Henderson County company that makes sugar-free foods is one of fastest-growing private food companies in U.S.

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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From the new edition of Verve magazine:

Kathy Milner is no Betty Crocker. Not exactly, anyway. The 51-year-old native New Yorker does like to cook, and she occasionally bakes. But Milner, who has a degree in chemistry and worked for the chemical giant DuPont, doesn’t see her sugar-free foods business, American Quality Foods, as a celebration of her domestic skills. In fact, it’s more like a chemistry experiment. A lucrative one.

AQF, which occupies a 17,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Mills River, ships product mixes to some 6,000 customers nationwide—places like nursing homes, hospitals and casinos—that cater to diabetic and weight-conscious clients. With revenues of $4.2 million last year and projected income of $5 million in 2010, Milner, the president, has turned sugar-free cake mixes into one of the fastest-growing private food companies in the country.