Parents who want to feed their babies a nutritious food, sourced from farms within 300 miles of Washington and Benton counties, can buy Oh Baby! food in local stores.
Mother and business owner Fran Free Gunsaulis displayed the baby food, which she cooked in her own kitchen on her Cincinnati farm this summer, at local stores Friday. They included the Pinnacle Station Local Market at New Hope Road and Promenade Boulevard in Rogers and Harps on Crossover Road in Fayetteville.
Gunsaulis said she spent between $50,000 and $100,000 of her own money to launch Oh Baby! Foods Inc., the first baby food company headquartered in Arkansas.
The frozen baby food company started in February, but Gunsaulis mapped out business plans while earning a master’s degree in agricultural economics at the University of Arkansas.
“The business plan was a project for one of my classes, and the industry analysis was a project for a different class,” Gunsaulis said. Lucy was born two weeks after she completed the course work.
Gunsaulis and two fulltime employees sought local ingredients and prepared the baby food in her kitchen from about May through October. She has about 16,000 packages of Oh Baby! food – 4,000 each of four flavors – sold at area stores for $4.98 per three-container package.
Logo from Oh Baby! Foods