In our “Stakeholder Board Spotlight” series, we get to hear stories from our Stakeholder Board members across Michigan’s food system, including what sparked their career path and their thoughts on Michigan Good Food Fund’s next chapter. Next up is Michigan Good Food Fund Stakeholder Board Member Kaja Thornton Hunter.
Kaja Thornton Hunter
Founder & CEO, Kaja’s Flavor LLC
Kaja Thornton-Hunter’s road to entrepreneurial success is paved with spices.
Born and reared in Muskegon Heights, MI, she founded her food and lifestyle business, Kaja’s Flavor LLC on eight years of loving and learning the foodways of Savannah, Georgia. There she mastered the art of blending spices by creating her signature crab boils. She brought that skill back to her hometown, where her business branched into a brick-and-mortar eatery, The Us Café, Meijer featured her flavors in 2021, and where her spice venture increased in one-year sales from $14,000 to $27,000 during the global pandemic.
Thornton Hunter has been featured on WZZM’s Black History Spotlight, in the first Black Owned Business Box, and at the Home and Garden Boat Show at the VanDyck Mortgage Convention Center.
“Muskegon Heights has zero groceries in a four square-mile area. We need those funds for emerging [food] businesses in order to help the community eat healthier, have places to buy healthy foods, and serve as an educational conduit on how to eat healthy.”
— Kaja Thornton Hunter