New business ideas take shape in Salt Lake City at The Foundry

SALT LAKE CITY — If you're looking for a reason to hope for the economy — not to mention hope for humanity — a crucible of sorts for startup businesses and the entrepreneurially obsessed called The Foundry has some prime examples.

Consider, for instance:

 A Priori, an already profitable new import/distribution company of fine specialty foods that was willed from dream into reality by Nick Frappier, a young painter who can give "a 10-hour discourse on chocolate and how most of what Americans call chocolate isn't even close to the real thing."

 META, a new catering business being nurtured along by founder Adam Kaslikowski that invokes ethically sourced eating and defies the credo of American fast food that, if it's fast, it's bad for you.

 Novobi — a software company with roots in Utah, Michigan and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam — was envisioned almost by accident, then realized and retooled by University of Utah MBA graduate and self-labeled insomniac Ha Pham. He is so sure he's onto something with re-engineering and developing software for small businesses that he just gave his two-week notice at his day job.

 Premier Tax and Accounting, an accounting and tax preparation business started by U. post-graduate Yohauna Allart, who has two employees and a novel approach by providing a still-valued characteristic of American small-business owners: legitimately accounting for your company's finances.

 Redflower, a startup beverage company that has blasted off on Pat Duke-Rosati's bet that, even in the age of premixed drinks and bottled water products lining miles of aisles in grocery stores, people still have a taste for the unique and simple blends of fruit juice and water.

The Foundry, which was launched barely three months ago by the U.'s Eccles School of Business and is located in the Salt Lake Chamber building downtown, is offering the ideal counterpoint to an economy stuck in the doldrums — a rigorous entrepreneurial practicum worthy of its name.

All 49 entrepreneurs enrolled and 15 startups workshopped there are part of the business school's tradition of fostering economic development in Utah by providing hands-on business training, both to make an entrepreneur's good ideas become real companies and to provide a peer-reviewed approach to help them through the managerial shoals that five startup owners interviewed Monday said is invaluable. And all of it is done while engendering a civic-minded savvy about doing business.