Our story

Hi! I'm Steven Kapsinow, founder of Sunrise Grown. I'm also a lifelong resident of Guilford, where I currently reside with my wife and two daughters. I'd like to thank you for visiting our site and learning more about Sunrise Grown, and I'd also like to take this time to share with you how Sunrise Grown evolved.

Sunrise Grown, the business, was established in 2018, but it's really a result of many loosely-related life experiences.

I've always enjoyed eating, but for most of my life, I never gave much thought about where our food came from. I can remember at an early age picking and eating delicious baby carrots from my grandfather and uncle's rather large garden on Lexington Avenue in New Haven. I guess that kind of shaped my perception of where food came from--small growing spaces nurtured by families of growers.

Growing up we didn't have a garden at our home, but my parents owned a couple small businesses in town. You may remember them. The Cookie Jar (currently Ballou's), which was a bakery and ice cream shop, and Scuttle Butt (currently Cilantro's), an antique and nautical gift shop. I helped out as much as I could at the shops, but by the time I was ready to get a real part-time job in high school, we didn't own those stores any more. After a couple brief stints as a dishwasher at the Sea Breeze (currently vacant) and The Bistro (currently Chapter One), I settled in at Page Hardware (still Page Hardware), where I worked during high school and college.

I've always had an interest in politics and history, and I enjoy writing. While at GHS, I decided that I wanted to be lawyer. After graduation, I went to UConn and majored in Political Science. About half way through my second year at UConn, I decided I didn't want to be a lawyer any more. This was 1996, right at the beginning of the Internet boom. Luckily, the English department offered a class called Internet Publishing, where we were given basic writing assignments that we had to publish on our own websites that we created. I was hooked. I knew this was going to take off, and I wanted to be part of it (too bad I didn't have the foresight to buy Amazon.com stock in 1997 when it was $1.54 per share). In 1997, I interned at Field & Stream magazine working on their website, which was one of the first websites by a print publication. Since graduating in 1998, I've spend 20 years in various roles working for smaller startups and businesses in Internet publishing, e-commerce, and advertising--commuting back and forth between Guilford and NYC and various towns in Fairfield county.

I met my wife while at UConn. She too was a Political Science major. We married in 2003 and had our first child in 2009. I know it sounds cliche, but this is when I started taking a deeper interest in food, reading the ingredients on packages, doing the research, and making sure our daughter wasn't consuming stuff that was potentially bad for her. Of course, this is a very deep and winding rabbit hole. But I took the red pill and continued my journey, learning about how most food is produced for mass consumption. Maybe I should have taken the blue pill instead. There was also the economic impact. Having a child costs money, and I quickly realized that making baby food from fresh fruits and vegetables was much cheaper and potentially safer than buying them packaged. So as much as we could, we did this. We bought from local CSAs and farmers' markets, and we bought organic when we couldn't source locally.

As a natural progression, we decided to start a small garden in our backyard. Again, I was hooked. We first grew cucumbers, garlic and potatoes. Not only did the food taste much better than what we were buying in the stores, but it was also much cheaper. We basically didn't have to buy cucumbers or garlic for most of the summer. Plant some tiny seeds, add some air, water, sun, and time, and voila, look at all the food! Win win. We knew exactly what was going into growing the food. We didn't use any synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides. We simply used our soil mixed with some compost--and that's it. And that's still how we grow in our garden today.

My wife and I both work, and like many of you, are very busy. We like to cook as much as possible with our garden-grown, organic, and/or locally sourced food, but sometimes, we're just too tired to cook, or it's simply too late, or we just want to get out of the house, so we decide to eat out or even do take out. However, it's really hard to find restaurants that use locally-sourced and/or organic products in their menu items. There are a couple farm to table restaurants in the area, but not many, and the cost can be prohibitive if eating there on even a semi-regular basis.

One of the roles I held (and still hold) at these startups was that of product manager. A product manager essentially identifies common customer needs and problems, determines if there is a large enough market, and works with Engineers and other business folks to solve these problems through product offerings. So, I decided to talk to a few restaurant owners in town to better understand the barriers to offering their customers more locally-sourced and/or organic food in their menu items. Refreshingly, all of them want to offer more and realize it is an advantage to their business to do so. However, local farms in general can't afford to sell their products at the prices most restaurants need to pay, and restaurant owners also don't have the time to hit the farmers' markets sourcing local produce.

This is where Sunrise Grown comes in. We're creating a business model that allows us to serve area restaurants more locally sourced food at affordable prices, so that they can serve you the tastiest and freshest food possible.