Zane Dunham at his June 2023 graduation from the Master of Science in Entrepreneurship program
There was one central question Zane Dunham (BBA ‘22, MS ‘23) held when developing his beverage line, NoWhere Foods: What if a drink could reconnect us to the ecologies of American landscapes?
When Dunham first walked through the doors of the Foster School of Business in 2018, he already possessed a passion for food and business. This passion grew throughout the five years Zane spent at Foster, culminating in his final year, when he earned his Master of Science in Entrepreneurship. During the master’s program, he honed his expertise as a marketer and chef to build NoWhere Foods, a specialty non-alcoholic beverage company.
“I had a basic idea of a food business coming from my background when I began working on the idea,” said Dunham. “It has continued to evolve and bloom over time.”
Dunham used the Entrepreneurship master’s program to hone every aspect of his business model for NoWhere Foods. The one-year, full-time program teaches founders and innovators everything from financial modeling to marketing, and market research to launch strategies.
Fast forward three years, and NoWhere Foods is sold in restaurants, breweries, markets, and grocery stores across the country, including Big Time Brewery and Alehouse in Seattle’s U-District. The company works with both local and national distributors to bring products to shelves, and he’s built a remarkable footprint in a short time.
Each NoWhere Foods drink is designed with the ecosystem in which it is found.
Building NoWhere Foods through Foster Entrepreneurship
Dunham grew NoWhere Foods from the ground up as part of the Master’s in Entrepreneurship program, which was developed specifically for founders and innovators who want to build or improve a product or service. Students often arrive with an idea and a passion for building. Many aspire to be entrepreneurs and found their own business. Others are intrapreneurs who introduce new products within established companies.
“The Foster School has a great mix of resources, mentors, experts, and cheerleaders that help with innovation. The entrepreneurship program, in particular, gives students the ability to test innovation and ideas in a very low-stakes environment.”
The Entrepreneurship program is divided into four quarters. Each quarter is dedicated to one step in the entrepreneurial journey: ideate, test, refine, and prepare to scale. Through these benchmarks, students have the opportunity to develop business strategies, test their products, strengthen marketing efforts, and explore funding options.
“Foster’s MS in Entrepreneurship program is structured to help you flesh out and refine your idea through the year-long curriculum. I came in with a few vague ideas, and over the first half of the year, we had the opportunity to test them, talk with customers, and start thinking about how to actually build a business. By the end of the MS in Entrepreneurship, I already had wholesale customers who were stocking NoWhere Foods products.”
“As I continue the journey of running my own business full-time, I am constantly, and somewhat ironically, coming back to certain tidbits I learned about at Foster. The foundation I learned at Foster has been so useful to me in recognizing patterns and frameworks in my business that I wouldn’t have been able to recognize otherwise.”
Bringing NoWhere Foods to life
Dunham’s mission is to rewrite the industrialized drinking habits our communities have fallen into due to mass production. Whenever someone enjoys a NoWhere Foods drink, each consumer has the chance to appreciate the vast diversity of America’s ecology.
“We want our product to be an invitation to everyone to understand these places and people on a deeper level, but also an invitation to nourish your body and the land.”
Every product starts with a vision, and NoWhere Foods is inspired by its people and the places they call “home.”
“One of our new drinks has Prickly Pear, Sagebrush, and Agave. While working on this drink, we were working with a wildcrafter who goes out into the desert and responsibly prunes the sagebrush after it rains to avoid harming the plant. We learned about how sagebrush goes through a lifecycle with the weather, and how, after it rains in the desert, the plant emits an oil that gives the desert its indistinguishable scent. We modeled this drink, which we call ‘Desert Bloom’, after the scent of the desert after it rains.”
As Chief Taste Maker, Dunham both develops and evaluates his company’s products. He collaborates with fruit growers, wildcrafters, and seedkeepers to create bright, flavorful drinks while balancing logistical challenges, including sugar levels, acidity, and body.
“I tend to find myself tending to our drinks most like a winemaker would tend to a harvest each year. Each harvest brings a different set of factors and challenges. Each batch is subtly different but remains at its core complex, refreshing, and minimally processed.”
“I also still self-deliver our items to partners we’ve had since the beginning of NoWhere Foods. Our retail and distribution partners are a part of our ecosystem.”
Reconnecting people to place through every sip
Crafting these drinks based on America’s ecologies takes a village of stakeholders and supporters. When creating new products, Dunham ensures the community regains its “sense of place,” which, in his view, has been lost due to modernization. With NoWhere Foods, he hopes every person can appreciate the “uniqueness of place” and reestablish their relationship with the beauty of their environment.
The company’s beverages aim to reconnect people with heirloom and ancestral ingredients. Their current lineup features ingredients such as a peach from the southwest, a native elderberry varietal, and wildcrafted ingredients such as juniper, all paired with natural sweeteners like honey, agave, and maple syrup.
According to Dunham, taste is a powerful tool that allows us to reconnect with past experiences.
“I’ve had so many conversations with people about trips they’ve had in the Southwest, or the time they were hiking in the mountains and came across an elderberry bush, or the time how our drinks remind them of when they last smelled a spruce tree. These stories are part of NoWhere Foods’ larger mission to reconnect people to the places they love through food. Food has a unique way of connecting sight, sound, and flavor that nothing I know of comes close to. I always love to learn how people experience our products through that lens.”
Finding growth in the entrepreneurial journey
Like all entrepreneurs, Dunham navigates the constant fluctuations of owning and running a company. As he puts it, it’s one of life’s “biggest roller coaster rides.” However, through this experience and support of the Entrepreneurship program, he has built a steady support system and equally steady perspective to keep him going.
“Personally, the most fulfilling part of founding and developing NoWhere Foods has been the personal growth I’ve experienced along the way. Furthermore, it’s been great getting to work with and support some of our suppliers. They are really the people behind what makes our food system so unique and resilient, and we need to be doing more for them.”
Many NoWhere Foods products have won awards across the country. In addition to finalist placements, their drinks have won the 2026 NEXTY Award for Best Adult Non-Alcoholic Beverage for Ridgeline (Cherry, Ginger, Maple). As well as most recently a 2026 Good Food Awards Win for Best Beverage for Tidal Break (Coffee, Pear, Maple). Their drinks have also won many awards at international competitions, including the World Alcohol Free Awards in London.
Dunham and his team are excited to produce several more beverages, including their Reserve Collection, which blends landscapes and ingredients that tell the story of “American Terroir” (the characteristic taste imparted to a wine by where it was produced). You can now find the reserve collection bottles in stores across the Puget Sound.
Zane Dunham, fourth from right, together with classmates at the Master of Science in Entrepreneurship program orientation.
Rooted in land, community, and American terroir
“I grew up on public lands because of my parents’ business,” Dunham concludes. “We would spend summers traveling around to national parks and monuments in the back of a truck and camper. This connection to land and seeing places across America was a pivotal point in my background for starting a food business, and ultimately led to NoWhere Foods. It made me appreciate our regional ecologies, and it taught me a lot about the people that steward them.”
No entrepreneurial journey is the same. For Zane Dunham, his culinary passions, a deep sense of place, and the foundation he built at Foster have shaped a company that continues to grow—one rooted not just in flavor, but in connection. As NoWhere Foods expands into new markets and new landscapes, Dunham remains focused on what inspired it all: bringing people closer to the land, the stories, and the communities behind every sip.