Welcome to Babson Street

Restaurant space opportunity presented itself, already having a restaurant across the street

Right after graduation, I started working for Chase Manhattan Bank in Istanbul. After 2 years, I realized that I didn’t enjoy working in an established company repeating similar tasks all the time. I was urged to create something from zero and grow it without any boundaries. After searching for a gap in a niche market, I noticed that there were no cookbooks published in Turkey which had pictures for recipes. So I found myself a partner who graduated from Cordon Bleu and who wanted to write a cookbook as well. After our second cookbook, we decided to create a trademark which would help sell our cookbooks and vice versa. At that point, we noticed that there were no artisanal chocolate shops in Turkey. Butterfly Chocolate was born to fill this need.

In 1863, the founder Jean-Baptiste Camus understood that his quest for the utmost refinement in his Cognac required the creation of a dedicated, independent House.

Living and working in NYC as a 20-something year old is an absolute grind. Balancing work, social life and everything in between challenged me to insert healthy lifestyle habits into every facet, especially eating. During days that I didn’t indulge over a restaurant feast, I forced myself to eat as healthy as possible, which led me to buy frozen cauliflower crust pizzas. It was a way for me to add a fun twist to my usual (read: boring) salad-eating cycle. After experiencing numerous weeks of empty grocery shelves and failure to find take out options, I decided to start making the veggie-carb substitute pizzas myself. Naturally, the “Babson” inside of me identified a gap in the food service space and scrambled to figure out a way to fill it. From there, I haven’t looked back, because I enjoy the product and I enjoy the work. The best part is that I’m literally faced with a new problem every single day, which challenges me to think innovatively, logically and patiently. For example, when I first started crafting the brand, I targeted health conscious millennial's. But now, after interacting with consumers, affinity groups and mentors, we’re evaluating a shift towards focusing on a market with dietary restrictions since our kitchen is dedicated gluten-free and our pizza can be vegan. Working through these daily decisions is truly gratifying and fuels me to continue being an entrepreneur.

Living in Europe among the chocolate greats created a desire to bring the high-end chocolate experience to chocolate milk.

A key and a coconut. When we popped open a coconut and stuck a straw in it to drink real fresh coconut water we realized what we were being sold in the U.S. was not the real deal. So we stuffed our luggage with a bunch of them, brought them back to Miami and the craze caught flame! We were inspired to expand our product line into premium rum because we believe rum is a spirit that many people haven’t had the pleasure of enjoying the right way. Much like we have seen happen with tequila and whiskey, rum is the next category to “premiumize” and to offer new, exciting brands from all over the world.

Growing up in Philadelphia with divorced immigrant parents taught me a lot of what I needed to know to get to where I am today. I grew up watching my mother hustling daily to provide me with the best possible life. I learned very early on that success meant hard work and sacrifice. So at an early age I started dabbling in different business ideas in an effort to contribute, which included selling popular headphones and watches. In high school I started a shoe cleaning business. This business ran for 4 months and we generated significant revenue. I was ecstatic. After just 4 months I was given an offer to sell. The decision was easy. I sold my first business and invested all of the money into starting DetraPel. The idea for DetraPel started from the conditioning service we were offering with my shoe cleaning business. I was using a competitor’s product, which I later found out was extremely carcinogenic, caused birth defects, dried white and ruined fabric. On top of that it was extremely expensive. By having used the toxic formulas, I exposed myself to harmful chemicals, but more importantly an industry-changing idea. I knew I wanted to create protective formulas that were safe enough to apply at home, without a mask, and in the presence of babies and puppies.

Experiencing the food and drink of Texas while working for Exxon, just after graduating from Babson. Bring these tastes to Boston.

As an Army sister, I was seeking a way to show my support & to give back. Honor Co. helps others do both of these via our “Bracelets For The Brave”!

I’ve been making mead since college. On my 30th birthday I decided to stop in to the Sunset Grill and treat myself to something different. They had mead there: $5 for 2oz and it was the worst mead I’d ever tried. I said that I could do better than that. The seed was probably planted then although I didn’t realize it. It wasn’t until I was at Babson that I started to think about this more seriously. I would brew mead when I needed to decompress. I started to think there could be a future here and started to research the market. When I tracked 5 meaderies over a 4 year data period and saw that mead was growing at 700% / year, I knew that it was on the cusp of a craft mead explosion like the craft beer explosion of the '90s. I wanted to be ready when that happened.

In 2006, Venezuela was going through fundamental changes, and I knew that in order to succeed as an entrepreneur, I had to expand my horizons to the largest single market in the world: the USA. When I began looking for opportunities, I began a conversation with my best friend about what we could do together. Outdoor Furniture was beginning to be an exciting new area, poised for growth, and we set out to build an outdoor furniture company based on four pillars: Design, Functionality, Durability and Harmony. From the beginning, we had an innate sense that these concepts had to guide not only the furniture we manufactured, but the company itself. We decided to be bold about color and it has paid off tremendously.

I was never really big on flowers because no one really ever got any for me. One day I realized I could by myself flowers and they made me just as happy. I began messing around with arranging them but truly fell in love when I took a course for fun on flower arranging. I was inspired to start my venture because I love how flowers make me feel and I love being able to brighten up people's days with flowers.

We wanted to improve the play environment and home for toddlers, and we ended up creating an innovative line of furnishings, decor and more playfully smart solutions for the entire family.

The inspiration to create my business sprouted from two different sources. On one hand, studying Entrepreneurship & Marketing at Babson enhanced the excitement within me to initiate and grow a business while, on the other, my passion for the island of Puerto Rico and my desire to share my love and knowledge of the island with others was, in itself, tremendous motivation. Babson prepared me for the challenges of managing a growing business – but it was the island itself which was the true inspiration! I came to Puerto Rico on vacation and fell in love with its landscapes, golden beaches, kaleidoscope of adventures and activities, warm, friendly people, and the vibrant Latino-Caribbean culture! It started with the purchase of a vacation villa for my family. Then people asked to rent the villa. Such requests increased as other villa owners asked me to handle short-term rentals for their villa ... and, without even a business plan, the enterprise grew organically because word-of-mouth spread and one villa turned into over 50! Aptly, I named the company “Paradise Villas & Vacations”. With the entrepreneurial grounding from Babson together with my newly discovered passion for hospitality and travel planning, I nurtured and developed a company culture dedicated to making sure all our guests have an amazing experience … tailor-made to how they like to enjoy their vacations. This includes “high touch”, 5-Star hospitality resulting in about 90% 5-Star reviews. Such achievements earned us “Superhost” status on Airbnb – the mark of a successful travel-related business.

On March 16, 2007, there was a massive outbreak of pet food contamination and thousands of pets had gotten sick and died. As a result of this, my mom started cooking for our pets because she didn’t trust any of the pet food on the market. This inspired us to create a company that pet parents can trust through placing a strong emphasis on safety and transparency.

I was tinkering in my garage and could not hear the doorbell—so I looked for a doorbell that would work to my phone. When I saw that none existed, I built my own.

For the love of rum and some interesting family history.

When my husband and I were on our honeymoon, we started talking about having a family and that conversation lead to what we would feed our family. We realized that we could either have convenience (pouches from a shelf) or quality (make the food fresh ourselves), but we could not have both convenience AND quality. So, we set out to create the business we would want to exist by the time we had children – one that provides fresh organic food that is also convenient to parents. Now we have a one-year old daughter, and we are proud to say she LOVES Smushed Organics and is such a happy healthy eater.

Rail Trail Flatbread Co. was opened in 2012 and created as a place for the community of Hudson to gather around the table. Partners Kasseris and El-Gamal developed this family of businesses as a method of community-building. This social enterprise the team embarked on to revive downtown Hudson can best be exemplified by the "open book model" deployed to the entire team: to create good profits for all stakeholders involved in the business. From investors to employees, owners to environment, Rail Trail Flatbread believes all parties involved must share in the "value" created.

It started out of my dorm room at Babson. All I needed was a space to write down business ideas and stay organized from week to week; however, I couldn't drill holes into the wall to set up a massive whiteboard or paint my walls with whiteboard paint. So Think Board was born -a dry erase film that was easy to install, looked beautiful, and worked like a charm. I stuck the first version of our product to the wall purely so I could write down other business ideas. It wasn't until 50 ideas later that enough friends came into my room and said "Hanson, your ideas aren't that great... BUT this thing... this is cool. Where can I get one?"

We are a family organization originating in the 1950's spanning four generations serving customers throughout New England.