Reston's Nordic-Knot Wins $40K In Barclays Small Business Promotion
RESTON, VA — Nordic-Knot, Reston's own small pretzel bakery, won big in Barclays Small Business Big Win promotion. The bakery finished second place and earned $40,000 in cash.
Barclays awarded a total of $255,000 to 10 small businesses as part of the Small Business Big Win promotion. Winners were announced on Tuesday.
Melissa Romano, who co-owns Nordic-Knot with Eric Lundberg, was happy about the second-place win, since she thought the Ashland Birth Center in Wisconsin was more deserving of the grand prize.
"They do amazing things for their community and the indigenous native communities around them, so it wouldn't have been appropriate for us to win this prize over them," she said.
Still, Romano was excited about the second-place finish and the $40,000 in prize money, which she and Lundberg will use to purchase new equipment to expand their business.
"It's going to change our business," she said. "It's going to afford us the opportunity to purchase the equipment that we have been working hard to save the money for. It's going to give us the boost that we need to get that equipment now, which will let us increase our production ... and bring our costs down so that we can better serve our community."
Barclays received more than 4,750 entries after it invited small business owners across the country to submit photos and essays, sharing their stories of resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic. From April 13-22, the public was invited to visit the Barclays' website, read the entries, and vote for their favorite.
Melissa Romano, who co-owns Nordic-Knot with Eric Lundberg, learned in early April that their Scandinavian pretzel bakery was chosen as one the promotion's 10 finalists.
In her essay, Romano described how the pandemic forced the Nordic-Knot to rethink its business model.
"We are primarily a wholesale distribution bakery and that's how we built the business," she told Patch in April. "We built the bakery to support other small businesses through wholesale distribution of our product."
During the pandemic, Romano and Lundberg pivoted their business to provide take-home packs of pretzels for retail customers. They also began packaging and selling its bulk flour and yeast to its customers. This pushed them more toward becoming a direct to customer retail outlet.
"We started a new online store and we started baking pretzels just for the people instead of baking them for wholesale distribution," she said. "We don't have a storefront, so my partner built us a beautiful wooden cabinet that sits out in front of the bakery and we set up hands-free pickup."
With the $40,000 boost, Nordic-Knot will continue to grow its retail component, including the return of the bakery's vending cart this summer at the Reston Farmers Market on Saturdays at the Lake Anne Village Center.
"We know that our community loves being able to just walk down and get a little coffee and pretzels or croissants from our vending cart on Saturday mornings at the farmers market, " she said. "We will continue with that. We will continue with our direct to consumer retail the way that it is now."
Reston's Nordic-Knot Wins $40K In Barclays Small Business Promotion originally appeared on the Reston Patch
