How Brightpoint helps local businesses adapt during challenging times – Input Fort Wayne

If you had asked Katey Foor a few years ago to open a restaurant, she would have laughed. 

Though she had plenty of food service experience, entrepreneurship was not something Foor saw for herself. That is, until late 2024, when she opened Katey’s Café, which serves breakfast and lunch out of the Centier Bank Building in downtown Fort Wayne. 

Similarly, Blanca Rosa didn’t grow up dreaming she’d become an entrepreneur. In fact, as a child, her career aspirations included becoming a therapist and teacher. After marrying her husband, she says she “fell in love with her husband’s family’s orchard,” and decided to dive into becoming a small business owner in 2018, opening Ambrosia Orchard.

For Grayce Holloway, the entrepreneurial journey has been intensely personal: years ago, after enduring a difficult pregnancy loss, Holloway turned to baking and decorating cakes as a way to navigate the painful grieving process. 

“I just didn’t want to cry all the time, and I really found peace when I was decorating,” she says. 

What began as baking a cake for a friend eventually grew into Icing for Izaac, a business that has honored the son she lost since its opening in March 2019.

While Foor, Rosa and Holloway have all had different journeys into entrepreneurship, they face many of the same challenges as they continue to operate in the midst of difficult economic circumstances. A recent report by two Purdue Fort Wayne professors highlights Fort Wayne’s rising prices and stagnant wages, which may be a driver of recent restaurant closures: residents simply have less money to spend on entertainment and dining out.

As these business owners navigate the difficulties of the food and hospitality sector, Brightpoint’s small business lending programs have proven invaluable.

In northeast Indiana, the Brightpoint Development Fund, a U.S. Department of Treasury Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), has been a source of relief and help for small business owners feeling the pressure of entrepreneurship in today’s economy. 

The fund offers lending options for entrepreneurs, including those who might not get approved by traditional financial institutions. Brightpoint helps applicants with the loan application process, clarifying specific business terms and providing encouragement and accountability to potential borrowers.

Once approved, each loan has certain conditions, such as sharing yearly financial information and identifying and acknowledging existing challenges and plans for future assistance. These terms build a foundation of ongoing support for entrepreneurs.

As Vice President of Commercial Economic Development at Brightpoint, Matt Crouch oversees a number of Brightpoint programs, including its small business lending offerings. His responsibilities with borrowers prioritize “relationship-building, trust, and collaboration.” For Crouch, his work goes beyond the balance sheet: “Small businesses give a sense of purpose to a community. They’re not just where we shop, but also where we share memories.”

Katey’s Café, Ambrosia Orchard, and Icing for Izaac have all utilized the resources provided by Brightpoint in hopes of strengthening their businesses and continuing to offer a space for those memories to be made.

Years ago, Ambrosia Orchard realized the need for additional cold storage – effectively a giant climate-controlled garage that could house extra produce from recent harvests. They turned to Brightpoint to help finance the project. According to Rosa, Brightpoint “made the process very encouraging.”

The increased storage capacity means upping the production of cider and mead for Ambrosia. After a big apple crop in 2025 (roughly 3,000 pounds of apples were picked from the family orchard), Ambrosia was able to cold store apples and expand capacity for future cider production.

Crucially, Brightpoint’s support doesn’t end with lending. It’s ongoing. 

“You think they want your money, and then they’ll step back. Brightpoint wasn’t like that at all,” Rosa says.

Brightpoint leadership hopes that its efforts to build relationships with borrowers will help identify potential business challenges before they grow into overwhelming issues. To assist with this, Brightpoint employs Derrick DeBruce as a borrower engagement coordinator. DeBruce maintains contact with borrowers, building relationships, checking in on them, understanding their struggles, and connecting them to other resources.

DeBruce knows the strain of operating a business, having watched his family open a business in the late 1970s, only to watch it fail a year later. He tells borrowers, “reach out to me before you get in trouble… we can work with you.”

For Katey’s Café, Brightpoint provided not just a loan, but crucial expertise, especially for challenges unique to the hospitality industry. Before opening her café, Foor had multiple sessions with a restaurant consultant. Brightpoint connected Foor to other helpful resources, such as the Indiana Small Business Development Center. Foor says she “had a great idea for the café, but didn’t have any experience with calculating projections, writing a business plan or managing a business’s finances.”

“If I had not received their help and the expertise of the partners of Brightpoint, the cafe would not have survived the first year,” Foor says.

Continued reviewing of financial statements and meeting with her ISBDC business counselor have brought new insights for Foor, such as where the café could raise prices to meet increasing costs. She’s also found ways to compensate for decreased foot traffic and in-person dining by offering online ordering to customers.

After Brightpoint provided Holloway with a business loan for Icing for Izaac’s brick-and-mortar location, the organization continued to share financial guidance, such as helping with a tricky sales tax situation that Holloway’s previous accountant had missed.

That continued support and outreach make a difference in the current economic climate, where Fort Wayne has seen numerous small businesses announce closure or share their struggles on social media in recent months.

For Holloway, working with Brightpoint has been a “full circle moment.” As a teen mom, she sought help from Brightpoint for childcare assistance and food stamps. Years later, she’s benefited from their business expertise. 

“I can’t even put into words how special it was to walk into the building with my husband and our five children for that small business loan,” she says.

She’s committed to responding to customer requests and innovating as an entrepreneur at a time when costs are increasing and consumer spending is down. 

“Every time something happens with the economy, it forces me as a small business owner to get really creative,” she says.

Over time, these relationships with business owners help build a knowledge base of sorts that Brightpoint can tap into, allowing it to respond more quickly to the next challenge a small business faces.

In recent years, Ambrosia Orchard has dealt with a combination of issues that can negatively affect its business: nationally, alcohol sales are down, while locally, Fort Wayne has experienced significant droughts in past summers. To mitigate these weather-related hurdles, Ambrosia has pivoted some of its production to less water-intensive crops, such as asian pears. And the challenges of a population that seems less inclined to drink have provided Ambrosia with an opportunity to focus on agritourism, rather than relying solely on alcohol sales.

Rosa says it’s devastating to see other businesses shuttering, but in the midst of these difficult times, she finds that the city’s food and beverage industry continues to find ways to support one another. Ambrosia Orchard works with many local farms for sourcing produce, and encourages collaboration and community as an antidote to business struggles. 

“When you’re struggling with a business, it’s easy to feel isolated, like you can’t push through,” Rosa says. “That’s the time to phone friends, reach out to colleagues, and try to collaborate with someone, share ideas, work on products together, and learn how others are getting people in the door. Collaboration is one of the biggest ways to not feel isolated and then come up with new and innovative ideas.”

This story is made possible by Brightpoint.