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.