I had a chance to sit down with the founders of “Making Waves Muskegon” to highlight a goodie box that features locally sourced products.
During the height of the COVID pandemic, local business owners were busy creating ways to provide Muskegon residents with popular homemade goods. Devine Calkins, owner of 490 Bakery stated, “All of us had the same mindset of focusing on the community and bringing quality product to our customers. We were brainstorming one day on how we can find a way to connect with other businesses to bring our product together as one, as one individual product.”
The box will act as a subscription, where customers can enjoy locally made products on a monthly basis, and will be sold online and via retail at the Muskegon Famers Market and Boomtown Market. The one time “Making Waves Box” is priced at $59.95 and monthly “The Subscription Box” is priced at $54.95. The products will change monthly among the four entrepreneurs, but as more businesses join in, Making Waves Muskegon hopes to incorporate a mixture of other businesses to feature in the subscription. Currently, the box features businesses such as Drip Drop Drink Coffee, 490 Bakery, What’s Your Jam, and ReFu Tea.
Colleen Nowacki, owner of What’s Your Jam, first started making jam as a fun hobby at home.Today, you can purchase her products online, or at the Muskegon Farmers Market. She has a variety of tasty jams, which are very fun to try (If you want to be adventurous like me, try the Mango Habanero Jam!) For the month of October, What’s Your Jam is releasing a Ghost Pepper Jam – that will warm you up! She also has a line of bourbon and coffee jams. So you can enjoy coffee all day long. Recently, Colleen started donating a percentage of her monthly sales to support a grassroots nonprofit.
While working at a local nonprofit that assisted individuals coming home from incarceration, Devine had a dream of being able to continue to support those individuals in a variety of ways. “We built bakery 490 to potential hire individuals, who are coming home from incarceration, and give them transitional employment,” stated Devine. The name 490 is a product of two numbers in the Bible about forgiveness and giving second chances. A percentage of the proceeds go to Fresh Coast Alliance, so they can continue providing recovery and reentry services in the community.
On September 12th, 490 Bakery will be launching a new Fall featured cookie, which is a Peanut Butter Peanut Candy Corn. Her current orders that can be found on her website here, and range from a variety of flavors like the McLaughlin Victorian Molasses Cookie, Lakeside Salted Caramel Sugar Cookie, Bluffton Cream Cheese Sugar Cookie, and many more drool worthy flavors.
Autumn, owner of RefuTea, created a product that will help educate the community, and inspire refugees to thrive. RefuTea was born after Autumn learned about the lack of employment opportunities available to refugees upon resettlement. Autumn’s dream one day is to open a RefuTea Café and employ refugees. For right now, take the time to browse her website to see the various tea flavors.
Drip Drop Drink is a locally owned coffee shop, where all are welcome to enjoy a good cup of Joe. The café specializes in pour over coffee, which is made by pouring hot water onto ground coffee beans using a filter. The end result? A delicious, fresh cup of coffee. Something new has been brewing at Drip Drop Drink. See what I did there? The owner of Drip Drop Drink, Todd Johnson, has been roasting and creating his side branded coffee, called Lumbertown Coffee Co. We suggest trying the Barrel Aged Coffee beans. Who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky and find some in your subscription box?
MiFoodChronicles paid Drip Drop Drink a visit during the Taste of Muskegon. Check out our blog post Taste of Muskegon Pt. 2 to discover other popular items from Drip Drop!
For anyone that is wondering what I want for my birthday or Christmas, I hope that this is a big enough hint.
View interview with Making Waves Muskegon here.
MiFoodChronicles 