Daily Inspiration: Meet Ally Cohen

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ally Cohen.

Hi Ally, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Back in the beginning of 2022, I (Ally) answered a Facebook post asking for taste testers for a new kind of vegan jerky. I was sent a sample of Michigan Cherry Bomb and instantly became a fan. Over the next year and a half, we’d get our hands on as much Detroit Jerky as we could – be it at local stores, festivals and food fairs. At Arts Beats and Eats in 2023, We met Scott Eatmon, the founder and owner of Detroit Jerky. It was great to meet him after all of the Facebook posts. Scott had a really fun and dry sense of humor, much like our own. In November of 2023, Scott posted in the Vegan Detroit Facebook group that he’d made the difficult decision to stop production of Detroit Jerky. We were devastated!!! He posted again that he had a big box of soy curls that he had leftover for anyone who was interested in purchasing it. I’d been searching for soy curls as I was hoping to make a recipe that I’d found online and I had no idea where to even find them so I jumped on that. We were headed out of town to visit our daughter in NYC that weekend, so we made arrangements to potentially pick up that box when we were back home. I asked him if he by chance had any jerky left that we could purchase. When he said that he had 50 bags of it, I told him that we’d stop by on our way out of town on our road trip – HOORAY!!!! 50 bags of deliciousness!!! We stopped by to pick up the very last case of Sweet Mesquite and started our roadie to visit our daughter. Along the way as we were enjoying our first bag of the trip, I asked Doug if it was a “stupid idea” to see if they wanted partners so they didn’t’ have to completely close up shop. Scott said that they weren’t interested in a partnership, but that he WOULD be interested in possibly selling the company. We set up a meeting for the following week when we got back into town. We met at our photography studio (Frameable Faces Photography) in West Bloomfield, talked some numbers, got some more information and chatted about a sales price for the company. We arranged for Scott and Katie (his wife and business partner) to come back to reconvene the following week and at that meeting, the deal was done! We were the new owners of Detroit Jerky! Scott and Katie held our hands during the entire transition, helped to train us on production, learn a lot of the ins and outs of food production at the commercial level and BOOM! Here we are now!

As a result of Doug’s strong marketing and social media marketing experience, we now sell Detroit Jerky in about 20 stores in the state of Michigan and several other stores nationwide. We’re still committed to carrying on the tradition that Scott and Katie started. This is a true food love story and it’s still being written!

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
No, it has not been a smooth road. One of the challenges that we had to face was when our sealer wasn’t quite sealing completely and we developed a mold problem. We were quick to get in touch with the stores that were carrying the bad bags and had them pull them from their shelves. We offered those stores, as well as any online orders that were placed, a brand new replacement of those bags. All of the stores were really appreciative of how proactive we were with that. Several of them commented that we were the first company to offer to make it right. We’ve since made it a standard practice to triple check our seals to prevent this from happening. And we’ve been successful!

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Doug and I also own a photography studio called Frameable Faces Photography. We’ve had our studio in the center of West Bloomfield inside the Orchard Mall for almost 17 years. We love live streaming – we were “Periscope famous” before Periscope was acquired by Twitter. We’ve been together for 31 years and we’ll be married for 29 on May 19 of this year (2025). We have two adult children – Lacey is 25 and is a writer in NYC. Tony is 23 and he’ll be moving out west to be a wildfire fighter/wilderness first responder. We have four fur kids – Tucker, Luna, Floofy and Archie (all cats with vastly different yet super fun personalities) and we have two furgrandkids in NYC (Holden and Desi ) and a scaly grandkid – Buddy (he’s a bearded dragon). We work and live together and spend just about all of our time together. I think what sets us apart from other people is that we genuinely love and like each other. There’s so much more to our lives that it won’t fit into this little space – but we’re definitely open to sharing more if you’d like to do a quick phone interview. There really is nothing like being able to wake up, work, live and laugh with your best friend every single day. We have a truly blessed life together and we’re insanely proud of our kids and each other.

We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up?
Ally – I think my favorite childhood memory is all of the traveling I was able to do with my family. We went scuba diving, cruising, exploring. So many truly amazing memories with my family – traveling was a way to see the world around us. And it’s something that I carry still to this day. It’s helped me show my own children the beauty and splendor of our world.

Doug – I have so many amazing childhood memories – I was really fortunate. Growing up watching my older brothers play football, traveling to bowl games and seeing family in New York, Virginia Beach and Florida was amazing. But so were the Jewish holidays at home and the friends I had in my neighborhood in Farmington Hills.

Pricing:

• One bag of Detroit Jerky $7
• Detroit Jerky T-shirt $22

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.detroitjerkyllc.com
• Instagram: detroit_jerky
• Facebook: Detroit Jerky
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@detroitjerkyllc
• Other: https://bsky.app/profile/detroitjerky.bsky.social