Syrup company goes from $5,000 loan to $60M in sales

Jordan Engelhardt, the founder and president of Clearwater-based Skinny Mixes LLC, had been pursuing big retailer Target for eight years.

As a small businesswoman, she had already bagged big game. 

Engelhardt, 42, started her ‘skinny syrup’ mix company in 2009, at the height of the recession, after her Clearwater-based real estate appraisal job became threatened by the market crash. She saw a need for a no-sugar syrup to make margaritas and cosmopolitans (the drink made popular in HBO's "Sex and the City"), getting the idea in 2007. In 2009, she got to work talking to people and food labs, and putting together some bottles. Her first year in business she made what she called a "baby profit.”