July 2026 Startup Grant Awarded to Babes Pickles

We’re excited to announce the July $10,000 Startup Grant recipient. Congratulations to Mikah Berlingeri & Juliette Fray, founders of Babes Pickles.

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

Video Transcript

Jama: Hi, everyone. My name is Jama with WomensNet, and I’m excited to introduce to you our July 2026 winners. We have with us Mikah and Juliette, and they’re with Babes Pickles, and they are our startup grant winner. Mikah and Juliette, please tell us all about Babes Pickles, and then who or what inspired your business?

Mikah: Hi, I’m Mikah, and Juliette is also on this call. And we are Babes Pickles. We’re an artisan, clean-ingredient pickle brand. We focus on being fresh with a really packed, bold flavor.

But we really were just two best friends who started making pickles in our kitchen just for fun, for friends and family. We’ve always loved pickles more than any other food out there, both independently and together. So when we started coming up with flavors and recipes, and we had our friends try them, they loved them so much. We also realized there were few fresh pickles out there on the market that we also enjoyed eating. So we thought we should just create our own and get it on the shelves. But a lot of inspiration comes from our love of food and our love of people. Food has always been such an important part of both of our families, as well as gathering people together. So creating a brand that was really important to us—to bring everyone together and have them be a part of a fun brand experience, as well as enjoying an incredible product.

Jama: So tell us a little bit more about what makes your business and just your approach with your product that you’re offering so special.

Juliette: What sets us apart is definitely our focus on quality ingredients and being super intentional about what we put in each jar.

I grew up going to France, and we always used French sels gris, so we incorporated that into our recipe. Our pickles are mineral-rich—they have a lot of electrolytes.

That’s another thing that sets us apart: they’re not only for snacking, they’re also for drinking the brine, they’re for cooking, and they’re for making cocktails.

And that leads us kind of into our unique marketing approach, which involves doing events and working with local restaurants and doing collaborations that celebrate the product through various iterations.

So not only are we selling pickles, but we’re pairing with local restaurants and doing a cocktail for a month, or they’re being served as appetizers to a main dish.

And that’s been really fun as well. As Mikah said, we love food. We love cooking. And it’s been really fun to have the opportunity to work with local restaurants and chefs and be able to have that collaboration. One more thing that I meant to add is a very important part of our brand and the product: we really, really value not using any preservatives or chemicals. We have a very extensive icing process that our cucumbers go through to ensure that they stay fresh, crispy, and crunchy without having to use any chemicals or preservatives. That is something that we really value and has been a value from the very start. We wanted to create a fresh, crisp pickle that we felt like we couldn’t find anywhere else.

Mikah: And I wanted to add, yes, the icing and the cold-brining process make them extremely crunchy, so that sets us apart. Another thing with our marketing strategy: we think that the name Babes is super fun and cheeky, and so it created this personality that we wanted to bring to the pickle industry that we felt wasn’t really out there—fun, cheeky, playful, and confident. Bringing pickles to the party as a gift. A lot of people gift them. Some real estate agents in Austin are gifting them as real estate gifts to all of their top-producing clients. And it is an elevated gift to be giving.

Juliette: To chime off of that, our name, Babes, for us, it’s like babes are people that are curious and confident and have good taste, but it’s also a term of endearment. It’s this notion of gifting and bringing people together that we have been also inspired by throughout this entire process because it’s just been very organic and exciting and rewarding in a way to be able to bring people together—really just a delicious product.

Mikah: Exactly.

Juliette: Absolutely.

Jama: It is truly unique. I love the fact that it doesn’t have some of the traditional preservatives. You can read the ingredients and understand and know what they are- and yet they’re so tasty. I know for me, cucumber’s my favorite- when it’s crisp and just right fresh, it’s just amazing. I cannot wait to try some of your pickles! Thank you both so much for joining us. And we do appreciate you taking the time. We know that you’re busy women, and so we appreciate getting to know your business a little bit. Congratulations on your July win, and we look forward to hearing more about you and your update towards the end of the year.