Melissa Baideme had never worked in the food and beverage world until she jumped in the deep end and started CK Natural Fruit Juice in 2021.
Four years later and she’s been named New York State Small Business Person of the Year by the U.S. Small Business Administration and is opening a new processing facility that will increase both her own production and create co-manufacturing capacity to help other food and beverage producers bring products to market.
The business is located in Chautauqua County, in the heart of New York’s Concord Grape Belt. Before CK Natural, Baideme worked in law enforcement – her husband, Nathan, is the county’s undersheriff – but had married into local grape royalty. Her husband is also a fourth-generation grape grower, and her father-in-law, Phil Baideme, was chair of the board at Growers’ Co-op, a century-old juice processor in Westfield.
That connection proved pivotal. In 2021, leading up to starting CK Natural, Baideme met with a woman who was looking to sell her fruit juice processing business. At first, Baideme thought it would be a small side project. Then she handed Baideme a stack of paperwork and told her the business was hers. With that, Baideme was now the exclusive retail sales and small bulk provider for Growers’ Co-op.
She quickly realized this was not going to be a hobby project.
She registered as an LLC that summer and began working with her local Small Business Development Center to retool what she was given and craft her own business.
“I decided I was going to make this my path,” Baideme said.
Baideme completed her Juice Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) certification through Cornell AgriTech and, wanted to learn more about food production, began working with the New York State Center of Excellence for Food and Agriculture (CoE) at Cornell AgriTech in 2022.
CK Natural is a certified Minority- and Women-Owned Business Enterprise (MWBE) in New York and most recently, became a certified federal Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB), putting her in a prime position to bid on federal and state contracts for institutions such as food banks.
CK Natural Fruit Juice’s main product is Concord grape juice concentrate, which it packages and distributes to wholesale customers. Additionally, Baideme packages and distributes Niagara and Catawba grape juice concentrates, as well as tart cherry juice concentrate. She’s also expanded into food production, including Concord grape pie filling, Concord grape vinaigrette dressing and other products.
Baideme currently rents space at Growers’ Co-op, where she also sources her concentrates, but the goal from the start was always to have her own facility. The new, 5,000-square-foot space will not only let her expand her juice distribution – Baideme said CK Natural sold 20,000 gallons of juice concentrate in 2024 and plans to sell 40,000 gallons by the end of 2025 – but also increase food production capabilities.
The new space will feature 60- and 100-gallon steam kettles, a full-scale bottling line, and commercial ovens, allowing Baideme to produce a wide range of products, from salsa to pies.
To help fuel that growth, Baideme participated in the Food Spark program. A collaboration between the CoE and the Cornell Agriculture and Food Technology Park (Tech Farm), Food Spark allowed Baideme to complete the 10-week eCornell Food Product Development certificate program, which she said gave her an education in food production, as well as the confidence she needed to move the business forward.
“It reassured me that I’m taking the proper steps and doing things correctly,” she said.
Baideme likes the fast pace of entrepreneurship, where, like in law enforcement, no two days are the same. But the stress of law enforcement was wearing on her and she admits she was feeling jaded.
“Now everyone loves me,” she said, adding that now she comes home after work smelling of sweet grapes. “What a wonderful life it is.”
Jacob Pucci is the marketing and communications coordinator for the New York State Center of Excellence for Food and Agriculture at Cornell AgriTech
