Young entrepreneur Chase Whitman sells Chip’s Sunflower Seeds from his Bryant University dorm

Whitman and his friend turned business partner, Oliver Pudvar, launched their brand, Chip’s Sunflower Seeds, as high school students at Champlain Valley Union High School in Hinesburg, Vt., in 2022.

Although Pudvar attends Manhattan College and Whitman studies at Bryant University, the two have big plans for their seeds to appear in stores up and down the region — they currently sit on shelves at Shelburne Country Store in Vermont.

Where did the idea come from?

Whitman: It was 2022, and Ollie and I were both on the baseball team, and we were in the same entrepreneurship class. Our business teacher gave us a project to come up with our own business. So we started our own sunflower seed business. We also took what we had around us, and I noticed that my family was into making maple syrup, so we incorporated all three things into our business project to really start something that we are truly passionate about doing.

Why sunflower seeds?

Whitman: It was funny because we were both on the baseball team but Oliver was the one that played the most. I was mostly sitting on the bench. And what I noticed was that most people around me were spitting sunflower seeds for the whole game. You can look at at the back of a sunflower seed package, and it has, on average, 117 percent of your daily sodium intake. So I thought, why not incorporate maple syrup into the sunflower seeds so it’s a more healthy, low sodium option to snacking during baseball games.

What does the production process look like?

Pudvar: With how we’ve started, we’ve gotten our sunflower seeds from California from a sunflower seed distributor out there. So we’re not locally sourcing them yet. But then once we get the seeds, we’re roasting the sunflower seeds, we’re flavoring the sunflower seeds, we’re packaging, and we’re doing this really all out of our kitchen right now. But hopefully in the near future, with a couple grants that we just received, we’ll be able to locally source our sunflower seeds in Vermont.

Could you expand on those grants?

Pudvar: So recently, Noah Jensen [chief marketing officer] and I, at Manhattan College, competed in a competition called the Manhattan College Innovation Challenge. This is a challenge for new companies that are starting up, young entrepreneurs, that go into Manhattan to pitch their ideas to CEOs that come and judge the competition. We were able to actually get second in the competition. We also won the audience favorite. We came away with $3,500 out of that, so we’re looking forward to putting that towards the company.

Whitman: Each semester [at Bryant University] we have $5,000 in grant money, and I’ve applied for that. And that’s to specifically cover our packaging. We also requested funding for farmer’s market weekend access in our hometown in Vermont.

What are the future goals for expanding the brand?

Pudvar: What we’re hoping to do is locally source all of our products. So having this all be run in Vermont and then hopefully, at one point we can take our hands off of the project and get into either a manufacturing plant or something along those lines, where we’re not literally having to do every step of the process. And then also trying to get into convenience stores and local grocery stores. With our product being a maple sunflower seed, we think that it can be super popular in the Northeast.

How are your sales?

Whitman: Our biggest seller online is actually our merchandise. And that’s what’s bringing in the most revenue now, because we base ourselves on our own mission of having a “chip on our shoulder.” That’s how we explain it. And that’s just like being the underdogs. And we find that people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

What type of merchandise do you sell?

Whitman: Right now we’re selling hoodies. That’s our that’s our biggest seller. We’re selling hats and we’re also selling polos, but we want to come out with a new merchandise line that really supports the chip on our shoulder idea.

Alexa Coultoff can be reached at alexa.coultoff@globe.com. Follow her @alexacoultoff.