Today we’d like to introduce you to Kirstine Raynor.
Hi Kirstine, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My path to becoming a founder was anything but linear.
I grew up in a small town on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and joined the U.S. Navy when I was young, working with AEGIS and Tomahawk missile systems. After leaving the military, my life took me through a number of very different chapters. I worked as a national skincare consultant for Estée Lauder, became a mother and eventually a single mother, studied acupuncture and Chinese medicine, worked in the nonprofit world, including managing a domestic violence shelter, and even drove for Lyft for a period of time while I figured out what was next.
Looking back, none of those chapters were disconnected. They taught me about people, resilience, service, healing, and how deeply our lives are shaped by the communities around us.
Boulder Broth began in 2018, but it certainly didn’t begin with a polished business plan or some grand vision of building a food company. I was making broth because I believed deeply in its ability to nourish people, and because I cared about where our food came from. I started small and built the company organically—one customer, one farmer, one market and one relationship at a time.
From the beginning, I wanted Boulder Broth to stand for something bigger than a product. Our three guiding principles have always been to support local agriculture, support regenerative agriculture, and build relationships around food. That eventually became the heart of our message: Heal Yourself. Heal the Land. Create Community.
For years, I wore nearly every hat in the company. I cooked, sold at farmers markets, handled customers and wholesale accounts, delivered product, built relationships with farmers, worked on branding and marketing, and figured things out as I went. There were many years when the business and I were almost indistinguishable from one another.
Over time, though, Boulder Broth grew. What started very grassroots has become a real team and a much larger operation. Today we produce hundreds of gallons of broth at a time, work with farmers and food producers we deeply respect, have retail and distribution partners throughout Colorado, and can ship our broth nationwide.
And this summer, after years of imagining what a physical expression of Boulder Broth could look like, we opened brothl, our tiny broth tasting room in North Boulder. Seeing people walk through those doors and gather around something that began so simply in my life has been incredibly emotional.
I think the biggest thing I’ve learned is that entrepreneurship rarely looks the way you imagine it will from the outside. Boulder Broth wasn’t built through one big break. It was built through thousands of small decisions—showing up, solving the next problem, nurturing relationships, learning from mistakes, and continuing to believe in the work even when I couldn’t see exactly where it was going.
Eight years later, I’m still building it. But I finally have a team around me, which has allowed me to step more fully into my role as a founder and CEO and think about what Boulder Broth can become rather than simply what needs to get done today.
And perhaps the part I’m proudest of is that, as we’ve grown, the original intention hasn’t changed. We’re still trying to make incredibly nourishing food, support the people who steward the land, and create genuine community around it.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It has absolutely not been a smooth road. I’m not sure entrepreneurship ever is.
For most of Boulder Broth’s life, there has been something to solve every single day—and usually several things. Production, distribution, staffing, cash flow, sourcing, equipment, regulations, logistics, growth. You solve one problem and another one appears. On the rare days when everything is quiet, I’ve learned to really appreciate it.
One of the biggest challenges has simply been the sheer amount of myself I’ve poured into building the company. For many years, I did nearly everything. There were stretches of exhaustive hours when my personal life inevitably took a back seat, and that is something I think a lot about now. I love this company deeply, but I’ve also learned that building something meaningful shouldn’t require sacrificing every other part of yourself indefinitely.
There have been difficult business decisions along the way, too. I’ve been offered outside investment more than once, and each time I ultimately chose not to take it. There were certainly moments when having more capital would have made things easier, but maintaining the ability to build Boulder Broth according to our values has always mattered enormously to me. Bootstrapping forces you to grow differently. Sometimes more slowly, sometimes much less comfortably, but also very intentionally.
Distribution has probably given me enough stories for an entire interview of its own. Food is an incredibly difficult business. You’re dealing with a perishable product, farmers and suppliers, production, cold storage, freezers, transportation, retailers, distributors and customers—and every link in that chain has to work. I have learned an enormous amount simply because I’ve had no choice but to figure things out when they didn’t.
But the struggles are only half the story. They have been continually trumped by these extraordinary moments when something works.
Finding the right people has been one of those. For years, so much of Boulder Broth lived inside my own head and depended on me personally. Finding a head of operations who could genuinely take ownership of that side of the company was transformative. Building a team of people I trust has allowed me to begin moving from being the person who does everything to actually leading the company.
And then there are the moments that stop me in my tracks: seeing someone discover our broth at a farmers market and become a customer for years, watching our products reach places I never imagined when I started, nourishing artists and communities at events, working with farmers whose values align with ours, or recently standing inside brothl and watching hundreds of people come through the doors.
Those moments put the hard ones into perspective.
I used to think success might eventually mean reaching a point where there weren’t so many problems to solve. I don’t think that anymore. The problems just change as the company grows. What has changed is my confidence that we can solve them.
I’ve learned to surround myself with really capable people, trust my instincts, ask for help when I need it, and keep moving. There have been plenty of moments when I’ve wondered how we were going to get through something. So far, we always have.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Boulder Broth is a Colorado-based broth company I founded in 2018. We make small-batch beef, bison, chicken, roasted mushroom and seasonal vegetable broths using exceptionally high-quality ingredients and sourcing practices that we take very seriously.
Our red meat broths simmer for 78–96 hours, and even our chicken and plant-based broths cook for a full 24 hours. We don’t cut corners to make the process faster or cheaper. The result is a broth that is incredibly rich, nutrient-dense and flavorful enough to drink straight from a cup, while also being something people use every day for cooking.
I think one of the things that most sets Boulder Broth apart is that we care just as much about where our ingredients come from as we do about what happens in the kitchen. We intentionally build relationships with farmers, ranchers and producers and look at how animals are raised, how land is treated and how our purchasing decisions can support a healthier food system.
That philosophy is expressed through what we call our three Noble Goals: Heal Yourself. Heal the Land. Create Community. They aren’t simply words on our packaging. They’re a framework I use when making decisions about the company.
Over the years, Boulder Broth has grown from a farmers market business into a brand sold through retailers and distribution partners throughout Colorado, with nationwide shipping available as well. We also have the privilege of nourishing artists backstage at venues and events throughout the Front Range, including Red Rocks Amphitheatre. I love that our broth can be just as at home in someone’s freezer on a Tuesday night as it is being handed to an artist before or after they walk onto one of the most iconic stages in the world.
Most recently, we opened brothl, our tiny broth tasting room in North Boulder. It’s a 200-square-foot space where people can come in for a hot cup or a flight of all five broths, pick up frozen quarts, sit at the bar, listen to music and connect. It gives people an opportunity to experience Boulder Broth rather than simply purchase it, and I think that distinction says a lot about who we are as a brand.
What I’m most proud of is that Boulder Broth has grown without losing its soul.
There are easier and cheaper ways to make broth. There are faster ways to grow a food company. We’ve intentionally chosen neither. We’ve remained committed to quality, thoughtful sourcing and the relationships behind our food, while building something that is commercially viable and capable of reaching more people.
I want people to know that when they buy Boulder Broth, they’re getting an exceptional product—but they’re also participating in something larger. Their purchase supports a chain of farmers, ranchers, producers, small businesses and people who believe that food can be good for our bodies, good for the land and good for the communities we live in.
That’s what Boulder Broth is really about.
What was your favorite childhood memory?
My childhood was complicated, so I don’t know that I have one singular favorite memory. But when I think about the moments when I felt happiest and most free as a kid, almost all of them involve water.
I grew up living on Long Island, NY & the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and some of my favorite memories are sailing on the Chesapeake Bay and on Long Island Sound. I was also swam competitively year-round growing up, so water was just always part of my life.
There is something about being in or near water that has always made me feel completely at home. I love the smell of it, the sound of it, the feeling of diving underneath and having the rest of the world go quiet for a minute.
That hasn’t changed. I’m still very much a water girl. I still swim laps as a workout, and whenever I have the opportunity to be near an ocean, a river, a lake—or get out on a boat—I’m happy.
It’s funny how some of the things that bring us comfort as children remain with us our entire lives. Water has always been one of those things for me.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.boulderbroth.com
- Instagram: @boulder.broth
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirstine-raynor?utm_source=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=member_ios
