Her Campus stepped out and met up with one of ODU’s very own entrepreneurs, Janay Brown, owner of Full Belly Delights LLC. Brown is a junior at ODU and majoring in marketing and working with the Strome Entrepreneurial Center.
Full Belly Delights is a gourmet retailer that sells handcrafted pork and turkey bacon treats. They feature three different products: stuffed and original truffles, flavored bacon strips, and bacon pops. These come in all different flavors from barbeque to seasonal flavors like gingersnap, catchily named “Oh Snap.”
Photo courtesy of Apex Design Art, LLC
Brown stated that her personal favorite is the “Berry Delightful” stuffed truffle, which is a truffle that is filled with raspberry and dipped in chocolate and drizzled with more raspberry and topped with more bacon, and one of our original truffles, French, which is simply bacon dipped in vanilla, sprinkled with sweet cinnamon. . . It’s kinda like french toast and bacon had a baby.”
Photo courtesy of Apex Design Art, LLC
Full Belly Delights is currently expanding to sell not only bacon but apparel and subscription boxes as well.
Things are going well for Full Belly Delights, but there were definitely times of struggle. The business started as a project for a high school class. Brown gave a presentation with samples.
“Next thing I knew, I had people calling me left and right, asking me for my barbeque bacon. I said it was only for a class but somebody peaked my interest when they said that they would pay for it. So, once they said that kind of a domino effect happened. I had over 100 orders in a month,” Brown sighed as she remembered the stress of so many orders.
She made a rule to only complete ten orders a day. When she started at ODU, she walked into the Strome Entrepreneurial Center and found help in Nancy Grden, the executive director of the Center. She encouraged Brown to get a job at the center and now Brown works as a student consultant to help future business owners get their permits, licenses, trademarks and other things like that.
Picking which kind of company she wanted was one of the first challenges of making the business. She knew she was not making a large corporation, so that was out, but she was torn between being a sole proprietorship or a Limited Liability Company (LLC). She chose LLC because that “separated me and my assets from my business asset. So that helps from a business standpoint that if somebody gets sick, or someone sues, they could only come for my business, and not my car or my house or anything like that.”
The next big road hurdle Brown faced were finding a kitchen and having inspections. Yummy Goodness Catering Company lets Full Belly Delights use their kitchen after hours.
“Just to get the inspection took me four months. No inspection agency would inspect my business,” Brown recalled.
Eventually after conversations with the Food and Drug Administration, Brown found the Department of Agriculture and they sent someone out to check out her kitchen so she could begin the process of selling.
Now, after three years of hard work, Full Belly Delights is starting to turn a profit and doing well. The business is thriving and Brown loves “being my own boss, nobody tells me what to do.” People can buy the gourmet bacon at www.fullbellydelights.com. She also has an Instagram (fullbellydelights), a Twitter (FB_Delights), a Snapchat (FB_Delights), and a Facebook (Full Belly Delights, LLC). They can also be purchased in ODU’s very own Monarch Way Store on campus.
Brown will be graduating in May 2019, but the self-proclaimed “serial entrepreneur” has big plans for the next year and beyond. She plans to start up two other small side business this year, one of which will be a subscription box for couples, sending out monthly date nights such as pajamas, popcorn, and a movie. In her spare time, she dances, raps, and loves eating food.
For future entrepreneurs, she wants you to “Make sure whatever you do you have a strong passion for it. There will be late nights, early mornings, and stressful times where you want to quit, but it’s worth it.”
To get involved with the Strome Entrepreneurial Center, just walk on in and talk to anybody working there.