Sydney Chasin has been eating gluten-free since she was 7-years-old. That meant she couldn’t grab just any bread or munch on just any kind of store-bought treat.
Her product “Tiny Pops” are hand-held packs of crunchy sorghum, an ancient grain that is air popped and comes in three different flavors — sweet and salty, cinnamon and cocoa. A handful of these look like mini-popcorn and taste like munching on a nutty flavored rice cake, which can be eaten on their own or as a topping.
Chasin officially launched the company in 2018. But first, she took out a credit card with a $5,000 limit and the mindset of using the bare minimum to start her business. In the United States, sorghum is a cereal crop used in animal feed, ethanol production and for human consumptionIt can be steamed, popped or used as a flour replacement for the specific market of people who eat gluten-free food.
While there aren’t acres of sorghum crops growing in the backyard of her Pacific Beach apartment — she sources it from Kansas — there is a real place called Chasin Dreams Farms.