Local entrepreneur wins small business award
Berl Tiskus
Rachel Carlyle Edington, owner of Gluten Free Mama Kitchen LLC, recently won a state small business award.
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POLSON — A sick baby with Celiac Disease was the reason Rachel Carlyle Edington began her business, Gluten Free Mama Kitchen LLC.
Now Rachel has been in business for six years and recently won the Montana District Office of the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Small Business Week Association award for small businesses with less than 10 employees.
“I’m excited, blessed, honored,” Rachel said. “It wouldn’t be possible without my team.”
She also thanked Western Building Centers for their forklift assistance, First Interstate Bank and Montana Community Development Corporation for all their help and support.
Gluten Free Mama products are now in distribution centers in the east, according to Rachel. She said Safeway Corporation led the way because they wanted to get her products into more stores.
Although serious health issues, multiple sclerosis and trigeminal neuralgia have hit Rachel hard, she deals with the company’s sales, marketing and social media. Much of the work she does sitting or lying down.
When she began her business, Rachel doubled her orders the first year.
Each year since, orders have been up 30 to 33 percent, and in 2013, she’ll double last year’s production.
With the company growing so rapidly, Rachel’s husband Rob has taken on ordering supplies, dealing with large orders, personnel and many other duties.
“The hardest thing is I wore all the hats,” Rachel said. “Each hat is a full time job.”
One employee, Julie Herron, will be moved to the office, answering phones, dealing with Amazon orders, shipping small parcels to grocery stores, QuickBooks invoices and continue training new employees to package Gluten Free Mama products.
When Rachel first began her business, there were two employees, and she was one. They worked from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. two days a week. Now Gluten Free Mama has six on the crew, and they’re interviewing to double their staff. Interviews take time, too, since Rachel considers the staff as a family. New hires have to be able to get along with people, be quick and reliable.
Rachel’s always been a businesswoman. She began at age 12 with a computer-generated business card advertising her babysitting service. Her dad gave her a calendar and told her she needed to keep track of jobs so she wouldn’t double up. Living in a subdivision with lots of young children, Rachel was busy and kept her business going until she was 16, when she began work in a pizza parlor.
Rachel started her own preschool and daycare so she could stay home with her children but still have a business. She utilized her preschool building when she first began Gluten Free Mama Kitchen LLC when she learned daughter Lexie couldn’t eat products containing gluten.
“I thought big but grew small,” Rachel said.
Soon she’ll be off to a TableTalk show in Connecticut with 1,000 stores attending to sell Gluten Free Mama products, opening even more avenues.
Then in June Rachel will teach gluten-free cooking to the chefs at Providence St. Joseph’s Medical Center.
Who knows what’s next for the Gluten Free Mama?
