We’re excited to share that two of our awesome women-owned Accelerator companies, Yoconut Dairy Free and Progeny Coffee, are nominated for the Small Business Grant Contest organized by shipping and printing giant, FedEx.
The contest enters small businesses from across the United States to win grants of up to $50,000 and up to $7,500 in FedEx Office print and business services.
Progeny and Yoconut were both entered into the running earlier this year, and now, it’s up to the public (aka you) to vote them in to the finals. Voting ends April 1st and the finalists are announced April 5th. You can vote once every 24 hours.
Read on below to learn more about the companies and hear from their founders. When you’re ready to vote, head on over to the Fedex Small Business Grant Contest website and vote!
Yoconut Dairy Free:
Yoconut makes a delicious dairy-free yogurt out from coconuts and other all-natural, alergen-free ingredients. Yoconut DF is on a mission to make healthy and allergy safe foods that everyone can enoy.
Its founder, Bonnie Lau shares “Yoconut Dairy Free is my passion project that is born out of my personal need. I LOVE to eat. So my first question upon picking up running was what I can eat. Magazines upon magazines say yogurt. But dairy just was not for me. After talking to many people, I realized the world needs a better yogurt. We pioneer an incredibly fresh and indulgent, zero food waste, and sustainable coconut yogurt that has naturally occurring electrolytes and zero added sugar. Small batch made in SF.” | vote for Yoconut here.
Progeny Coffee:
Progeny sells sustainable 100% Specialty Colombian Coffee, single-origin to coffee lovers all to support its mission of empowering Colombian coffee farmers to get out of poverty.
As CEO, Maria Palacio tells it, Progeny is not only producing delicious coffee, they “have already doubled the income and impacted around 20 families of farmers from the coffee we have sold to companies. We need to keep expanding our work in order to keep helping farmers get out of poverty. We'll use the grant to hire more people to be part of our sales team, therefore, extending our impact with the farmers. We will also improve the working conditions of the farmers in Colombia, so they can focus on increasing the quality of their coffee and get more revenues for it.” | vote for Progeny here.
