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Tag: Spark Grills

Made in Colorado 2022 — Emerging Manufacturer

All Made In Colorado’s winners and finalists have at least one thing in common: They all make products in Colorado. 

It underlines the sheer breadth of the products made in Colorado. While the Colorado manufacturing base is not as established as places like the Rust Belt and the Southeast, it is also unconstrained by tradition and underpinned by innovation.  

And that might be exactly what the domestic industry needs as it rides a winning streak fueled by the return of manufacturing from China and other overseas locales — no matter whether it lands in Detroit or Kremmling, Colorado. 

READ — Made in Colorado 2022 — Top Food and Beverage Manufacturer

 

EMERGING MANUFACTURER

WINNER — Fading West Development

Buena Vista 

Visit — www.fadingwestdevelopment.com  

Fading West1

Fading West opened its 110,000-square-foot modular housing factory in Buena Vista in November 2021. Its first year was a bit of a doozy.

“It’s been a very changing startup year for sure,” says founder and CEO Charlie Chupp. “Just the environment of interest rates, employees, housing. Our mission is to create more affordable housing and workforce housing, and it’s one of our big limiting factors as well. We’re still dealing with COVID outbreaks.”

But that didn’t stop the 135-employee company from delivering upwards of 150,000 square feet of housing in year one as it scaled manufacturing capacity to 25,000 square feet a month. “The demand and need in the state has been overwhelming,” says Chupp. “We’ve been able to partner with some great groups around the state to impact communities and create more homes for people who wouldn’t be able to afford them.”

Fading West supplies its own development in Buena Vista, The Farm, and is also working on projects in Breckenridge, Vail and Gunnison. To meet demand, Fading West is adding a second shift in early 2023 that will boost capacity by more than 10,000 square feet a month. If all goes to plan, a pair of larger Fading West factories will open on the Front Range by 2024.

“Colorado is a challenging state to build in for traditional construction,” says Chupp. “We’re able to control those costs better just by the nature of manufacturing, and if we’re staying in the state, that allows us to minimize our transportation costs and allows us to be really effective in accomplishing our mission of creating more affordable housing.”

FINALIST — Spark Grills

Boulder

Visit — www.sparkgrills.com

Spark grill

Founded by Benjamin West in 2017, Spark is rethinking the charcoal grill as it expands its manufacturing footprint in Boulder. The startup’s proprietary Briqs are ready to go in about five minutes, and its grill allows for precise temperature control from 250 to 900 degrees Fahrenheit.

 

Meati FoodsFINALIST — Meati Foods

Boulder 

Visit — www.meati.com

 

Fermenting mushroom roots into protein products that mimic steak and chicken, Meati raised an eye-popping $150 million in July 2022 to accelerate production. Case in point: Slated for launch in late 2022, Meati’s 115,000-square-foot Mega Ranch facility in Thornton will have capacity to produce hundreds of millions of pounds annually.

 

 

Denver-based writer Eric Peterson is the author of Frommer’s Colorado, Frommer’s Montana & Wyoming, Frommer’s Yellowstone & Grand Teton National Parks and the Ramble series of guidebooks, featuring first-person travelogues covering everything from atomic landmarks in New Mexico to celebrity gone wrong in Hollywood. Peterson has also recently written about backpacking in Yosemite, cross-country skiing in Yellowstone and downhill skiing in Colorado for such publications as Denver’s Westword and The New York Daily News. He can be reached at [email protected]

Spark Grills aims to disrupt grilling with new funding round

Spark Grills, a Boulder-based grilling startup, recently secured an additional $3.5 million in funding. The investment was led by Lerer Hippeau with participation from previous investors including Global Founders Capital, Bullish and Precursor Ventures. This brings the startup’s total funding to more than $12 million as it prepares to launch its product.

Spark Grills was started in 2017 to redesign the experience of charcoal grilling.

“I fell in love with cooking with wood and charcoal while living in Kenya. Cooking with wood and charcoal is a great experience that draws people in and makes for great food,” says Ben West, CEO of Spark Grills. “When I moved back to Portland, I wanted to continue cooking that way but it was basically impossible. I learned that 70% of grillouts today are with propane, so I was curious what it would be like to design the whole grill, to get it back in the mainstream.”

Now, three years after its inception, the startup is gearing up to deliver its first shipment of grills in July with a system meant to bring new precision and ease to charcoal grilling.

Spark Grills Briq
Image courtesy of Spark Grills.

Spark Grills is launching with its sleek charcoal grill, app, and proprietary wood and charcoal Briqs system, which was invented by food and biomass scientists in Boulder. According to West, the Briqs — which are single-use sheets of charcoal made specifically for the Sparks Grill — are designed to ignite faster, burn steadier and make cleaning easier, compared to regular charcoal. Plus, you get the temperature control and flavor of charcoal that is lacking from gas grilling, he says. And the app? It allows you to monitor the temperatures of the grill and the food you’re cooking.

But the Boulder-based company is just getting started. Spark Grills used the funding from its previous two rounds  — $2.1 million and $6.7 million, respectively — to get the company off the ground, hire a team and start production. Now, with its new $3.5 million investment and shipments almost ready to go, the investment will fund “continuous product innovation [of both the grill and the Briqs] and further our commercialization efforts,” West says. ‘“This is just the beginning for us.”

Going forward, Spark Grills will continue its pre-order sales and bring new innovation and possibilities to grilling. “The way our Briqs are made allow for endless flavor possibilities,” West says. “And because we manufacture our Briqs at our headquarters in Boulder, we can easily test and develop new flavor profiles.”