Alison Burgos & Michelle Gaber
Co-Founders and Co-Owners, Seed Food and Wine Festival
Alison Burgos and wife Michelle Gaber got the idea for their business while attending the South Beach Wine & Food Festival and realizing the food there did not fit in with their conscious, sustainable, plant-based lifestyle. Today, the Seed Food and Wine Festival is a huge hit, though Burgos and Gaber weren′t always the experts they are today. “When we started to create the festival, we were the first to admit we were just ′baby vegans.′ We didn′t know everything there was to know about plant-based living, sustainability, animal welfare or building a food and wine festival with so many moving parts,“ says Burgos. “So we reached out to local and national experts who we admired and asked them for their advice and, in many cases, also invited them to sit on our advisory committee. I don′t think our first year would have been a success without all of these mentors who we now call friends guiding us, teaching us and challenging us.“ She believes that if you want to start a business you need to “surround yourself with like-minded people you can learn from, as well as teach and share ideas with“ and that you have to “believe in your dream even if it scares you, because if you′re not scared, it′s probably too late.“
