A local company that offers nutritious options for homemade baby food continues to expand its offerings and where its products can be found.

Taste-T-Love Baby Food founder Kourtney Terry said she started off her college career going into the culinary arts, but when she learned she was pregnant with her now-16-year-old daughter, she changed her major to “something more practical,” eventually ending up as an internal project manager for a local health care system.

But in 2018, after her third child was born, she found her passion: creating baby food.

“Once I started making food for him, I really enjoyed it,” Terry said. “I would send pictures to friends and family and I was having fun in the kitchen coming up with these different flavors.”

Going back to work after maternity leave, she found her time in the kitchen increasingly limited. So in 2019, Terry resigned her day job to devote all of her efforts to the new company and enrolled in what now is Aviatra Accelators to help launch the business.

Taste-T-Love got its start serving online subscribers and farmers markets, then expanded in April when Dorothy Lane Market’s Springboro location started carrying its products.

“I realized there was a need,” said Terry, of Huber Heights. “There’s nothing comparable to this type of baby food in the store right now, which makes it even more exciting that we were able to get into Dorothy Lane because we are now the only frozen baby food offered in our area.”

Taste-T-Love Baby Food offers features a selection of between 40 and 50 squeeze pouches in “every single ingredient you can think of, from cauliflower to potatoes to mangoes to peas and green beans,” she said. It also offers numerous multi-ingredient options.

‘We don’t make them all all the time, but they are available to order,” she said.

The company’s products are purchased for not only first-time eater, but also toddlers and a growing population of all ages “because they find value in it,” Terry said.

An increased selection of toddler options are planned for the near future. “A lot of the customers who shop with me frequently, they want their kids to move with the product,” Terry said.

Taste-T-Love Baby Food ingredients are steamed and not submerged in water, so its products don’t lose nutritional value, she said. Freezing it means the ability to remain preservative-free.

Taste-T-Love also offer cookies and brownies infused with nutritional yeast, flaxseed, oatmeal and other ingredients to help produce better lactation for mothers who breastfeed, she said.

The company provides food for local child care centers who are under Child and Adult Care Food Programs and recently secured a partnership with Dayton Children’s Hospital. It offers food at Mini University’s Sinclair and Hope Center locations.

Taste-T-Love also recently won a Better Business Bureau Spark Award for Entrepreneurship. Terry said talking to customers has helped tremendously with making Taste-T-Love products better for not only the public as a whole, but also for customers looking to have them tailored to their specific wants and needs.

“I always seek input from my customers because if I’m not serving them, I wouldn’t have a business,” she said.

The business previously created its products in commercial kitchens in Centerville, Huber Heights and Fairborn before switching to one in downtown Dayton. She employs two staffers there, plus two business advisers and a brand ambassador. Her husband, Delvin, assists by doing “everything.”

“Anything I ask him to do,” she said and laughed. “His ‘honey-do list’ is endless.

“I would not be where I am today with this business without my husband because there are so many times that I have wanted to give up or go back to work and put those degrees (to use) and my husband is always there picking me up off the floor and pushing me and reminding me of the vision.”