April 2025 Startup Grant Awarded to Tegner Mill

We’re excited to announce the April $10,000 Start-up Grant recipient. Congratulations to Natalie Wilson, Founder of Tegner Mill.

Recently, WomensNet Advisory Board member Jama Hernandez sat down with Natalie for an exclusive interview. You can listen to their conversation and view the transcript below.

Video Transcript

Can you tell us a little bit about your business?

Hi, my name is Natalie Wilson and I am owner and Miller of Tegner Mill. A little bit about Tegner Mill. We are a local stone mill located in the heart of the California Central Valley and Turlock, California. We take local grain and mill it into flour. Our slogan is pure and simple. We have no additives, no bleach, nothing has ever been sprayed, and we’re able to provide people with a fresh milled flour option that is clean so that they can cook for their families. We also offer bulk flour that we provide to local artisan bakers as well as restaurants and bakeries, so they as well can enjoy a fresh milled flour. We offer quite a few different varieties of flour. And the fun thing with fresh milled flour is based on the wheat variety, so we have a great option.

 

 

What or who inspired your business?

I have to give a lot of credit to our local grain farmers. Most of them have been growing grain over the last five years and they have really taken into account growing organic heritage, which are older varieties, non-modified varieties of grain. That really inspired me to want to give them a way to be able to sell their grain. We didn’t have a local flour mill, so now we are using the local grains that are mostly grown within 15 to 20 miles from the mill and milling it into fresh flour so that we can provide it to our customers. So that was really inspirational, and they really gave me the motivation to get started as well as my roots in agriculture and wanting to be able to provide something that was clean and locally accessible. We also ship. So that’s been really exciting to be able to share our flour with other people around the United States.

 

What is your most effective marketing strategies you’ve used to let others know about your business? 

I’ve used social media, especially Instagram. So fresh old flour- there’s quite a bit of a learning curve and people are really used to industrial flour that they use in all their products. So we’ve had to do a lot of education, and so it’s been a really great outlet to provide videos and information so that we can truly educate people so that they can understand the true value of our product. So, again, I feel so blessed to have received this award and we are going to be purchasing cold storage with it so that we can mill more flour and keep up with all of the demand.