Ride the Wave of Entrepreneurial Spirit

Everywhere you look, dreams are being fulfilled 

BY ELLEN HIATT

Obsessive Creators. Adventure Seekers. Sweet Tooth Dreamers. World Travelers. 

There’s so much going on in Snohomish County you’d think Willy Wonka’s whacky energy has infected everyone here! It’s not just technology Goliaths who start in garage bays and warehouses. In this corner of the Pacific Northwest, it’s a one-of-a-kind snack museum, a world-renowned, award-winning Whisky brand and a billion dollar-grossing collectible toy maker. 

Pop into Petrikor downtown Everett, where Aaron Sheckler and Scott Hulme just opened a “general store for the modern dweller,” and where the dreams of other locals live on in their product lines.

It started on Everett’s waterfront in 1918 with shingle mills and casket makers, and even a first-of-a-kind radio station, KRKO, just four years later. All have rode the waves (no apologies for the multi-faceted and very-intended pun here), into the 21st Century, transforming the region and preparing for the next big deal, Paine Field as a Works Progress project in 1936 and Boeing Everett in 1943. 

The businesses with the biggest economic impact provide a prosperous environment that puts a little extra cha-ching in pockets, supporting entrepreneurs pouring hearts and coffee into paper cups at roadside stands, and creating thriving businesses out of a single idea.

If you haven’t stopped at the Snackin Shack, the world’s only snack museum in a quiet alley near the Schack Art Museum, then you don’t know what you’re missing when it comes to entrepreneurial spirit. Jaxen McInnis started the museum (which subsists on snack sales, of course) in his garage. Any summer day you’ll find him strapped in skates, spinning around the neighborhood and staking out the yard signs that will draw his customers and the curious in like flies to honey (or, in this case, to high fructose corn syrup and impossibly colorful packaging.) The snacks are all first editions, and, he admits, an unhealthy obsession that he plans to take to the next level.

Check out the public private partnership between Snohomish County and High Trek Ventures. Brad Hallbach couldn’t convince King County but he received open arms in Snohomish County, which helped activate a little-used park at the foot of a runway at Paine Field.

Paine Field’s Beecher’s Market

At Seattle Paine Field Air Terminal, an award-winning boutique airport with approachable prestige, the café is brimming with enterprise. Beecher’s Cheese, the dream of a Seattle cheesemaker whose ambition was to make great cheese free of unnatural additives, runs the café, as they do in airports from California to New York, Utah to Illinois. 

Cozy up at Upper Case Bar, the swank airport lounge where the eats include Beecher’s “World’s Best” Mac & Cheese (that’s no exaggeration), and a Kimchi Melt with Firefly Kitchen’s Kimchi, a Seattle, mom-made passion project and probiotic-packed tasty addition. (Good to keep that gut happy on your travels!)

Brent Swearinger-Johnson runs the café and cocktail bar for Beecher’s and will tell you that the focus is always on high quality and local products. Delivering an Old Fashioned cocktail with James Bay Whisky during a terminal-side conversation with the distillery founders, he points out the cafe’s offerings of elevated grab-and-go include Café Vita coffee, Pacific Popcorn, Girl Meets Dirt’s pepper jam, and so many more delectable items all made in the Pacific Northwest, from Orcas Island to Seattle. Want beer with that popcorn? How about a choice from Metier Brewing Company, one of the few Black-owned brewing companies in the nation with its start in Woodinville.

The distillery owners Ernie and Leigh Troth began distilling in a 1400-square-foot warehouse space in Paine Field and have been selling from there since 2019. The space has grown and so have their offerings, which are often white labeled and sold for a premium in Hong Kong and around the world. Wholesale is half their business.

“We do have a Scotch Whiskey, but we’re the only American distillery with a permit to release a Scotch Canadian Whisky and a bourbon,” Ernie said. Their Galloping Goose Canadian Whisky has six gold medals and was named Canadian Whisky of the Year at the Asia International Spirits competition in Hong Kong in 2020.

Locally, they build community and enjoy it when Harley-riding Veterans show up… “It’s like the Navy flying over,” said Leigh about the welcome thunder.

“That Galloping Goose Whisky is so smooth you guys,” he told Ernie and Leigh as they sipped cocktails, watching the sunset shine its orange hues over the runway and Alaska Airlines’ Boeing 737, its iconic Eskimo tail art smiling through the plate glass windows of the Terminal.

Getting to that level of spirits production took a lot of resources. Ernie said that navigating the heavily regulated spirits industry required the support of Washington State Agriculture Department, the Western US Agricultural Trade Association, the Department of Commerce (DOC) in Olympia.

For a small business, you may inquire at the Economic Alliance of Snohomish County about scaling up your retail business and find yourself with one-on-one support from the Washington APEX Accelerator, in a Startup Washington course with the DOC. 

Truly, the ecosystem of entrepreneurs is inclusive, providing space, efficiency and expertise for budding business owners.

“Any door is the right door to come in,” Ernie said. “It’s a group that all know each other.” And any would direct you to the right resource.

James Bay Old Fashioned

If travels out of Paine Field aren’t in your plans, you can still enjoy that taste of exclusiveness. The airport’s Upper Case Bar shared their recipe for an Old Fashioned with James Bay Whisky.

• 2 oz James Bay Galloping Goose Canadian Whisky
• .25 oz semi rich simple syrup
• 2 dashes of Angostura Bitters
• 1 dash Orange Bitters

You can’t go wrong with this, and a sunset of your own over the Salish Sea.