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Brewing up memories in a college dorm
It started at a MEDA chapter meeting, and who knows where it will go.
Last fall, Goshen College business majors Niles Graber Miller and Hans Weaver got to know each other while attending a Michiana MEDA Chapter meeting with several faculty members. They discovered common passions for business and values and decided to start a business together, Cultural Ventures, LLC. Their first product was Menno Tea, an iced beverage based on a treasured family recipe.
Graber Miller, from Goshen, Ind., and Weaver, from New Holland, Pa., pitched their idea and a marketing plan to faculty and were awarded a $5,000 entrepreneurship grant from the Goshen business department.
“Niles, Hans, and I met every other week through the school year to discuss their business issues, provide feedback/suggestions, and to create the best possibility for a successful business,” says Michelle Horning, department chair.
Throughout the fall and spring, Weaver and Graber Miller tested tea recipes and after perfecting their blend they began production in the college coffee shop, known as Java Junction.
Menno Tea, a play on an original recipe called meadow tea, made its debut in Goshen in July.
A production nudge came when they received an order for 2,500 bottles for the Mennonite Youth Convention in Pittsburgh this summer. Realizing they could no longer produce the tea by hand, the pair contracted production out to a bottling company in Pennsylvania. Restaurants, markets and galleries now carry the tea in the Goshen area as well as in Archbold, Ohio, and Pittsburgh. Plans are to distribute throughout the midwest.
“Menno Tea has a taste that many people associate with home,” says Weaver. “So we say that we’re not just brewing a tea, we’re brewing a culture. This means that we’re
Culture in a bottle: Upstart entrepreneurs Niles Graber Miller (left) and Hans Weaver.
Goshen grants boost student-run businesses
From a brightly painted vintage van to black and white photos from Africa, Goshen College students are bringing entrepreneurial ideas to life with help from their business department. To encourage students to develop their skills further, the department has awarded entrepreneurship grants totalling $27,500 to seven student-owned businesses.
Each business presented a business plan and demonstrated their skill, market analysis and likelihood of success.
Besides the Menno Tea producers described above, the student businesses include: • Studio Ace of Spade, offering print and Web services from bottom-up branding to Web development and design, is owned by senior Jon Savage and Goshen grad Simon Birky Hartmann of Goshen. They established their studio last year, combining talents in art, graphic design, management trying to include a community in this taste, creating memories and representing a culture, which can be Goshen, your home or any community you associate the tea with.”
“We want to encourage people to explore new cultures through our tea,” says Graber Miller, who has lived in various parts of Central America and Asia. “Cultural awareness is what sets us apart from other tea companies.”
The young entrepreneurs plan to add teas from other cultures. In one of their corporate ads they say, “We started this venture out of our dorm room at Goshen College after brainstorming together in business class, but now are on a mission to heal the world peace by peace, drink by drink.” ◆
and technology. • Reimagine Cinema, a company producing music videos and short films, is owned by Jacob Landis-Eigsti, a senior communication and theater major from Lakewood, Colo. The Indiana Association of School Broadcasters named his videos the best in the state, and the Broadcast Education Association awarded his music video, “Beautiful,” the secondbest college music video in the nation for 2011. • ResQ Records is a music production and publishing company specializing in Afrofusion music. It is owned by Idris Busari, a junior broadcasting and public relations major from Nigeria. • Ras Photo Studio is owned by Abi Tsigie, a junior art major from Ethiopia. In addition to digital color photography, it specializes in black and white photography and also has an experimental laboratory, collecting and experimenting with the distinctive lighting and textual effects of old film-based cameras. • NGM Designs, owned by Niles Graber Miller, a first-year business major from Goshen, advertises local businesses on vintage vehicles (see photo, page 3). Graber Miller began his business a year ago with hand-painted advertisements on a 1970 Volkswagen van. Clients gain exposure as the van is driven around town and parked in visible locations. • Entertaining Angels is a music business started by William Frisbie, a sophomore accounting major and business minor from Goshen. It assists artists with recording needs and provides lighting and sound for events.
The funds were part of a larger external grant that the business department received a few years ago and which now has ended. Michelle Horning, business department chair, says the department intends to continue to award grants but likely on a smaller scale. ◆
MEDA convention to celebrate “Enduring values, lasting impact”
Many North American Mennonites will return to their roots as hundreds of supporters gather Nov. 3-6 for the annual Business As a Calling convention of Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA) in Lancaster, Pa.
With a theme of Enduring Values: Lasting Impact, the event provides an opportunity to not only connect faith and work, but also celebrate the spirit of entrepreneurship that is central to MEDA’s mission of creating business solutions to poverty.
Plenary speakers include: • Tom Wolf, CEO of Wolf Organization, a six-generation family building materials business based in York, Pa., who will describe his recent efforts to transform Wolf to compete in the fast-changing global economy in his presentation, “Modern Competitiveness and Traditional Values.” • Joyce Bontrager Lehman, a program officer with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, who will draw on 10 years in global microfinance in 25 countries to speak on “From Kalona to Kabul and Beyond: A Journey from an Amish Community to Global Economic Development.” • Biotech entrepreneur and venture capital fund manager Kim Tan of SpringHill Management Ltd., who will present on “Enterprises Impacting Social Needs: Addressing Human Trafficking, HIV/AIDS, Climate Change and Education.” Tan is co-founder of Britain’s Transformational Business Network, author of The Jubilee Gospel and co-author of the book, Fighting Poverty through Enterprise. • Ervin Stutzman, executive director of Mennonite Church USA, a preacher, teacher and author of Being God’s People, a study for new believers, who will address the connection between strong faith and good business practices in “A Faith that Shapes Enduring Values.”
Local tours will explore the diverse history, culture and business profile of Lancaster County.
More than 40 seminars will cover topics ranging from agriculture and family business to executive leadership and Amish enterprise, as well as impact stories from MEDA projects around the world.
For a complete brochure go to businessasacalling.org or call (800) 665-7026. — Linda Whitmore
Friend of business takes MWC helm
The newly appointed general secretary of the Mennonite World Conference has a track record of being friendly to business.
Next January, Cesar Garcia, 39, will become the new general secretary of the MWC. A Mennonite Brethren leader in Bogota, Colombia, he has been a church planter, pastor and professor of Bible and theology, as well as chair of the MB Churches of Colombia from 2002-2008. He recently concluded graduate studies at the Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary in Fresno, Calif.
Garcia has been at the forefront of helping Colombian Mennonite businesspeople organize for greater impact.
In 2007 he organized a three-day conference on Connecting Faith, Business and Development. It drew 70-80 people representing a diverse blend of businesses including agribusiness, coffee and salsa production, garment trades, electrical engineering, chemical products and pharmaceutical sales. They were described as active businesspeople who were committed to investing their resources to address social issues.
Garcia said at the time that the businesspeople had been trying to bring their faith into the business world, “but each one with his/her own individual efforts, without much contact between them.”
The conference took a step toward changing that. It led to the formation of a group called EMACOL (a Spanish acronym for Colombian Anabaptist Businesspeople). Its aim is to enrich its members spiritually and to help them work together to support church projects and address social issues in their communities, such as education for children displaced by violence and community development in at-risk sectors.
“The church can provide an ethical foundation and relational networking to strengthen businesses,” Garcia told The Marketplace at the time. “Businesses can support projects that churches by their own effort would not be able to sustain. Together, they can help each other so that their faith might be practical and relevant.”
Winnipeg businessman Roger Friesen, along with MEDA president Allan Sauder, participated in the conference. Friesen, who grew up in Colombia and worked for MEDA there in the early 1970s, described the discussion among the Colombian businesspeople as “very aggressive.” The ethical questions they explored were “the same kinds of faith/ business issues we grapple with here, from employeerelated issues to customer/ supplier relationships. When it comes to business and the church, they have the same issues we do. Their businesspeople bring skills and other gifts to the church, and there’s some tension about not being used by the church.”
He noted also that “there’s a hunger in the Christian business community in Colombia for these discussions and for finding solutions to ethical and value questions.”
Garcia saw promise in working together as a global Mennonite business community by “establishing relationship networks that facilitate commercial exchange and laying foundations that support community social development, in an interdependent manner, with a special emphasis on the poorest churches in the world.”
Only a few months remain (until Dec. 31) for U.S. citizens over 70½ years old to make a tax-free IRA gift to MEDA.
You can donate tax-free your Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) or any amount up to $100,000 per individual. Regulations require that an IRA gift go directly to the charity and not to a Donor Advised Fund.
This can be a win-win — it’s tax-free, plus you benefit a MEDA global project of your choice.
For more information contact MEDA’s U.S. office (717-560-6546) and ask for Mike Miller or Marlin Hershey.
