Exploring Life & Business with Leigh Radatz of Stella’s Artisan Nuts

Today we’d like to introduce you to Leigh Radatz. 

Hi Leigh, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
After a 28-year career in healthcare administration, I found myself at a crossroads trying to decide to continue or choose another path entirely. A family member suggested selling ‘the nuts’, referring to a tasty, flavored nut recipe that my mother used to make. People gobbled it up when she sent them to a family Super Bowl party years earlier. I thought he was crazy…I had just purchased a house and needed a weekly paycheck! 

I had moved back to my home state of Michigan after working in the Boston area for 25 yrs. and the craft beer industry here was booming. So, I thought…beer and nuts…a perfect combination! Within six months, I formed the LLC and started to put one foot in front of the other in terms of the market, the business, the million details. The learning curve was not a short one. We now have, depending on the season, 11 to 15 different nut flavors at one time with seasonal flavors, limited edition varieties, and new flavor combinations being tested constantly. We even have a second food product line curated and ready for testing…stay tuned! 

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Well, the first and, most obvious, challenge was that I had no experience with how to form a food company. I had a cooking background thanks to my mother and grandmother and plenty of management experience, but it’s a totally different ballgame. State regulations, food safety laws, licenses, packaging, FDA requirements…then, if you get that figured out…who and where do you sell these to? Will anyone like them? After all, there’s lots of nuts on the market…but few, if any at the time, were being paired specifically with beverages. I had to learn all about that aspect too so that it made sense to customers. 

So many obstacles and challenges to starting a whole new life path at the age of 54! 

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
First and foremost, our flavor line started with one family recipe and a market niche born out of a culture of pairing great beverages with great food. I knew the nuts were fantastic and that a pairing with the booming craft beverage market in Michigan certainly had a place for snacks like nuts. I think what sets us apart from others is that we don’t pick of flavor with a particular pairing in mind. After all, people’s individual tastes are what dictate food and beverage pairing. That being said, I knew a few combinations and flavors were either trending or just seemed like great combinations. The first few years in business, our founding flavor (Mom’s recipe) was our only flavor. But in 2020, and in the middle of a pandemic, we expanded our flavor line as we’re deemed an ‘essential business’ and were lucky enough to be able to have a weekly presence at a local farmers market…BOOM…customers. And they wanted new tastes and flavors and experiences. We think of ourselves as a ‘specialty food product’. Not so far off the beaten path that the flavors aren’t familiar, they’re just superior to most. 

We are homegrown in the sense that it was family, literally and figuratively, that was behind the beginning of Stella’s Artisan Nuts, and we continue the tradition of great flavors within a community of buyers looking for new and different taste experiences. 

Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
Product quality, innovation of flavors, using feedback to fuel product improvement and satisfaction. 

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @stellasnuts
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/stellasnuts