilities - in addition to many others.  They describe themselves as "...a non-profit organization providing research services to our customers who include federal and state governments, multinational corporations, and small to medium-size companies. The overall aim of the entire Fraunhofer organization is to bridge the gap between research and industry by providing top notch applied research services..."

Who needs any of these things?  Having never worked directly with lasers or coatings and not yet doing the appropriate research, I currently have no idea - but if you're looking for any of these types of specialized services, they look to be a great place to turn for assistance.

To learn more about the Fraunhofer Center, visit:  http://www.ccl.fraunhofer.org/e_welcome.php
To find other interesting business support organizations, visit:  http://insyght.co