Samuel Adams via Facebook

We always knew beer would give us good advice.

If you've ever dreamed of opening a brewery, bakery, or restaurant you know by now that talent alone doesn't drive a successful business.

Funding, marketing, and a smart business plan are all as important as a great recipe for pie or ribs.

The best way to figure out a strategy is to find a mentor -- preferably for free.

The Boston Beer Company, makers of Samuel Adams, has been mentoring entrepreneurs in the food and beverage industry since 2008, under their Brewing the American Dream program. The program, in partnership with Accion, has provided business advice to over 3,000 small business owners and $1.9 million in micro-financing to more than 220 companies.The program plans on offering over a dozen micro-loans to South Florida entrepreneurs in 2013.

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ThinkFoodGroup

Jose Andres

Jose Andres, chef and owner of a fleet of chic restaurants including The Bazaar at the SLS Hotel in Miami, and a nonprofit documentary film team are in the early stages of shooting a Travel Channel-like showing off Haiti's food and cooking.

Andres has visited the country more than a dozen times since a massive earthquake struck the southern part of the country, devastating the capital Port-Au-Prince and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless.

"Jose went to Haiti three months after the earthquake," said Sebastian Lindstrom, a filmmaker and head of the What Took You So Long Foundation. "He didn't know what he wanted to do but he wanted to support the Haitian people and figure out how to use food as an agent of change."

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All photos by Zachary Fagenson

Inside Stephen's, a corned-beef-fueled time machine in Hialeah.

Circling around Hialeah side streets near LeJeune Avenue we found Stephen's Restaurant only after dodging a 10-foot-by-10-foot slab of marble being offloaded into a warehouse.

A New York-style deli with house-made, hand-sliced pastrami and corned beef loaded onto thick slices of griddled rye bread is the last thing we thought we'd find here. Yet Stephen's is a holdover from a bygone era, when Formica countertops were still in style and the area was home to a garment district and a large Jewish population.

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All photos by Zachary Fagenson

Inside Spice 'N Curry

Jai Mazumddar earned a master's degree in finance from the University of Florida in 2002. He spent more than half decade crunching numbers, mostly as a stockbroker for Continental Securities, which the Securities and Exchange Commission shut down, and later as a financial analyst for a real estate company in Boston.

Today he's bouncing off the walls at Spice 'n Curry, and Indian market on 107th Avenue a few blocks from Florida International University's main campus. We had to follow him from the register, where he was ringing up customers for bags of basmati rice and bunches of fenugreek leaves, to the five-seat counter where he sells three kinds of curries; chicken, mutton and vegetarian. There's also chicken and mutton biryani -- a mixed rice and meat dish -- and chaat, various bite-sized Indian snacks made for sharing, similar to Chinese dim sum.

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Do you have what it takes to be a Hipster Venture Capitalist?

Of course you do, because you make it rain on Kickstarter, a website that helps small entrepreneurs get their ideas funded through crowdsourcing. One of the latest Kickstarter projects to come out of Miami, picklePeoples, is yet another venture from Chef Jeremiah Bullfrog, owner of Gastropod food truck and forthcoming chef for the soon to re-open Broken Shaker.

It all started when he and his squad of gastro-misfits were hired to cater a wedding a wedding in Brooklyn.

"The bride's mother is Korean. We got the idea to do Kim Chee bar and Banchan," he said. "Thus a pickle company was born."

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Jacob Katel

Hutson on the line at Ortanique

Cindy Hutson, chef and co-owner of Coral Gables mainstay Ortanique on the Mile, has been hired by the Dunmore Resort at Harbour Isles in the Bahamas to revamp the restaurant's menu and in-room service.

Dunmore owner Gil Besing, who bought and revamped the property in 2010, discovered Hutson via a Google search and invited her to the property in March. Hutson instantly fell in love.

The Dunmore closed its doors August 15 and will reopen November 15 with a menu specializing in traditional Bahamian food: conch, hogfish, spiny lobster, cassava, and yams.

"I spent a whole day on a golf cart looking to source out breadfruit, and I found six trees," Huston says. "The islanders use it one or two ways: They roast it and eat, or they roast it cut into wedge and fry it."

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Tennessee-based Ruby Tuesday Inc. announced Wednesday it will acquire Miami's Lime Fresh Mexican Grill for $24 million.

The deal includes Lime's intellectual property rights, as well as the assets of seven company-owned restaurants, and will offer Ruby Tuesday an opportunity for growth, particularly in Florida, says founder, chair, and chief executive Sandy Beall.

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​You're enjoying a day at the beach roasting in the hot sun and occasionally dipping in the ocean. Then hunger rears its ugly head. But leaving the beach just isn't an option. Got an iPhone or a Droid phone? Download URGE Miami, the app that delivers anywhere.

URGE doesn't actually deliver for the restaurants. To be more specific, URGE is a service that brings restaurants to its customers, no matter where they're at using location based on GPS coordinates given by their phones.

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Copperpot's

Befitting motto: "slow down, and jam on"

​A mere two months ago, IT day-jobbers ;Tom Wilfong and Vanessa Safie started a little jam making enterprise in their Kendall home kitchen.. Since then, it has quickly grown into a miniature company - one that just might (we hope) topple Smucker's. Made with all natural, preservative-free and local ingredients, Copperpot's jams are undoubtedly one of the best (if not the best) jam we've ever had.

Let's tap into your imaginary taste sense with their jam varieties:

• Apple Butter
• Apple Sauce
• Bourbon Apple Butter (While its popularity was completely unexpected, Copperpot's said this was their most difficult recipe to perfect.)
• Jalapeno Jam
• Pineapple Five Spice
• Red Onion Marmalade
• Strawberry Jam
• Sweet n' Spicy (candied jalapeños)

As their own self-proclaimed harshest critics, Safie confessed that her favorite is Pineapple Five Spice, "I love [it] so much that I scrape the pot clean when I cook it". Wilfong confessed his, "Apple Butter. I love that when you take a bite of the apple butter it screams apple in your mouth". (By the way, if we had to choose one, we'd take a lifetime supply of Strawberry Jam. The cleanest and freshest tasting jam one will likely every experience).

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The Candygirl herslelf, Marissa Gould

When Candygirl Marissa Gould moved to Miami last year, she was concerned with the lack of old-school candy stores to satisfy her sweet tooth. "I was hard-pressed to find an old-school candy store where you, the customer, got to mix and match your favorites. So I decided to create my own candyland -- a candygirl's candyland to sweeten up your day."

Well, she has done just that. Gould offers a variety of retro sweets, including Razzles, Mallo Cups, and edible cigarettes and cigars. She has gummies in just about every shape, size, and color, as well as those huge jawbreakers guaranteed to leave you with TMJ. And for those looking for an extreme sugar rush, try the Flintstone-size candy powder straws and the three-foot-long gummy snake, strangely named the Big Fat Hissy Fit.

Where do you find this sweet temptress?

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