- May 22, 2026
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Lakewood Ranch is a lovely place to live, but it’s unlikely to become the next Silicon Valley. It’s not a startup hub or tech incubator or hotbed of venture capital. But there is entrepreneurship percolating beneath the rooftops. Small businesses are being hatched, ambitions unleashed, dreams realized.
“I think of us as having a hidden entrepreneur community,” says Brittany Lamont, president/CEO of the Lakewood Ranch Business Alliance. “There’s a lot of small business activity, not just in brick-and-mortar but from people you may never see.”
Allow us to introduce you to three small businesses — two of them less than a year old and one looking to expand into a wider market.
When Jason Huh’s parents divorced after his eighth grade year, his mother, Katherine Best, moved him from Sarasota to what was then the wilds of Lakewood Ranch. That was in 1998, when the master-planned community was 3 years old. “There was hardly anything but a lot of land and cow pastures, and a Mobil gas station,” he says.
It was not an easy transition for an energetic, social kid who had studied taekwondo, played league soccer and been first-chair violinist in the Sarasota Middle School orchestra. It wasn’t all bad, though. Jason found a way to turn inward. “Lakewood Ranch was so peaceful, and it helped me clear my mind,” he says. “It kind of served as an incubator for a lot of ideas, and without Lakewood Ranch, I don’t think any of this would exist.”
The “this” Huh speaks of is STEEL, a company he launched on his own in 2016 and of which remains the sole owner. Its products include a wide array of muscle-building supplements, energy drinks and — as of July 2025 — Sodi Pop, a “better-for-you” soft drink.
The new soda is available at Detwiler’s Farm Market and about 150 gas station convenience stores throughout Florida, Huh says.
His father, Won Huh, was a former Mr. Korea bodybuilding champ and a prominent fitness trainer in Sarasota. Jason didn’t pick up weightlifting in earnest until his junior year at Lakewood Ranch High School, but he quickly became obsessed and dropped music and other sports. In 2004, a year after graduating, he won a national teen bodybuilding championship, which spurred him to go all in — Mr. Olympia or bust.
During this period, he opened his first business, Elite Nutrition and Smoothie, in downtown Sarasota, which remains a STEEL storefront. Huh pushed and pulled and flexed and posed until he earned his professional bodybuilding card in 2010. A year later he married, and by 2013 he and Jessica had two daughters. Huh’s fervor for the sport began to fade. He became less enamored with its hyper-macho, insular nature and had grown weary of the arduous training and strict diet regimens. Jason Huh had mellowed out.
He retired from pro bodybuilding in 2013 and turned his attention toward family and running Elite Nutrition. After what he calls his “walkabout year,” Huh started a T-shirt business aimed at the weightlifting crowd. Its quick success prompted him to start a supplements line that swelled to myriad products. Then came Revit energy drinks, also targeted at weightlifters.
Business was robust, but Huh found himself getting antsy. Nearly all of his sales were direct-to-consumer, and he wanted to connect with a larger audience. So STEEL rolled out a less extreme energy drink called Omni, its name (“all” in Latin) signaling a move toward the mass market. “I wanted to serve a different platform where I could get into the community, do hand-to-hand marketing, get to talk to people,” he says.
Omni has 200 milligrams of caffeine — a can of Coke has 34 — so it’s off limits to the Huh kids. That gave him an idea: Sodi Pop, which essentially kept Omni’s names (Stoked, Beach Day, Island Gold, etc.) and fruity flavors while removing the caffeine.
Huh says that Sodi Pop has a way to go before it’s successful. The beverage sector is hyper-competitive, and to scale up, his soft drink will have to gain shelf space in larger stores. For now, Huh is focused on establishing a foothold in the local, regional and state markets.
He’s pleased that his kids (ages 18, 13, 10 and 4) and their friends can pop cans and sip away. Sodi Pop has no sugar, artificial flavors, dyes or other additives. It’s naturally flavored, uses Sucralose as a sweetener and contains vitamins C, B12 and ginger.
And then there’s this full-circle development: Sodi Pop is available in the vending machine at Lakewood Ranch High.
Never one to let the grass grow under him, Huh rolled out yet another product in March. Liquid Maximus Vitae is water sourced from a “protected alpine aquifer” in Austria. It comes in 16-ounce cans.
All STEEL products are available through SteelSupplements.com.
It started with a silly question from a kid, which gave rise to a silly idea for a business, which after some brainstorming and research didn’t seem so silly anymore. Last September, seven members of the Whitman and Wacha families founded Combat Spice Co. to market their craft spice creations under the brand Moo-Jitsu.
The business started as a fun side hustle that would involve the kids — all of them under 10 — but some positive early response has Brandon Whitman and Scott Wacha, Moo-Jitsu’s primary drivers, thinking bigger. “We both work in recruiting,” says Wacha. “And we know that the job market is shrinking. If we’re able to build this company into something really big, then all of our kids could one day have an opportunity to walk into a job.”
One potential beneficiary is Olivia Whitman, 9, who on the ride back from a jiu-jitsu tournament saw some cows swimming in a pond. “I didn’t know cows could swim,” she mused to her dad, then asked, “Can cows do jiu-jitsu?”
“Probably,” Brandon replied.
Out of the mouths of babes.
The Whitmans, who live in Lakewood Ranch, and the Wachas, Bradenton residents, are close friends who gather for weekend barbecues. The two dads have long enjoyed toying with different spice combinations. When they decided to launch the business, Whitman (CEO) and Wacha (CFO) took their base recipes to a company in Colorado for an intense, three-day R&D session to refine their blends. Using 2,000 available ingredients, including many the partners did not have access to, they emerged with four types: O-Moo-Plata Green, Ki-Moo-Ra Black, Rear-Naked Gold and Arm Bar Red.
Each has a cute backstory that combines bovine and jiu-jitsu themes. And each contains a long list of ingredients that unite for a distinct flavor profile. The Colorado company blends the spices and bottles, labels and ships them to Wacha’s house.
Moo-Jitsu spices are not just meant for backyard barbecues. “Between the four blends, they can be used for everyday cooking, on salads, even on popcorn,” Whitman says. “They’re low sodium so you can use them liberally.”
During an interview in early March, Whitman said the company had sold 3,000 bottles and already placed a second order with its provider. The four spices are selling about equally. “There are no duds, so that gives me confidence we can go back and create new blends,” he added.
Rather than pushing to get their products onto store shelves, the Moo-Jitsu crew sets up at outdoor events, including the Tuesday farmers’ market at Benderson Park. To lure passersby, they fire up the grill and cook meat sprinkled with their spice blends. That attracts noses. The team hands out samples, which often leads to sales.
Olivia Whitman and Wes Wacha, both 9, span out, armed with samples, and draw folks to the table, which can lead to a sale. “At first, Olivia asked me, ‘How much money do I get?’” Brandon recalls with a chuckle. “They thought, ‘I just sold a $12 box, I should get $12.’ We had to show them the math, the cost of goods, how much we paid, how much we’re making, how none of us [adults] are taking a salary but are investing it right back into the business. And Olivia goes, ‘So where’s my money?’ And I said, ‘Well, we’ll have to work out a side agreement.’”
When Wes asked his father for his cut, Wacha told him, “You want dinner tonight?”
Moo-jitsu products are available through MooJitsu.co.
By her mid-teens, Katelyn Diaz knew she wanted to start a company one day, so after graduating from Lakewood Ranch High last year, she enrolled at State College of Florida to take online business classes. But she couldn’t hold back her entrepreneurial urge. “I didn’t want to wait until I graduated,” she says.
The 19-year-old huddled with her parents — Adrian and Rachel Diaz — and came up with an idea they felt would find a niche in Lakewood Ranch: a coffee trailer. They coined it Sip n Brew.
Since last August, the colorful, custom-made vehicle has been all around the Lakewood Ranch area — at Nathan Benderson Park, at youth baseball and flag football games, at Sarasota Polo Club matches, at private events and elsewhere. Sip n Brew has even gone pro. It’s the exclusive coffee vendor at Sarasota Paradise soccer matches (which began in March and run until October).
In addition to hot coffee, Sip n Brew offers cold brews, various teas (hot and cold), four types of lemonade and a few snacks.
Mom and Dad covered most of the startup costs but required Katelyn to pony up some bucks from her savings. To start their startup, Rachel took a year off from her teaching job and Adrian figured out how to carve out time from his corporate job in IT. The R&D phase was fun. For about a month, mom and daughter spent mornings in the kitchen of their Polo Run home sampling different coffee beans to create Sip n Brew’s flavor profiles. They chose Banyan Coffee in Palmetto as their provider.
Each partner focuses on a few areas of the business, with some overlap. Adrian handles the financial and business development — he landed the Paradise deal — as well as setting up the trailer and usually driving it to that day’s location. Rachel covers inventory and community outreach. Katelyn creates the graphics, runs the brand’s robust social media channels, makes a lot of the drinks, packs the coolers and sells the beverages from the trailer. Rachel joins her when needed.
So how’s business?
In early March, Katelyn said it was “pretty good” — in an optimistic tone. A successful day brings in around $650, she says. The Diazes hope to soon add a second trailer and, if all goes well, eventually open a brick-and-mortar location — starting in Lakewood Ranch.
Thus far, the Sip n Brew venture is working out. “Sometimes it can be a struggle with a family business,” Katelyn says. “But it’s brought us closer together — figuring things out, how to even start a business in the first place. But we’re having fun.”
Adrian’s assessment of his daughter’s first foray into entrepreneurship is a simple one. “Super proud,” he says.
Katelyn Diaz posts Sip n Brew’s weekly schedule on SipnBrew.com.
