When Theresa Viggiano and Patrick Leger of First Field had a bumper crop of tomatoes at her New Jersey farm a few years ago, she started experimenting with preserving, with the thought of making a product they could sell at the farmstand she maintained at the end of her driveway. "Everyone seemed to be doing tomato sauces," Leger says, "We thought, why not do ketchup?" More

Rhonda Kave and her company, Roni-Sue's Chocolates, are a mainstay in the New York food scene, with quirky offerings like the chocolate-covered bacon she calls Pig Candy, a wide selection of classic truffles, and a line of caramel products made with Brooklyn Brewery beer and Martin's pretzels. She does all of the candy production out of her storefront in the Essex Street Market, but her latest venture is taking her a bit farther afield: to Belize. A partner in Moho Cocoa, Kave has recently made the switch to single-origin chocolate for all of her products. More

"We were looking for natural foods to fuel for long runs," Jason explains. He points out that while many chia devotees add the seeds to water for a tapioca-like beverage (the seeds gel in water), they wanted something more practical for a workout a workout. He adds, "We were just looking to solve our own problems." More

"We chose the name La Sonrisa because the sonrisa means smile in Spanish, and it's what we aim to do when people have our empanandas," says Lauren Chiluiza. She adds, "It also helps that empanadas look like smiles." Chiluiza and her partner, Ariel Rodriguez, launched their empanada business at the Hester Street Fair in the summer of 2010. They moved on to a food truck, which is usually parked on Hudson Street between Columbus Drive and Second Street in Jersey City, with the ultimate goal of selling their products wholesale to grocery stores and other retailers. More

When Saul Bolton (of Michelin-starred Saul restaurant fame) opened The Vanderbilt, he wanted to emphasize the charcuterie program. He offered housemade sausages like boudin noir and kielbasa in what he calls "different food groups in the meat category": lamb, beef, pork, chicken. One of his regular customers, Eric Denby, impresario of the Brooklyn Flea and Smorgasburg, suggested that the sausages might be a good fit for the casual, open-air atmosphere of those markets, and Brooklyn Bangers was born. More

Michael Marino and Jorge Moret came to the food business from the design world—Marino has a furniture design background and Moret is a graphic designer—and pursued it from a desire to create something tangible. "We were tired of jobs where we weren't making anything," Marino explained. "We wanted to bring something to market." More

Five years ago, Eric MacNeil had a dinner party to attend and nothing to bring. Though he'd only made hot sauce once before, he threw together a batch and gave it to his hosts. Guests loved it so much they'd riffled through the fridge looking for anything they could eat it on. "They were putting it on lettuce," MacNeil laughs. More

2012 is a big year for Macaron Parlour: co-founders Simon Tung and Christina Ha are getting married in April and opening a brick and mortar store in Manhattan this summer. "Our first year of business, we said we'd never have a store," says Tung. "All of our friends said 'don't do it!'" More

When one of her colleagues came to a Halloween party dressed as the floor of a movie theater, complete with popcorn, Swedish fish, and chocolate candy, it occurred to Jennifer Taylor-Miller that those elements could work pretty well in a cookie. More

They formed a company, The Jam Stand, with a tagline inspired buy their initial misadventures—"Because there's so much more than grape jelly." More