From Education to Entrepreneurship: How Centennial Grad Jordan Launched The Breakfast Pantry

Food Media graduate Jordan Kruger launched The Breakfast Pantry after earning her diploma at Centennial. Here's how!

At Centennial College we give students the knowledge and tools to pursue the career path of their dreams, and help create student entrepreneurs like Jordan Kruger. She took our Food Media program and developed an idea for a small business while at school, using what she learned to make it happen.

Jordan now owns and operates The Breakfast Pantry, a place where you can purchase healthy food and other supplies, all geared towards helping you start your day off right, both physically and mentally. And it was something she decided in just ten minutes! Here's how we helped her make it happen, and what the path from student to entrepreneur looks like.

Good beginnings

"I like to describe The Breakfast Pantry as an online retailer offering a curated selection of products that help people start their days feeling good," Jordan explains.

"It's a really broad range of products that includes everything from breakfast and pantry products, to health and wellness items, self-care products, home and kitchen accessories ? anything you use or visualize in your morning that will help you start your day feeling nourished, calm and relaxed."

But, how did she make that a reality? It began with a sudden creative decision under pressure.

A life-changing ten minutes

In Centennial College's Food Media program, you learn how to bring the culinary arts to a wider audience, through mediums like photography, writing, editing, production and social media, all of which are important when you're trying to promote a culinary business.

"In one of my classes, we had a project," Jordan explains. "You had to think of a food business concept. It could be any business in the food industry, whatever you wanted." In fact, she had to come up with the idea really quickly, as prompted by her instructor.

"Basically, he said, you have ten minutes, write your idea on a piece of paper and we are going to go around the classroom and share our ideas. I literally wrote on the paper:

'Website for breakfast products'...

while freaking out. And then he stood there and read everyone's out, analyzing each idea, giving it a bit of criticism. And he read mine, and went, yeah, love it."

Energized, Jordan's concept would grow from there, as she'd continue to realistically develop it as a part of her education.

"We spent half the year working on that project, developing a minor business plan, even getting to stages like graphics and what the business would look like. ... I thought it was something that I could really see myself pursuing after school. I put a lot of work into the project, knowing I was actually doing work that could help me turn this into a career as soon as I graduate.

And that's exactly what I did. When I graduated, I spent almost another full year just working full time to bring my school project to life and turn it into a viable business."

How do you go from student to entrepreneur?

"I graduated knowing I love this idea, and I'm going to now put all my time into creating a business out of it," Jordan begins. And here's what creating a business looks like.

"I had a framework, a rough business plan that we had created in the program," she begins. "So, I first spent a couple weeks really refining that business plan, going into a lot more detail, figuring out the logistics. Can I actually do this? How much is it going to cost to bring this business to life? I really worked hard on the business plan."

"I realized if I spend a few more months working on this full time, and then launch this business, this will be my career," she says.

"So I started building the website myself. I started curating a product selection and reaching out to different brands and suppliers, figuring that all out, and then I turned my parent's basement into a warehouse. Their whole basement was filled with hundreds of products, stacks and stacks of shipping boxes, everything I needed. And I launched the business about a year after graduating." And her Centennial College education helped the whole way.

"The Food Media program covered a lot of different areas," she says. "It was super interesting getting to learn from a range of industry professionals. All my teachers specialized in a different area of the food industry, so I really valued their opinions. Hearing from them gave me a lot of practical experience that I was able to take with me into my career."

Interested in becoming an entrepreneur?

Here's what Jordan has to say about her career path, and those who might want to follow her:

"My biggest piece of advice is not to be afraid to follow an idea or a passion," she says. "It can be really scary, you might fear that other people are going to judge you, not understand the idea or not see it in the same light that you do. But if you're really passionate, you should follow that idea and not be afraid to ask for help along the way."

"I'd sometimes get embarrassed to ask people questions," she says. "But people are super willing to help you. People want to help you succeed. And I think you need to leverage the resources you have, and the connections. In school, I met all these amazing professors that were so happy to help me along the way when I had questions. So don't be afraid to reach out for help."

Follow the Breakfast Pantry on Instagram.