"I felt really confident and prepared when I came out of Purdue. My education made me unafraid of taking on a project like this."

Unafraid? Perhaps. Unpolished? Certainly.

Photo by Dave Umberger

In 1998, Ryan Howard, with partner Faye Mulvaney, won the soybean utilization competition for inventing a soy-based ski wax. The two won again in 1999, and Howard won for a third time before graduating in 2000.

"I knew I needed some practical experience in business other than what I learned at Purdue," Howard says.

Rather than jump right in to his soybean-processing dream, Howard took a job as a project engineer with General Mills, where he planned to practice what his mom had always preached.

"She told me all the time, 'You have to learn from the best and then go beat them at their own game,'" Howard says.

For two years, he toiled for General Mills in its Chicago plant. Howard learned everything he could, asked a million questions and kept mental notes. He hung out with the maintenance crews so he could see how big, expensive machines got fixed when they wore down.

"General Mills was an amazing company to work for," Howard acknowledges. "Their quality management systems were top-shelf. I learned so much by working there."

While he worked there, he founded his own company, which consisted of two guys, a business plan and a dream. Howard convinced his best friend, Dan Ziegler, to sign on and start Chicago Soydairy.

Howard flatlined his savings account and convinced his dad and a few friends to invest in his dream. He even got his tattoo artist to buy a few shares. Howard and Ziegler bought $10,000 worth of processing and refrigeration equipment and two very large bags of beans.

Ziegler lived and worked in Indianapolis but would drive to Chicago on weekends. Ensconced in Howard's basement, the pair tried to perfect a soy-based milk substitute that vegans and people with dairy allergies would enjoy.

They tiled and sloped the basement so they could easily drain their mistakes and went to the Internet to find recipes for soymilk.

In December 2002, their first batch of soymilk dribbled out into the cup Howard anxiously held under the spout.

"We were freaking out when it started to come out of the machine," Howard remembers. "It tasted great at first, we were so excited. But then, about four hours later, it tasted really terrible."

Soybeans, they found, are very complex little critters that contain oils that break down and cause off odors and off flavors as they age.

"We were really depressed," Howard says. "There are way too many mediocre products on the market and I had no interest in putting out another one. I knew that if I ever put a product on the market, it was going to be top quality. It was heartbreaking that we couldn't figure out what we had to do to make it taste better."

Howard quit his job at General Mills and spent six months of sleepless nights and long-distance phone calls to his partner in Indianapolis to figure what had gone wrong.

"I was young and dumb, so I just kept pushing ahead. I never accepted that it wouldn't work. I dove into scientific journals and studies and started to draw a bunch of different conclusions. I'd call Dan at all hours of the night and say 'Hey, what if we try this?' or 'What if we do that?' He was a great sounding board for a lot of ideas. And, I'll admit, not all of them were good."

Chucking it and retreating to the corporate security afforded by General Mills was not an option for Howard. Six months of setbacks only steeled his determination to make his dream come true.

"This was my time, my money and my life that I had spent on this project. I had to make it work. I had way, way too much invested in the project to just quit," he says.

By April 2003, Howard and Ziegler, the CEO and El Presidente and lone employees of Chicago Soydairy, finally figured outhow to make tasty soymilk that had a shelf life. It was time for Howard to put on his salesman's hat. With an address list of every vegetarian restaurant and cafe in Chicago, he hit the streets.

"We had some initial success," Howard says. "A lot of people liked us. We were a local company, we delivered a fresh product, and it tasted better than anything they were using."

Howard was cranking out about 40 gallons of soymilk a week. One customer loved their basement brew so much, he asked if there was an ice cream product, too.

Before Ziegler could say no, Howard chirped, "Sure, why not?"

Ice cream is a $24 billion a year industry in the United States. Nondairy frozen dessert sales approach $150 million a year in the U.S. Why couldn't we tap into that market, Howard argued.

So it was back to the basement.

They bought six electric ice cream mixers, the ones that turn salt, ice, milk, sugar and patience into creamy, delicious ice cream. Kind of like a summer picnic without the food or the fun.

"We cooked an ice cream mix on my stove and threw it into the ice cream makers," Howard says. "It only took two batches before we thought we had stumbled onto something really great."

That was the easy part. Now they needed real money to buy a real ice cream machine.

"It was time to max out the credit cards again," Howard says.

They sunk $6,000 into a dinosaur of a used machine capable of churning out two gallons of ice cream every 15-20 minutes. Suddenly, they had diversified.

He had a product, but the product didn't have a name.

With no marketing branch, nor money to hire one, Howard sent an e-mail to family and friends. "It just so happened that my dad came up with the name, 'Temptation.' It was perfect."

Finally, it was time to move out of the basement. Chicago Soydairy moved into a 1,600-square-foot section of an industrial strip mall in Lombard, just west of Chicago. It may not have been as much as they wanted, but it was all they could afford.

But all that could soon change. Howard's business recently earned a $25,000 economic development grant from the Innovate Illinois 2006 program, funded by the Illinois governor's office.

The company currently offers eight flavors of nondairy ice creams. Howard hopes the grant money will help the company dent the lucrative West Coast market with Temptation.

"The West Coast is as big a market as the rest of the country combined," Howard says. "We would love to be able to sell Temptation in a market as big as California."

In the company's first full year (2004), sales reached $40,000. By 2005, sales climbed to $100,000. Howard expects annual sales to approach $250,000 by the end of this year. Not bad for a guy with an idea and a couple of bags of beans.

Contact Howard at ryan@welovesoy.com