Alex Krakoski ’16 has come up with a creative way to fund his Cornell education: beef jerky. And the entrepreneurial student has enlisted the help of several other CALS students to help turn his idea into a burgeoning business that recently received top honors at a student business competition.
A chemical engineering major pursuing a minor in applied economics and management at the Dyson School, Alex has built a team of 10 from all disciplines, from accounting and financing to food science and engineering, including CALS students Ben Pham, Camille Kapaun, Justin Siegel and Brenda Margolies.
“CALS has all sorts of resources which I’ve used to grow Worthy Jerky,“ he told the Entreprenuership@Dyson blog. "Nancy Bell set me up with some great introductions and the Dyson School even sent me to the NYC Tech Summit and an international conference in Washington, DC.”
Alex and team were also accepted as a Cornell eLab business where they workshop the company everyday with savvy business leaders.
Worthy Jerky isn’t your standard gas station fare. It includes fun flavors like citrus barbeque, spicy teriyaki and raspberry chipotle, and the team prides itself in not using preservatives, colorants, processed sugars, or other artificial ingredients. With consumers that much more conscious about what they’re putting into their bodies, Alex hopes a strong brand association with quality will take them far.
The idea actually originated oversees, at Leysin Boarding School in the Swiss Alps, an athletic school where many of his fellow slope-hitting students were in need of hearty portable snacks. Alex remembered the great jerky he used to make back home with his Mom and saw an opportunity to capitalize. He sold them in 1oz packets that his mom would send in batches of 150. It was a huge success - successful enough to raise enough money to help pay his tuition, fly round trip back to the States, and even fund a couple vacations in Asia. He continued the operation when he came to Cornell his freshman year, having a friend run the operations at Leysin while he sent product from the U.S.
“I raised a few eyebrows in the Cornell financial aid office when they saw I had recurring transfers from a Swiss bank account. They asked me what suspicious activity I was engaged in and when I told them they didn’t believe me. Finally I was able to prove that this was just a lucrative jerky business.”
