Adam Rosenbalm’s original reason for signing up his Kingsport, Tennessee-based catering and frozen foods business, Good Batch Mama, for the Restaurant Recovery Program offered by Proof Incubator in Chattanooga, was for networking and grant application purposes.
“I thought it was geared more towards restaurants, but I thought we might learn from their ability to get grants and I approached it as a way to get in front of industry professionals. Plus, [Proof co-founder] Mike Robinson has forgotten in his sleep more than I know.”
When Rosenbalm opened the business three years ago, the focus was on catering with a side interest in frozen homemade meals. Then the pandemic hit.
“Catering more or less dropped to zero overnight,” he said, “but frozen meals doubled, so net zero, in effect. It’s an interesting inverse relationship and it had nothing to do with the foresight of the owners,” he said with a laugh.
“We got lucky.”