‘Food brings people together:’ St. Paul specialty market owner thinking big about bringing diverse cultural foods to hungry shoppers

Kayla Yang-Best is passionate about food and bringing greater equity to the local food supply chain.

"Food brings people together, that’s what I grew up with,” she said. “What keeps us entertained, and what brings us together is all about food and family and sharing.”

Yang-Best said she grew up in a large family, and food was a centerpiece. Five years ago, she launched a business to sell Asian food kits and Asian soups.

Two years later, she opened Seasoned Specialty Food Market on Grand Avenue in St. Paul.

"I think of Seasoned Specialty Foods as a little market,” Yang-Best said. “But we have a really big purpose."

She sells an eclectic variety of local, organic and cultural foods: Somali salsa and cookies from Minneapolis, meat sauce from St. Paul, even tortilla chips using corn from Iowa. Four hundred food products in all.

"We also supplement and highlight their food by bringing other foods that support or co-brand really well," Yang-Best noted.

There’s food for thought here, too. Some producers give 10% to 20% of their profits to charity.

The owner of Junita’s Jar cookies, a survivor of domestic abuse, supports education and awareness initiatives dedicated to ending relationship violence.

“When I talk about this, I’m always excited to share what we’re doing, what we’re seeing and who we’re touching in the community,” Yang-Best said.

But Yang-Best is also paving her own food frontier by ‘co-retailing.’ New food producers pay her a $600 annual fee to showcase their products, items that in a non-pandemic year might be sold at a farmer’s market or the state fair.

"We handle all the retail services and logistics for them,” Yang-Best explained. “What’s unique about us is that they get 100% from the sale of their products after that membership fee."

She’s now co-retailing with 40 local food producers, 90% of them are women-owned; six out of 10 by people of color.

Yang-Best said both groups are underrepresented and underpaid in a tough industry.

“If you look at what woman and Black-owned, Indigenous and people of color food businesses are getting, they typically get less of the deal in business,” she said.

But now, Yang-Best is looking forward to a rare opportunity. She is one of 24 finalists selected for a Bush Fellowship, out of 746 applicants.

The St. Paul-based foundation chooses ‘visionary leaders — who are thinking big about how to solve problems… and shape a better future for their communities.’

Yang-Best will receive $100,000 over the next two years to help with her co-retailing initiative.

She said she hopes to expand her business model, learn more about networking and marketing techniques and bridge the gap between the food producers she’s working with and the commercial marketplace.

“My aspiration, my dream is to spread the impact that we’re seeing here at seasoned or with co-retailing,” she said. “I want to see that spread by replicating what we’re doing here across different communities, in Minnesota and beyond.”

Part of Yang-Best’s vision is to have a ‘store within a store.’ The idea is to have locally-produced specialty foods marketed and sold by a national food store chain. That, she said, would give these diverse Minnesota businesses a huge boost and exposure.

But first, Yang-Best said, she’s heading back to school as a Bush Fellow.

“I need to work on some things with myself, do some development,” she said. “Working with different communities, working with different organizations. Small and large organizations, grocery stores, different people from different backgrounds. How do we do that together?”