We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Scott Eatmon. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Scott below.

Alright, Scott thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

I haven’t always been vegan, but Detroit has always been a huge part of my life. I mostly grew up here, from kindergarten to long after high school. As an adult, my career brought me back to the city that I loved, and for the past 20 years I have been lucky enough to watch Detroit flourish and grow. I’ve witnessed a once forgotten cultural appreciation for the city restored to much of its former glory.

The Detroit area already has a sizeable vegan and plant based community, and we wanted to contribute to that. As proud Michiganders and proud Detroiters our goal with this business was to combine our passion for veganism with our passion for the city and community that we are so very happy to be a part of.

Detroit represents strength, innovation and togetherness. Detroit represents pride, determination and perseverance through adversity. Detroit Jerky strives to make our city and community proud by being the embodiment of those qualities.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

We have been vegan for many years. While working from home during the pandemic, we were able to use some of that extra time to try out new recipes and experiment more in the kitchen. We got pretty good at making some really tasty meat alternatives and eventually decided to try making our own vegan jerky as well.

Our intent was not to start a business, but just for our own personal consumption at home. After some trial and error, what we created came out much better than what we expected.. in fact, our vegan friends, as well as our meat-eating friends all agreed that we stumbled onto something great! So, in September of 2020, we decided to make this into a business.

We then started looking for a commercial kitchen and were fortunate enough to meet Marlo Bendon, owner of the Proud Mitten Shared Kitchen in Plymouth, MI. She helped us move from concept to creation, not only by providing us with an incredible commercial kitchen space, but more so because she helped us learn the ropes with a food startup business. Her mission is to help people like us take these great ideas and develop them into something real, and something successful!

2 years later, we are thrilled to have grown so much, adding 2 new products to our lineup earlier this year for a total of six original flavors. We are thrilled to have brought a product to market that can be appreciated by such a wide and diverse audience. The response to our products has been overwhelmingly positive. Vegans and vegetarians appreciate tasty snack alternatives, and meat eaters have been completely shocked that something made from plants can be so similar to meat.

The best part of all of this, is that we are able to offer a healthier alternative to a classic snack, bringing all the flavor and enjoyment, but without the saturated fats, cholesterol, and nitrates. We are very proud that our products are better for people, better for our planet and no animals are harmed along the way.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

We spend a lot of time at local events, offering discounts and promotions while also introducing our products to new consumers. That face to face interaction has been crucial in building our reputation and brand awareness. After the first interaction, its all about making sure we continue to make the highest quality products, and then making those products readily available. At the start of this year, we teamed up with our distributor, John Chetcuti from Atoms Green Market. He has helped to bring our jerky to around 40 new retail locations in S.E. Michigan and Northern Ohio.

Have you ever had to pivot?

With the success of our business also comes some very scary decisions that will need to be made soon. We have both been working in our respective fields for 16-26 years, but with the rapid growth of our business and the clear need for us to expand operations soon, at least one of us will be faced with the very intimidating decision on whether or not to put our career aside to pursue the business.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://detroitjerkyllc.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/detroit_jerky
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/detroitjerkyllc/