Lt. Abraham Kamrack, United States Navy
True Made Foods (www.truefoods.me)
Born in Washington, DC, Abe Kamrack grew up in Virginia, Brooklyn and Maryland before attending Vanderbilt University on an NROTC scholarship. After graduation, he served eight years as a Navy Helicopter pilot, deploying on counter-narcotics missions and for OIF. He spent his last tour in England where he earned his MBA from the London Business School and was introduced to impact entrepreneurship. This experience prompted Abe to leave the Navy and start a seven-year adventure in emerging markets as an impact entrepreneur. He spent time in Bulgaria, Ghana, Egypt and China and even lived in Qatar for three years. Along the way, he launched various ventures, including gone that built greenhouse farms in the desert. In 2013, Abe returned to the DC area and was hired by the Coexist Foundation to develop and launch Coexist Coffee. Launching the coffee taught Abe the food business and married his two biggest passions – food and entrepreneurship. Raised on a mix of Southern Italian and Southern Virginian culinary traditions, Abe is an avid cook and self-proclaimed grill master, both of which led him to create True Foods- a new line of condiments that are sweetened with vegetables instead of sugar or corn syrup.
What does your company do?
True Made Foods turns junk foods into superfoods by replacing the corn syrup and refined sugars so prevalent in American staples like ketchup, bbq sauce and sriracha with real vegetables. We naturally sweeten our sauces with real veggies – carrots, butternut squash and spinach – turning these once empty calorie foods into nutrient dense, paleo superfoods.
What promoted you to launch it?
As a parent I had dreams of raising my kids in a sugar-free household, but that dream was destroyed as I continually lost battles with five years olds over the use of ketchup. I couldn’t get my kids to stop eating ketchup, so I made a better one.
How has your military life educated and influenced your business life?
There is no better preparation for entrepreneurship than being a Navy helicopter pilot – we were constantly required to wear multiple hats and be a jack of all trades and master of none. Being a Navy pilot also taught me how to prioritize tasks and information in high-pressure, information overload situations – the mantra – Aviate, Navigate, Communicate stays with me and applies to everything I do in business and entrepreneurship.
What do you hope to do with your business?
I hope to change the way America eats without changing the best parts of American food culture. We want to preserve American BBQ, the family dinner, the backyard cookout, and community cookouts, but make them radically healthier by substituting out the high-sugar, low nutrition sauces that are staples at these events for healthy, American-veggie made sauces. We believe we can eat healthy, bring America together and preserve the best parts of our food culture while shedding the worst.
What advice would you give other Veterans looking to own a business?
Be ready financially. Starting your own business is a risk and it is now harder than ever before to start a business in America thanks to high health insurance and housing costs. Be prepared to go some time without a salary and have a plan for what to do if your business takes longer to start than expected, which it likely well.
What is the most important thing you want people to know about Veterans?
Most Veterans have soft skills, like grit, diligence, resourcefulness and creativity that go way-beyond what you can expect to find from civilian counterparts. Hard skills are easy to learn, invest in Veterans and it will pay off in the medium to long term.
