Big Connecticut Food Event Crowns Black Girl Kimchi Winner

Onika Bent built her kimchi business the hard way, fermenting and selling out of New Haven before most Connecticut consumers knew what to do with a jar of the stuff. On Saturday, at Yale School of Management’s Evans Hall, she walked away with the inaugural Chris Marcocci Emerging Brand Award, one of the highlights of the fourth annual Big Connecticut Food Event.

The daylong gathering, organized by CT Food Launchpad, pulled together more than 30 Connecticut-based food and beverage businesses with a straightforward mission: strengthen the state’s food economy and push more local brands onto grocery store shelves. Chef, food justice activist, and event organizer Tagan Engel described the emerging brand competition as an effort to connect “innovative food entrepreneurs often toiling in obscurity with people established in Connecticut’s food ecosystem.”

Bent’s Black Girl Kimchi earned that recognition in a field packed with creative competitors. The event showcased canned milk marketed as fresh enough to make dairy viral again, bagels with “double-proofed” seeds engineered to actually stay on the bagel, and a sauce brand offering flavors ranging from Curry Coolada to Sweet Yak to Beer Nutz. Connecticut’s food startup scene, it turns out, does not lack for ambition or imagination.

The main pitch competition drew serious attention. Judges from Bozzuto’s, Whole Foods, and Pip’s Heirloom Snacks evaluated five finalists for a $10,000 grand prize, with $5,000 going to second place, $2,500 to third, and $1,250 each to two runners-up.

The winner was Arshad Bahl and his Amrita protein bars, a brand with a founding story that stopped the room. When Bahl’s son was diagnosed with autism and severe gastrointestinal issues at age two, Bahl and his wife searched for low-inflammation, low-allergen, low-sugar food options. They found nothing workable on the market, so they built their own plant-based protein snack from scratch. He named it Amrita, the Sanskrit word for divine nectar of the gods.

Bahl told the audience of 90 that his son will soon graduate from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a bachelor’s degree. He showed a slide of Jack working alongside other employees with developmental disabilities at the Amrita manufacturing facility. “They are why I do this,” Bahl said.

Second place went to Donovan Evans and Da Last Drip, a sauce brand Evans said grew out of a childhood spent experimenting in the kitchen. “We didn’t study the periodic table at my house,” he told the crowd. “Instead of learning about uranium, I learned about cayenne pepper, paprika,” and the spices and flavors that would eventually become his product line.

Before the competition, attendees worked through intensive one-on-one coaching sessions and industry panel discussions, giving entrepreneurs the kind of feedback and connections that can be hard to come by when you’re running a small food business without a corporate infrastructure behind you. That’s precisely the gap CT Food Launchpad has positioned itself to fill. Connecticut has a real concentration of food entrepreneurship, particularly in cities like New Haven and Bridgeport, but getting from a farmers market table to a regional grocery shelf requires access and relationships that smaller founders often lack.

The event used both competitions, the emerging brand award and the main pitch contest, to surface businesses at different stages. Bent’s recognition through the Marcocci award reflects an understanding that some companies need visibility and mentorship before they’re ready to stand in front of a panel of retail buyers asking hard questions about margins and distribution logistics.

Black Girl Kimchi has been building that groundwork for years. The brand draws on Korean fermentation tradition while centering a Black founder’s perspective and community ties in New Haven, a combination that has earned it a loyal local following. Saturday’s award puts a wider spotlight on what Bent has been doing quietly and steadily for some time.

For a state that often undersells its own food economy, events like the Big Connecticut Food Event serve a real purpose. The products showing up on tables at Yale’s Evans Hall are not novelties. They are businesses with founders who have already done the hard work. Saturday was about making sure more people noticed.