MEAL PREP BUSINESS BENEFITS FROM GRANT PROGRAM

Nala’s Kitchen gets $10,000 from Women’s Business Development Council

WALLINGFORD — Since getting a $10,000 grant from the Women’s Business Development Council ’s Equity Match grant program, earlier this year, Beca Tuinei’s meal preparation business is really cooking.

“My sales are up 75 percent,” Tuinei said of her business, Nala’s Kitchen, which operates out of rented kitchen space on South Colony Road.

Before getting the grant, Tuinei had relied on wordof-mouth from existing customers to increase her base of clients, busy timestarved professionals who want someone else to prepare healthful meals for them.

But after having been selected as a grant recipient, she invested the $10,000 she received in advertising on Facebook and on a billboard along Interstate 91.

Now, Tuinei and her four employees are preparing and delivering between 400 and 500 meals a week to customers around the state. They deliver between two and four meals to customers twice a week.

“I’d like to triple that by a year from now,” she said.

The grant program was put together during summer 2020.

Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz and Fran Pastore, founder and chief executive officer of the Bridgeport-based Women’s Business Development Council, discovered that female entrepreneurs and particularly small business owners of color “lost out on much of the funding,” being given out by the federal government to business owners whose companies were suffering because of the pandemic.

To date, the program has raised nearly $1 million and is about to enter its third funding round, with applications due by Sept. 28, Bysiewicz said. The size of the grants ranges between $2,500 and $10,000.

As part of the grant program, she said, business owners have to put up some of their own capital.

“It’s not a one-for-one match, though,” Bysiewicz said. In Tuinei’s case, for example, she had to put up $2,500 of her own capital to get $10,000 in grant money.

Tuinei’s business had been operating out of a West Hartford commercial kitchen for several years before relocating to Zandri’s Catering Service in Wallingford. Owner Jim Zandri operated an onpremise catering business at the South Colony Road location before switching to off-site catering last summer and converting his banquet hall into a storage facility.

Tuinei is one of about a half-dozen food service businesses that rent kitchen space from Zandri. She calls Zandri her mentor and he said it feels good about sharing some of the things he has learned about food service after decades in the business.

“They are really up and coming,” he said of Tuinei’s business. “And I’m really grateful to have them and the other people who are renting space in the kitchen. If it weren’t for the rent money and the PPP, I would be out of business by now.”

Luther Turmelle / Hearst Connecticut Media Beca Tuinei, left, and Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz talk about the Women’s Business Development Council’s Equity Match grant program in Wallingford. Tuinei’s business Nala’s Kitchen is a recipient of the grant program.