Northern Lights - Issue 44 - September 2026
Food to Housing – Entrepreneur Passion Helps Community Thrive
by AMY LANE
When Nic Welty graduated from Carnegie Mellon University’s top-tier Tepper School of Business, it was as outstanding entrepreneurial student of the year.
Now 44, he’s lived up to that recognition, many times over. From the 9 Bean Rows farmstead he and wife Jen started in 2009 in Suttons Bay, to co-founding a cooperative aimed at helping local northern Michigan farmers, to a new grain milling operation and upcoming housing on 9 Bean Rows land, Welty sees the region’s needs and challenges, and responds.
“Nic has a strong vision and the determination to turn big ideas into action, regardless of barriers or complexity,” said Laura Galbraith, president of Venture North Funding & Development, which has helped finance many of the Weltys’ endeavors. “He has also built a strong network of partnerships to bring together the right team to get things done.”
Nic and Jen Welty started small, coming to northern Michigan in 2006 and working at winery Black Star Farms, where Jen had once interned.
In a few years, they rented farmland to grow vegetables and established a Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA, program, with Jen also baking bread and croissants in space rented from Black Star farms at “a very generous rate” – space once part of a horse barn and converted by Nic into a kitchen.
Nic Welty harvests lacinato kale at 9 Bean Rows in Suttons Bay, where his entrepreneurial journey began with farming and a commitment to increasing access to high-quality local food year-round.
Food and Farming for Profit
As they started 9 Bean Rows, “our mission statement to begin with was, and still is, about increasing the availability of high-quality local food, 12 months of the year,” Nic Welty said.
Holding degrees in economics, molecular biology and chemistry, Welty was often called upon to teach classes and give presentations at conferences and other settings, attended by members of the farm and food business communities. And as he viewed and analyzed the food system in the area, he was struck by the need for a shared ordering platform that could connect restaurants, grocery stores and others with farmers and their fruits, vegetables, meats, cheese and other products – a need he answered by building a simple online system based on a Google platform.
“This was a stab at trying to make something happen,” he said.
It was a precursor to many more meetings with farmers and partnerships that led to MI Farm Co-Op, a cooperative co-founded by Welty and Jim Bardenhagen, of family- owned Bardenhagen Farms.
“My goal was to make the farmers more profitable,” Welty said. “Better access to markets, more profits for farmers. Having a single platform where you can buy all of the local stuff that’s here, is super handy. And I thought it was something that a good local foods system needed, and we didn’t have it here.”
Food from 25 Farms
Launching operation in 2015 with some 90 percent of its sales farm-to-school, MI Farm Co-Op now includes more than 25 farms in northwest Michigan, selling produce, meat, eggs and more to restaurants, grocery stores, schools, catering and other food-related businesses. It also has a multi-farm, year-round CSA program. Welty is treasurer and Bardenhagen is president of the co-op.
As MI Farm Co-Op grew, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development awarded a grant toward a new aggregation facility, moving the co-op out of its operating home in the Weltys’ barn. Venture North provided a loan to support the initial phase of the project until USDA reimbursement came through, one of several “bridge” loans made by Venture North to 9 Bean Rows and the co-op – critical financing when projects involve reimbursable grants that “can create ongoing timing and cash flow challenges,” Galbraith said.
Venture North has partnered with the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development or MDARD, the Michigan Economic Development Corp. and USDA “on multiple regional projects, providing low-interest loans with little to no collateral requirements to help bridge these gaps,” she said.
Nic and Jen Welty have spent years turning their shared vision for 9 Bean Rows into a growing network of businesses and partnerships. “Together, they transformed a small agricultural operation into a multifaceted food business,” says Venture North President Laura Galbraith.
Venture North Capital for Extraordinary Bread and More
At 9 Bean Rows, Venture North-supported expansions have included building additions for bakery production space and, in 2022, retail space and a unique, wood-fired clay convection oven built on-site by artisans from Barcelona, Spain. It was long a dream of Jen Welty’s, who had learned to bake bread on such an oven years prior, Nic Welty said.
“We went from a really crappy, dilapidated oven” to one of superior thermal performance and size, improved speed and quality, he said. “In many ways, it’s the best wood-fired oven you could ever have.” It burns wood from the Weltys’ property and other local sources, important as a move from fossil fuels and saving $500 a month compared to propane.
A Melting Pot of Businesses
The Weltys’ 9 Bean Rows is a community of interconnected businesses: A farm that provides vegetables and fruits for its year-round CSA and weekly farmers markets throughout the region and local restaurants; a bakery making a variety of breads, European pastries and more in a retail space that also sells farm produce and local food products; a café serving up sandwiches, salads and wood-fired pizza made on bakery dough; and now, a milling operation to source grain from local farmers and process it into flour. That project, long in the works, provides farmers with another business opportunity while strengthening the local grain system, Welty said.
“The best way to preserve farmland is to do something profitable with it,” he said. “We’ve been working with different farmers and millers for over 10 years…trying to find a way…a farmer can grow a crop and actually make something off it.”
Local grain is also important to 9 Bean Rows, for its breads and pasta. “For us, it’s an extension of increasing the quality within 9 Bean Rows. Hopefully that keeps our customers happy, keeps more customers coming in to us,” Welty said.
Supported by USDA and MDARD grants and Venture North loans, the mill is an operation Welty hopes to have running by the end of the year.
Nic and Jen Welty are “a strong husband-wife team with complementary roles,” Galbraith said. “Together, they transformed a small agricultural operation into a multifaceted food business encompassing farming, a CSA, bakery, café and wholesale operations. Jen’s baking expertise became a defining part of the business, while Nic focused on farming, business development and building partnerships across the regional food system.”
And, she said, “it is important to recognize the economic impact extends well beyond his own businesses. Through MI Farm Co-Op, Nic has helped create a collaborative model that enables small family farms to collectively access larger markets and strengthens the region’s food system. His ability to bring farmers, institutions, funders and other partners together has turned a big idea into meaningful regional economic impact.”
Leading by Example
Employing some 80 people at peak season, Nic said he and Jen take pride in being able to create jobs. “Creating meaningful jobs for people is a major goal or accomplishment that we strive for,” he said.
And Abby Zelenak, front of house manager at 9 Bean Rows, said the duo are inspirational. “Nic and Jen, even though they’re the owners, they’re there right by your side on those hot summer days…it’s leadership by example,” she said.
Nic is “very intelligent, but also very intentional in everything he does. It might not make sense to you in the moment, but his brain is three steps ahead of you,” she said. The two are “always trying to make the place better…staff’s lives better, better customer experience…they’re just always trying to improve, and Nic is the main driver of that.”
“A business must be financially profitable, but it also should be a net positive impact on the community and ideally a net positive impact on the environment or ecosystem. I don’t want to do something unless it’s beneficial all the way around.”
- Nic Welty, 9 Bean Rows
Growing an Awesome Entrepreneur
Zelenak said she has always wanted to own a business of her own someday, and “Nic and Jen are great examples.” It is “cool to personally work alongside those people that lead the team,” she said. Owning a business “is definitely really hard work but Nic and Jen are great examples of a good way to do it.”
For his part, Welty said Zelenak, who’s been with 9 Bean Rows for a year, is “awesome.” She’s in charge of day-to-day customer-facing bakery operations, tells bakers how much to bake, coordinates incoming produce from MI Farm Co-Op and 9 Bean, orders and stocks retail products with an emphasis on supporting local farmers and their fresh and shelf-stable goods, and handles hiring and other duties. She’s responsible for a retail space and sales that Welty said are “our most profitable revenue stream, and our biggest revenue stream. For 9 Bean Rows’ business, being able to sell direct-to-consumer on-site is a tremendous component of what we do.”
Profits aren’t all that’s in Welty’s end game, though. “I don’t like to do things unless it makes sense from a total triple bottom line standpoint,” he said. “A business must be financially profitable, but it also should be a net positive impact on the community and ideally a net positive impact on the environment or ecosystem. I don’t want to do something unless it’s beneficial all the way around.”
Centered on Complex Community Challenges
Coming up at 9 Bean Rows: Four duplex houses Welty’s working to build and offer to employees, answering “a desperate need” for housing that he said has made it difficult to attract workers.
It’s an approach to which Freya Bradford, director of systems change and learning at Rotary Charities of Traverse City, gives kudos.
“It is extremely difficult for people to find affordable housing in Leelanau County and our region in general,” she said. “It’s really heartening to see business owners like Nic who see a problem that they don’t own, like housing that is affecting their workforce, and try to do something about it.”
A loaf of artisan bread from 9 Bean Rows, where Jen Welty’s passion for baking has become a defining part of the business.
Supporting Systems that Help Communities Thrive: Rotary Charities
At Rotary Charities, Bradford’s work centers around complex community problems and challenges, areas like housing that “are everyone’s problem,” she said.
Welty “gets that there’s something that he can do and contribute,” Bradford said. “He’s doing his part…which is pretty awesome.”
Rotary Charities is a longstanding partner to Venture North, providing grants that have helped Venture North operate its programs and expand its ability to help small businesses in Rotary’s five-county region, and investing capital that Venture North in turn deploys in loans to businesses like 9 Bean Rows.
“We recognize the importance of small businesses and entrepreneurs to the overall health of our region,” Bradford said. “Our investments in Venture North are a meaningful way to support the small businesses that help our region thrive.”
Galbraith said Venture North is “eagerly anticipating” the duplexes Welty is building. “If successful, the project could provide a replicable model for other property owners and employers seeking to expand attainable workforce housing throughout the region.”
But Wait, There’s More
As with many entrepreneurs, Welty has business challenges -- difficulties in finding and affording good help, access to capital, tight project budgets, government approvals and timelines that can be difficult to mesh, he said.
There aren’t enough hours in a day that starts by 4 a.m. and goes well into the evening. “I have habitually skipped sleeping as a means to find some more hours over the years,” Welty said. “There’s a lot going on.”
And even with all that he’s accomplished, he’s far from done. Said Welty: “I have many, many other business ideas, too.”
Amy Lane is a veteran Michigan business reporter whose background includes work with Crain Communications Inc., Crain’s Detroit Business and serving as Capitol correspondent for nearly 25 years. Now a freelance reporter and journalist, Lane’s work has appeared in many publications including Traverse City Business News.
