We were lucky to catch up with Elizabeth Choto recently and have shared our conversation below.
Elizabeth, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you tell us a bit about who your hero is and the influence they’ve had on you?
My biggest heroes are my parents. From as far back as I can remember, they both imparted a sense of entrepreneurship and a love of planting and growing food that I still carry with me today. From growing small-scale vegetables and fruit that were enough to feed more than our immediate family, to large-scale mono-crop plantings like corn and sweet potatoes, there was always something growing and we were always learning about how every plant, vegetable, and fruit could nourish us and provide for us by selling the surplus. They both had other entrepreneurial ventures going (which was rough at the time), but I ‘m grateful that from watching them, my siblings and I had the idea ingrained in us that we can learn how to do anything. The trick is the patience to keep practicing and improving.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Graze Dat! is a charcuterie board and grazing board company that started as a pandemic project. Right before the pandemic, I’d opened a brewery tour and was having a great time taking people to the brewery scene here and leading behind the scenes tours. Once everything shut down, I was faced with how to continue my tours without breweries, and I created an online tasting with a new beer that was launching globally. During one of those tastings, we realized we were drinking way too heavy a beer with a bunch of newbies, and that we needed food or snacks so people didn’t tap out 5 minutes into things. So I encouraged everyone to have snacks on hand at the next tour and I made myself a charcuterie board. During that tasting, literally no-one cared what they were drinking. They wanted to know what was on my board and if I could make them one. One board turned into five, and so on. Things really took off when a friend posted a board I made for her on a local foodie board (Where Black NOLA Eats), and we’ve been going strong ever since!
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
This journey has been a real life rollercoaster! The ups have been amazing and the downs (like this last and probably future summers to come in NOLA) have been the absolute pits. This last summer was especially difficult. It’s traditional for many residents to escape the heat at the height of summer, and for things to slow down. They ground to an almost screeching halt this summer, forcing some restaurants to go out of business and Graze Dat! was really close to doing that. To survive, we had to pare down our menu and really focus on marketing a handful of things that we know are our bestsellers, and also formulate a plan for years to come to ensure that we have enough in our reserves to get through the tough summer months.
How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?
Graze Dat! is completely self-funded. We decided to bootstrap our operation and still run a lean organization started with a $45 charcuterie board and no marketing budget. Social media (Instagram and Facebook) were our very best (and free) marketing “friends” and enabled us to reach so many more people than we would have had we been posted up on a corner somewhere or just relying on friends sharing their experiences and pics. As we’ve grown, we still rely heavily on social media but have also added email marketing campaigns that have allowed us to stay in touch with our customer for very minimal cost. We’ve always acquired materials in bulk and that helps us to maintain the quality our customers have come to enjoy withough having to pay crazy prices.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.grazedat.com
- Instagram: @grazedat
- Facebook: @grazedat
Image Credits
Elizabeth Choto