Minnesota’s next breakout food brand raises $2M to fuel retail expansion

Meet the local investors who funded the latest round for Maazah and the sister founders on the push to make it a household staple. Plus: A new gig for Target’s former chief communications officer Katie Boylan, and Life Time CEO Bahram Akradi’s big growth plans for 2026.

Maazah, maker of Afghan-inspired chutney dips and sauces, is poised to become Minnesota’s next breakout food brand, now with $2 million in seed financing to support national retail growth.

Sister founders Yasameen and Sheilla Sajady were able to take a moment to celebrate this week, after seven months of nonstop pitching to investors, on top of managing growing demand from Whole Foods and Costco. The $2 million round they just closed is funded almost exclusively by a group of Minnesota-based family offices. Rich Gammill, founder of Proterra, led the round and was joined by Northlew Capital, the family office of George Hicks (who also co-founded the Värde investment firm) and Artifact Capital, led by Melissa Breitenfeldt.

“It’s important to establish trust with the investor community here,” said Yasameen Sajady. “They want to see us win.”

Most of Maazah’s early angel investors were also Minnesota firms, including Tundra Ventures and Groove Capital.

The daughters of Afghan immigrants, the Sajady sisters grew up in Coon Rapids. They started bottling their mother’s chutneys and selling them at local farmers markets in 2014. From there, the products moved to co-ops and local grocers. Today, Maazah is sold in 1,500 stores, thanks to nationwide expansion with Whole Foods and Phoenix-based Sprouts Farmers Market as well as a growing footprint of Costco stores, including the Midwest region. The vision, said Sheilla Sajady, is to “bring Maazah’s bold, globally inspired flavors to everyday tables.”

Made in the U.S. by contract manufacturers, Maazah is inching closer to profitability. The Sajadys, who just hired their first employee, project $3 million in revenue this year.

Naturally Minnesota, a nonprofit that supports food and ag startups, is partnering with Naturally chapters in Chicago, Wisconsin and Colorado for the first ever Midwest & Mountain Mingle at Expo West. The goal, said Naturally Minnesota Executive Director Allison Hohn, is to boost visibility for Midwest brands among investors and buyers. “And also boost the profile for Minnesota as a food innovation hub and convener.”

Talk about hands-on learning: Target’s former chief communications and corporate affairs officer Katie Boylan — a trusted adviser to former CEO Brian Cornell right up until her departure in October — is teaching a graduate-level strategic communications class this semester at the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

The No. 1 question she gets from students is not about any recent headlines for the mass retailer. “Students always want to hear about what it was like to balance my personal priorities with the demands of a big job,” said Boylan, 49.

So what does she tell them? “I often reflect on a piece of advice someone gave me years ago — to think about balance like a checkbook. There will be credits and debits across the different parts of your life, whether it’s work, family or other things. Over time, the goal is to balance it all out in a way that feels right to you.”

More from my conversation with Boylan:

You have a wealth of experience to draw upon after nearly 15 years at Target. Are you using specific campaigns or projects from your time there, or going broader? We dig into a different case study during each class, and depending on the news cycle, we’ll carve out time for a discussion on current events. The students get to choose the cases, and we’ve already covered quite a bit of ground, from Duolingo and Dave’s Killer Bread to CeraVe and Visit Seattle.

With the case studies so far, we’ve talked a lot about brand identity and the power that comes with really knowing who you are and who you’re aiming to reach. We’ve also found ourselves in lively conversations about the importance of research, risk vs. reward, and the reality of difficult tradeoffs.

What’s changed about strategic communications since you were a student? A lot about the world of communications has changed since I was in college, but I think what matters most is how you connect what you learn in the classroom with what you learn on the job. I attended the College of St. Benedict, which is a liberal arts institution, and along with a firm theoretical foundation, I appreciate that they taught me to value curiosity, community and the power of listening closely. The class I’m teaching at the Hubbard School is designed to be very hands-on and experiential. We have a nonprofit “client” and we’ll work through each phase of the campaign-planning process as if we were their communications team. Along the way, we are also talking a lot about some of the intangibles, like how to ask the right questions, partner, collaborate and influence others. My hope is that this class is another step on their path of putting it all together.

Would you ever go back to corporate? I might! Some of the opportunities that have come my way have been really interesting, but right now, I am enjoying the time to recharge and make sure I’m rejuvenated for what’s next. Teaching has reminded me how much I love communications, and being around students is giving me a lot of energy.

(For the record, the ever-collected Boylan politely declined my overture to dish on Target or make any predictions about the hometown retailer. You can take the chief out of the C-suite, but she remains a pro.)

“We expect to add nearly as much new square footage in 2026 as we opened in the past two years combined,” chairman and CEO Bahram Akradi said Tuesday on the company’s earnings call.

Total 2025 revenue for Chanhassen-based Life Time Group Holdings Inc. was up more than 14% over the previous year, to $2.99 billion. Monthly dues are also up to an average of $233 — a 10.8% increase from fourth quarter of last year. Seeking Alpha offers more detail and analyst reaction.

Google’s Pine Island plans: Google will build a data center near Rochester. The announcement this week comes after a year of negotiations that resulted in the tech giant paying Xcel Energy for a significant amount of new wind, solar and battery power. “The agreement drives a significant investment in new clean energy that advances Minnesota’s carbon-free goals and strengthens grid reliability for everybody, Xcel’s Minnesota president Bria Shea told the Strib’s Walker Orenstein.

Stock plunge: Eden Prairie-based Tennant logged its biggest one-day drop in share price in 15 years this week. The Strib’s Patrick Kennedy reports on manufacturing disruptions caused by a new software system that led to a quarterly loss.

The $50 million home: Minnesota’s most expensive home listing recently hit the market — again — on Lake Minnetonka. Lindsay Bacigalupo and Christine Smith from the Wayzata office of Engel & Völkers are the second team of agents to try to sell the listing for the third time in as many years, my colleague Jim Buchta reports. Have a look.