“My dream was to buy a big food truck… Now we are making almost double money because of the food truck.”

— Sheuli Solaiman, Owner/Chef – Mystic Royal Restaurant, Mystic Bites Food Truck

“The seCTerRise grant gave us funding to purchase certain cybersecurity items… The process of getting the seCTerRise grant was straight forward and smooth. It was a good, interactive, responsive process.”

— Will Schramm, Principal Engineer – PVI Systems, Niantic

“Without seCTer we wouldn’t have been able to rebrand as aggressively as we did.”

— Rob Miller, Owner – Epicure Brewing, Norwich

“I have been able to create jobs and employ several people as a result of getting over that bottleneck. We just needed that little bit of extra help to jump up to a level to compete with larger businesses.”

— Trent Hagerty, Owner – Little River Bread Co., Danielson

“The grant allowed us to expand into value-added products… From last year to this year we saw an increase in revenue, more foot traffic, and more people recommending the stand.”

— Katie Patton – Betsy’s Stand, Sterling

“We wouldn’t exist – and certainly not on this scale – without the help from seCTer. The conventional capital funding route didn’t work for us. People didn’t think we were sexy enough! But now our horticultural features are designed into hotels, casinos, office buildings, and large residential buildings all across the country.”

— Chris Pianta, CEO/Owner, – AgroSci Inc., Colchester

“Without seCTer we could not have bought the business. Banks didn’t want to talk to us, they said we were too small and asking for too much. The seCTer loan also had a much better interest rate, which made it all work. SeCTer allowed me to get out of a corporate job and do something on my own. We  were able to move from New Hampshire to Mystic, which is where we wanted to be.”

— Paul Jacey, President, Components For Manufacturing, LLC

“We’ve reached capacity for production and distribution now that we’re a year into it. We wanted to move into different channels for distribution to grow. We were distributing the kombucha in kegs and bottles but to get into more restaurants and into grocery stores we needed to be able to can it. So this seCTerRISE grant is allowing us to purchase equipment for packaging and more equipment for production. Now we can do more B to B and distribute far wider than before.”

– David Brannan, Founder/Head Brewer, 860Kombucha

“This is a game-changer. The seCTerRISE grant is generous funding to help a small business make some big strides. I really needed to update my website and fix some things since that’s the core of my business and it’s how customers and farmers connect. Now I can contract a web developer to make upgrades that will make it easier for customers to navigate the site and for farmers to update their inventories and manage orders. I work with more than 30 farms in Connecticut so if I can grow it will help them too – and maybe I can hire a web developer eventually!”

– Rosemary Ostfeld, Owner, Sustainable Planet LLC, dba Healthy PlanEat

Witness how AGCT was able to remain resilient and enter the world-wide personal protective equipment (PPE) market with the help of CT PTAC to successfully create a new division of the company, during its most challenging year of its 40 years in business.