Katie’s kickstarter chicken
One of the most popular items at “Taste By Katie” is the homemade ice cream Katie Gilman makes once a week, with flavors based on customer requests. But unless she raises enough money for a new freezer this month, her ice cream is off the menu.
Gilman started her own business last year, focusing on something she saw as needed in the community: healthy home-cooked meals to go. She didn’t qualify for help from the Small Business Administration, so she took out loans based on her earnings from the Marriott Corporation, got the support of mom and dad, bought second-hand equipment, and set up in the Dominion Hills shopping plaza on Wilson Boulevard.
She was inspired to cook by her grandmother, who taught her how to bake the coffee cake on the brunch menu. Grandma’s Magic Cookie Bars are another favorite of children. Gilman was trained professionally at the Culinary Arts Institute in Washington, D.C. She went on to cook at the Marriott. As a personal chef, her favorite part of the job was coming up with menus everyone would enjoy, from the 6 year old to the working mom. Cooking for busy parents drove her to start a business designed for helping make people’s lives easier.
Despite reaching capacity as a one-woman business, she is stuck. Her oven stopped working months ago, her other oven is quirky, her freezer died, her ability to grow is on hold, and her loans are maxed out. Her business, despite a good initial year, needs to expand to survive, and Gilman can’t make it grow on her own.
Encouraged by customers who donated funds, she, her brother Matt, and brother-and-sister filmmakers Richy and Sarah Leitner, are working together to create some small business buzz for Gilman’s crowdfunding campaign to grow the business.
The four, now in their 20’s, attended Arlington’s Yorktown High School. Gilman turned to Matt, a writer-editor, to create the copy for her website. He enlisted Richy and Sarah Leitner and their team at The Rest of the Moose Media, who donated their skills, to create an introductory video for the website. It’s a film noir, Raymond Chandler-esque, that paints a four minute panorama of Gilman, the charm of her restaurant, and her plight, in black and white. See www.indiegogo.com/projects/taste-by-katie.