SBA won't refinance your Shopify MCAs, What even is a seed oil, Regenerative bread in SF, and more

Before Barney Butter I worked in small business lending. I wrote the first SBA loan for Wells Fargo in the South Bay, for a woman owned light industrial machine shop. I want to talk about financing a startup with instruments like the SBA, given that raising capital is so hard these days.

Also,

• What even is a seed oil?

• Are barista reformulations better?

• Finding a market for regenerative wheat one bakery at a time

Almond oil is a seed oil, it turns out

This was not obvious to me. At least not as a negative. I reached out to the founders of almond based dip JeeSauce, which promises to be the authentic version of Bitchin’ Sauce before the family feud.

I wanted to know why they use avocado oil (listed as first ingredient) vs almond oil in their formula and here’s what I got —

Seed oils are extracted from the seed of a plant, and although almonds are referred to as nuts, almonds are botanically seeds, specifically the kernel found inside the hard shell of the fruit.

To understand seed oils better I did a little digging — seed oils that are “bad” are those with high omega-6 fatty acid content, especially linoleic acid, which is associated with promoting inflammation when consumed in excess, relative to omega-3 fatty acids. Here’s how popular oils stack up against almond oil, based on their fatty acid profiles, proclivity to oxidation, processing, and inflammatory risk —

Almond oil is “good” and in the middle of this ranking. Here’s how I’m thinking about this for my own personal choices — overall diet quality matters a lot more than type of oil used in low/moderate snacking. When cooking, I think cold-pressed of any oil is best, and I avoid oil that comes in plastic containers (Read what I learned about macro-plastics in olive oil from Kosterina!)

Reformulation trade-offs aren’t helping

For things we consume everyday, it shouldn’t be so hard to stay away from another bad oil, sunflower oil. But yet it is. A popular almond barista milk just reformulated away from dipotassium phosphate and the new ingredient is sunflower oil:

• Almond Milk (Filtered Water, Almonds)

• Sunflower Oil

• Potassium Citrate

• Sea Salt

• Sunflower Lecithin

• Natural Flavors

• Calcium Carbonate

• Guar Gum

• Gellan Gum

Sunflower oil (not the high-oleic kind) is not on the chart above, but if it were it would be dead last. Sunflower oil contains 65-75% omega-6 ( too much is bad when not in balance with omega-3) and is highly refined.

If you drink an almond milk latte everyday with this kind of ingredient deck, consider that ~8% of the almond milk you are consuming is sunflower oil, and 2% is almonds. This is based on typical almond milk formulations where water constitutes the majority of the product, and the sunflower oil being the next most significant ingredient.

Of course, performance in barista blends matter, as Chobani CEO lamented recently. But foaming and texturizing clean solutions do exist! Email me to learn more.

---

The story behind regenerative wheat at Jane the Bakery in San Francisco

Descendants of Henry Miller, one half of Miller & Lux, the ranching company founded in 1858 that once owned more than a million acres in the West, are Cannon Michael and his sister Amanda. Cannon has started growing regenerative wheat solely for his sister’s bakery at Bowles Farming Company, the family’s six-generation, 10,000-acre property in Los Banos. They’ve harvested 80,000 pounds of einkorn that is certified by Food Alliance. I’m looking forward to sharing more about the state of regenerative farming, supply chain, and off takes when I speak to Cannon in a few weeks. Find out more about the grain project at Jane Grain.

---

Early stage capital is hard to find, so how do you fund a startup?

This is getting long, so next week I’ll give you the whole run down of my conversation with financing guru Keith Kohler. Keith has been unlocking financing for brands from pre-revenue all the way to growth stage. He works with companies that don’t currently have a full scope of their financing options, are in a crunch-time situation with tremendous cash needs and require fast and accurate financing solutions, and/or don’t have a CFO or advisor.

Keith informed me that ⚠️ SBA Lending Rules Just Changed — as of June 1, 2025, SBA loans can no longer be used to refinance Merchant Cash Advances (MCAs) or factoring debt.

This change hits founders using financing from platforms including Shopify Capital, PayPal Working Capital, and other MCA-style loans. You can however refinance a promissory note, so if you can get a personal loan to pay down the MCA debt you are more likely to qualify.

You can directly connect with Keith for a consultation at Keith@K2Financing.com

If you like my writing, help get the word out by reposting, commenting and liking on LinkedIn

All my best,

Jennifer