gourmet-food
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The 800-Dish Machine Behind Toronto’s Favourite Fancy Grocery Store
Summerhill Market escaped the supermarket price war by making dinner itself. Its six-store system offers a useful lesson in how an independent retailer can turn a costly back room into the reason customers cross town.
Goldbelly
Goldbelly is a New York-based online marketplace that ships iconic regional dishes and gourmet foods from more than 1,000 restaurants, bakeries, and food makers across all 50 U.S. states directly to customers' doors. Founded in 2013 by Joe Ariel, the company lets people order signature dishes - from Nashville hot chicken to New York cheesecake and deep-dish pizza - along with celebrity-chef meal kits, food-gift boxes, and subscriptions, packaging nostalgia and hard-to-get local specialties into nationwide delivery.
Mike's Hot Honey
Mike's Hot Honey is a Brooklyn-based food brand that makes honey infused with chili peppers - a sweet-and-spicy condiment for pizza, fried chicken, cheese and more. Founded by Mike Kurtz in 2010 after he discovered chili-infused honey at a Brazilian pizzeria, the company pioneered the hot honey category in the United States and now sells through more than 30,000 retail locations and 3,000-plus restaurants. Led by CEO Matt Beaton since 2015, it has grown from a one-man operation at Paulie Gee's pizzeria into a nationally distributed brand with an estimated $40 million in annual revenue.
Joe Ariel
Joe Ariel is the founder and CEO of Goldbelly, the e-commerce marketplace that ships iconic regional dishes from more than 1,000 restaurants and food makers to doorsteps across the United States. A serial entrepreneur who previously led Eats.com and Delivery.com, Ariel built Goldbelly out of a simple frustration - the best food in America rarely leaves the town where it is made. In 2026 he was named Official Food Curator of America's 250th anniversary, leading the 'Taste of America250' program and a national storytelling project to define the canon of American cuisine.
Matt Beaton
Matt Beaton is CEO of Mike's Hot Honey, the Brooklyn-based chili-infused honey brand he built with college friend Mike Kurtz. He joined in 2015 when the company was pulling in $100,000 a year, and grew a one-SKU business into a roughly $40 million operation stocked in more than 30,000 retail stores and 3,000 restaurants. He came out of brand-management jobs at Wrigley and PUR Water and an MBA from Kellogg, and now runs the classic case study for what happens when you refuse to launch a second product.