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Business & Tech

St. Louis Trio Crafts Special Spice Blends

Adventures in Spice provides top quality herbs and spices from around the world—right in your neighborhood.

Laura Bozzay, Debbie Siebert and Linda Yonce are the three woman team behind Adventures in Spice, a St. Louis spice company that wants to “enhance” your life and your cooking. The company sells spices, herbs and gourmet blends at farmers markets, festivals, craft fairs and online. You can find them at the Clayton Farmer's Market on Saturday.

Bozzay said they started their company three years ago and don’t have immediate plans for a brick and mortar shop. She said they wanted to try out their business plan first.

“You want to know several things before you pour money into a business,” she said. By selling their products at farmers markets and online, they get to keep their prices low while discovering who their best customers are and what they want.

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“We have a following across the St. Louis area,” she said.

Adventures in Spice is part of a business incubator program at the BEGIN New Venture Center at the St. Patrick Center in downtown St. Louis. The center has a culinary suite with a professional kitchen for start-up and early-stage companies.

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“We share the kitchen with 18 other kitchen companies,” she said. They enjoy the collaborative atmosphere of the business incubator and Bozzay said that other chefs will stop by to see what they are mixing and offer helpful advice from their own culinary experience.

Adventures in Spice has more than 155 spice products, including blends for special diets, like no sugar products or spice blends without salt.

“We carry unusual things, like granulated honey, that you won’t find at a grocery store,” she said. Their products are also much fresher and of a higher quality than what you might find at your local market.

“Typically the grocery stores buy in big volumes,” she said. Spices end up sitting in warehouses or in trucks for a long time, then sit even longer on the store shelf. “Heat, light and moisture is the enemy of spices,” Bozzay said.

“We’re buying a higher quality product. Our spices are from all over the world, but they are cleaned and processed in the United States to USDA standards,” she said. Bozzay said customers only need to stop by their stand and smell the spices to understand the difference between their product and grocery store herbs.

Adventures in Spices can also mix up special blends for party favors or for holiday gift giving. They offer special blends starting at one pound and can do a semi-private label on orders as small as 25 units.

They can also come to your event, like a wedding reception or anniversary party, and mix spices you select to symbolize the blending of families and love. The customer chooses the spices before hand and guests can pour the mix into their own packets to take home.

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