Lincoln man started Bandiola Spice business with help from UNL

There's a lot that needs to be taken into consideration when starting a business, especially if that business distributes food. There are regulations that need to be followed exactly if the business wants to avoid a lawsuit.

At the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the Food Processing Center on East Campus helps food distributing companies of different sizes from all over the country follow those regulations, and a food entrepreneur assistance program has been especially useful for some smaller startup companies.

Mike Gochnour, owner of Bandiola Spice, is from Lincoln and although he never went to college, he started his spice company last March with all the help he could get from UNL.

"I think I could have done it without (UNL)" Gochnour said. "But they streamlined the process."

Jessica Dahlgren, the executive chef of the center, said she created several recipes using Bandiola Spices for Gouchnour's Web site — there are seven flavors of Bandiola spices: steak, chicken, pork, rib rub, barbeque, popcorn and Mediterranean.

"He really knows his spices … (The spices) were all his; we just made the recipes," Dahlgren said. "We like using the little local people."

Close to 250 people attended one of the five seminars offered to entrepreneurs as part of the assistance program last year, said Jill Gifford, the food entrepreneur assistance program manager. The seminar is $350 for non-Nebraskans and $175 for Nebraskans and specifically goes over what every business owner who distributes food needs to know.

"There are a lot of regulations," Gifford said. "The program is very extensive."

Those entrepreneurs also have the option of one-on-one consulting at the food processing center.

Gochnour isn't going through any one-on-one consulting, but he's hoping for word-of-mouth advertising to get his products in griller's hands by the time tailgate season rolls around.

"Once they try them, that should be enough," he said of his spices.

Gochnour sells the spices online, at 12 different retailers in Lincoln and from his house at 5100 Wilshire Ave., where the back porch is surrounded by grills and smokers.

Before starting his business, Gochnour went from a horse trainer who liked to grill, to a grill master who likes horses. After graduating high school, Gochnour was planning on going to Kearney State College (now the University of Nebraska-Kearney) before he took a job training horses.

He worked for several horse training farms in Nebraska, Texas, Arizona and Kentucky, before coming back to Nebraska. He got hooked on grilling and the spices that go along with it after spending days out in the sun training thoroughbreds and nights sitting on haystacks drinking beer and cooking steaks.

He got the idea to create his own spice company two years ago and spent the next two years traveling the country thinking of spice concoctions.

He describes them as a combination of tastes from around the country done the Nebraskan way. He went to rib and barbecue fests in places like Kansas City, Mo., and Lynchburg, Tenn., and talked to grillers about what spices they put on their food. Then he returned back to Lincoln and is now starting to get his company off the ground.