From home bakeries to hat-making to third spaces, Gainesville’s small business scene thrives on passion and perseverance. Owners were motivated by their visions and dreams. And what they found was a supportive local community.
Dylan Sobien and Narteat “Ohm” Sintupanpratu own a restaurant with an avocado-based menu. Amanda De Turo is living her dream of being a baker. Trinity Johnson is a hat-making entrepreneur. Braden Ramirez and Kate Yeung formed a third space. And Radley and Jennifer Ruland are into creating brand awareness.
They all face challenges such as rising rents and a transient college-town population. Some government reports expose the realities they face, like U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data that says that in Florida, two out of every three newly opened small businesses fail.
Most new businesses don’t make it long-term, a report from the U.S. Small Business Administration concurred. Between 1994 and 2021, about 68% of new companies remained open after two years, and fewer than half survived for five years.
These are the stories of five local businesses that are beating the odds. We open with their individual stories and conclude with interviews with city government's team that helps to make free help available to all.
Having it made in the avocado shade
As a freshman at the University of Florida with plans to major in materials engineering, Dylan Sobien pictured himself pursuing a career in nano computation in cancer research. By the time he was a senior and graduating, though, he had changed course.
“I struggled with what I think many students struggle with, kind of a little bit of an identity crisis,” said Sobien, who earned a bachelor's in 2014 in Science in Food and Resource Economics. “You know, it’s hard being that young, going through studies, figuring yourself out and having this pressure to kind of plan out your entire life and your entire course right then and there in a few years.”
Eleven years later, Sobien finds himself on a different path to success. He is a co-owner of a Gainesville restaurant, Hass Kitchen, which boasts an avocado-based menu. Selling food items like Hass French Toast (with avocado cream cheese, fresh fruit and pistachios) and Hass Classic Breakfast (avocado fries, sausage, ham, dill tater tots, grilled tomato, sunny side up egg and warm sourdough), he's taken avocados and transformed them into creative masterpieces.
The 39-year-old restaurateur said that he and his business partner of four years, Narteat “Ohm” Sintupanpratu, are examples of small-business people who have made it against the odds.
Opening a restaurant was a dream that Sobien said he did not know he even had until he realized that material engineering wasn’t his thing. He dropped out of UF and worked at a local sushi restaurant. That's where he met Sintupanpratu.
“We would normally very often nerd out about food and cuisine and daydream about ideas of restaurants,” Sobien said. “So, I went back to school, under the business college.”
Sobien and Sintupanpratu’s dream was not so easy to chase. They got sued three months into their venture because their original name, Pit & Peel, was already claimed by a North Carolina company. They rebranded as Hass Kitchen, a nod to the avocado at the heart of their menu. But then avocado prices began to rise. With their signature ingredient suddenly becoming more costly, they worried that their dream might not have a chance. Another concern is the possibility of being evicted if the building where they are leasing their business gets sold.
Many businesses fail because they don’t figure out a way to differentiate themselves and/or they are underpriced, said Michael H. Morris, a former UF George and Lisa Etheridge Professor of Entrepreneurship. However, he added, the most important thing for a business to succeed is networking.
“It’s your ability to leverage, but leverage network relationships,” Morris said. “So, it’s who do you know? Who do they know? Who can connect you to this? Who can help you open this door? Who can get you a testimonial from this person?”
Baking up her dream career
For Amanda De Turo, owner of Black Apron Baking, her passion comes to life in the quiet of her own kitchen.
While De Turo started baking professionally in 2020 during the quarantine, her love for it goes back much further.
“I’ve always loved baking my entire life,” she said. “I knew since I was 5 that I wanted to do something in culinary for my career.”
Originally from Clermont, she enrolled in Valencia College’s downtown Orlando culinary program right out of high school and earned her associate degree in December 2022.
When her boyfriend and friends moved to Gainesville for college, an empty room opened up in their place. De Turo took this as a sign.
She moved in and continued working toward her bachelor’s in business management at Valencia online. She also began building her baking business from the ground up.
Today, she runs a business allowed under the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services’ cottage food law, which allows her to sell certain foods made in her unlicensed home kitchen directly to customers.
“My company is under an LLC,” De Turo said, “so just another thing to kind of protect myself.”
Based mainly in Gainesville but still taking orders in Orlando, De Turo runs Black Apron Baking entirely on her own. Her specialty is intricately designed sugar cookies — a craft she admits took some practice.
“Obviously, the first ones looked terrible,” she said. “I thought I was going to be a professional right when I started, and that obviously did not happen. But I stuck with it and was determined to make it work and get good at it.”
De Turo said she’s gone through several phases and trials to find success in her baking dream.
“Figuring out what works for you and your business and how to reach the right audience,” she added, “can be a challenge.”
Hats off to her customizable idea
Gainesville is home to a variety of creative small businesses, each navigating its own challenges. Trinity Johnson, for instance, runs CAPS on University, a local hat-making business.
She has built her brand by focusing on unique designs and marketing directly to customers through social media and community events.
She got the idea to sell custom hats during a trip to Nashville with her mom, where busy streets were lined with shops selling outrageously priced custom hats. Noticing there was no similar business in Gainesville, she decided to hit the ground running and start making her own.
Once she had products to share, she turned to social media, which quickly became a central part of her outreach and a key way to connect with customers.
“Every place I’ve ever worked, I have been on the social media and marketing team,” she said, so I have a lot of experience with that.”
Johnson also shared that she has realized how much local businesses support one another, with many local entrepreneurs working together and cheering each other on.
In the market for love
Coterie Market is a business idea born from a simple date-night dilemma.
Kate Yeung and Braden Ramirez — who met while attending UF, had corporate jobs and at the time had been dating for six years — were always on the lookout for new places to spend time together in Gainesville.
Then an opportunity presented itself — to open a business that served as a “third space,” a welcoming gathering spot outside of home and work where the community can connect and feel a sense of belonging.
It was an opportunity that felt too good to pass up.
“We just fully went all in,” said Yeung, who in 2021 earned a bachelor’s in Business Administration.
They said good-bye to the corporate world (“We knew as soon as we quit our jobs, it was all in or nothing,” Yeung said) and leased out retail space to create the Coterie Market — a cafe, retail store and workshop space.
Initially, they had planned to first focus on hosting workshops, but there was a delay in moving in. That’s when they pivoted to the cafe.
“We love making our own food and drinks all the time,” Yeung said, “so we were like, ‘You know what? Maybe we could continue that.’ ”
For the first three years, Yeung and Ramirez ran the business alone. Managing every aspect on their own proved to be demanding, Yeung said, but it laid the groundwork for the team of four they built later.
“We were making drinks, kind of like prepping and batching everything, making sure that we had a supply run and all the ingredients were there,” she said. “So, the admin side of that is quite insane.”
Yeung says that keeping a business open is a challenge, but not one she is currently worried about. Her biggest challenge these days is not having enough time.
“You can ask our vendors or customers,” she said. “They know we don’t sleep.”
Eventually, she said, the two plan to expand their business to other college towns similar to Gainesville, where students are their target audience.
Juggling jobs while building brands
In the 1990s, Radley Ruland was on the UF football team and he met his future bride, Jennifer, then a nursing student. After graduation, he got a job selling cable advertising for Cox Media.
That soon became his day job. At night, Ruland was taking calls for Rad Wear, a former side business that he and his now wife built from scratch into a success.
“We're in the top one percent of all distributors in the country,” Radley Ruland said, “as far as our space goes, in the promotional product and apparel world.”
He got the idea for Rad Wear from a conversation with a young man whose parents owned an embroidery shop. Ruland began working on a client base and started selling embroidered goods.
“I did it on the side, as I was still working at Cox Cable, for about two years,” he said. “I started selling embroidery, like decorated apparel, you know, like uniforms.”
Ruland sold so many embroidered products that he decided to start his own company.
“I got more business in that week than I knew what to do with,” Ruland said. “But my wife would not let me quit my job because I had a 401(k), pension and all that.”
The Rulands spent two years working their original day jobs while running Rad Wear at night. He said they practically raised their kids in the office.
“At night, Jen and I would stay up and do proposals and take care of the kids,” Ruland said. “We would usually go to bed around 2 a.m. or 3 a.m., and then get up at 6 a.m., or 7 a.m., and start all over.”
In a report from the Journal of Small Business Strategy, the average rate of survival for newly established small businesses is two years. Rad Wear recently celebrated its 15th anniversary.
Ruland credits their success to the company’s ability to adapt.
During the pandemic, for example, Ruland pivoted to selling personal protective equipment, a move that meant that Rad Wear’s sales did not take as much of a hit as the rest of the industry.
How the city tries to support small business growth
The City of Gainesville has resources to support small local businesses to help them grow.
“The stronger businesses we have,” said Zeriah Folston, City of Gainesville Small Business and Equal Opportunity director, “the stronger local economy we have and help us ensure that Gainesville continues to stay vibrant.”
In the U.S., most businesses are classified as small. According to the Small Business Administration, over the past 25 years, small businesses have contributed to the creation of 12.9 million new jobs, accounting for roughly two out of every three jobs added to the economy.
Folston sees small businesses as the backbone of Gainesville’s economy. They not only add flavor and personality to the city, she said, but they are fundamental to the city’s economic health.
When entrepreneurs run home bakeries or local boutique shops, their success has ripple effects: they create jobs, pay taxes that help fund public services and reinvest their earnings into other neighborhood businesses.
This effect, where dollars spent locally circulate through the community, strengthens not just the owners, but the entire city.
Folson and his team, which includes Faylene Welcome, the director of Small Business and Vendor Diversity Relations, and Sylvia Warren, the Equal Opportunity manager for the city’s Small Business Department, work together to help businesses reach their full potential.
Welcome helps coordinate city initiatives and programs, promote small businesses and lead outreach efforts. She emphasized the importance of businesses having strong survival skills, a clear framework in place and an effective marketing strategy, especially during both lean times and periods of growth.
“There will be peaks and valleys as part of operating a business,” Welcome said.
The Small Business Department of Gainesville has worked closely with start-up businesses to promote resources.
Resources include monthly training sessions and free workshops. Folston said trainings include teaching entrepreneurs how to start a business, how to finance it, how to get capital and how to solicit staff.
“And one of those resources is us at the city of Gainesville,” Folston said. “Utilize us.”
