innovationIOWA Weekly 10.15.20

After Walmart’s annual Open Call pitch event, Des Moines-based Lola’s Fine Hot Sauce will be one of 175 small businesses to find itself on the shelves of the national retailer in early 2021, Walmart announced recently.

Lola’s Fine Hot Sauce already is carried in national chains such as Whole Foods, Costco, Target and restaurants through the U.S. and parts of Canada.

"I believe getting into Walmart will help us scale into more stores, because Walmart is an industry leader in terms of products they bring in," said CEO Taufeek Shah. "We’re a family recipe company, minority-owned. … We have a great all-natural family recipe that’s healthy, that’s full of flavor, and we’re the only generational family recipe that’s made right here in America."

The 4-year-old company is named after Shah’s mother, Carmelita Shah, a doctor and Filipino immigrant who developed the family hot sauce recipe that Taufeek grew up with. "Lola" means grandmother in the Filipino language Tagalog, and stuck with Carmelita after Taufeek and his sister began raising children.

"We’re really trying to grow our family brand, to get our products out there to the consumers because we have a great product, and we have a great story to tell," Shah said.

More than 800 small companies pitched during virtual 30-minute meetings with Walmart and Sam’s Club merchants. In addition to Walmart stores and Sam’s Clubs, platforms available to participants include Walmart.com, Walmart Marketplace and Samsclub.com. All participating businesses producing shelf-stable products were invited to sell their products on Walmart’s various online platforms.

IN THE NEWS

Iowa AgriTech Accelerator hosts Demo Day this morning
The Iowa AgriTech Accelerator is hosting Demo Day from 8 to 8:30 a.m. this morning, featuring four startups that participated this year: Curiosity Labs, Digital Spring, N-Sense and Sensegrass. The public can view the live event online or on Facebook Live. IATA’s Demo Day is an official event of the World Food Prize 2020 Borlaug Dialogue; this year’s virtual event features guest speaker Paul Schickler.

West Des Moines, Google launch ‘Plant the Speed’ campaign for city residents
Residents of West Des Moines can now enroll their address for connection to the city’s Google Fiber conduit network, the city and Google Fiber announced this month. Through the "Plant the Speed" campaign, residents can sign up at www.wiredWDM.org to enroll their address, the first step to getting fiber service at resident homes. The website also includes information about the build schedule and construction process, Google Fiber reported.

IDT expands global footprint with launch of China office
Coralville-based Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT) has launched IDT China, an official business entity to be headquartered in Shanghai, the Corridor Business Journal reports. The genomics services provider said the launch is the latest step in IDT’s ongoing global expansion to support researchers across numerous disciplines from pharmaceutical development to agricultural biology. IDT has facilities in Asia, Europe and North America, and serves customers in more than 100 countries. IDT made national headlines earlier this year, as the coronavirus pandemic took hold, by becoming the first U.S. company to have its primer and probe kits approved by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for use in its COVID-19 testing protocol.

MakuSafe announces new hires, product deployments
MakuSafe, a safety technology company providing workforce wearables and analytics, officially launched its commercial product with new contact tracing features seven months after the COVID-19 pandemic delayed its initial launch date. Since receiving nearly $10 million in investment funding and test pilots, MakuSafe has expanded to cover its 1,000th worker in the next few days, recently began its first international deployment and hired a principal data scientist, as well as other staff in mechanical design engineering, account management, software development and data analytics.

ONE GOOD TECH READ
The digital divide starts with a laptop shortage

NEW YORK TIMES: When the Guilford County Schools in North Carolina spent more than $27 million to buy 66,000 computers and tablets for students over the summer, the district ran into a problem: There was a shortage of cheap laptops, and the devices wouldn’t arrive until late October or November. More than 4,000 students in the district had to start the school year without the computers they needed for remote learning. Millions of children are encountering all sorts of inconveniences that come with digital instruction during the coronavirus pandemic. But many students are facing a more basic challenge: They don’t have computers and can’t attend classes held online.

IN OTHER NEWS: How do we make sure tech companies do the right thing? (FAST COMPANY); How the coronavirus’s genetic code can help control outbreaks (WASHINGTON POST); Should we screen kids’ genes to ‘predict’ how successful they’ll be in school? (HECHINGER REPORT).