Our Team
Founder and CEO
Gabriel Claycamp
Gabriel Claycamp is a chef-trained product developer and CPG operator with more than two decades of experience building food businesses from concept through scale. He leads Alchemy in the Kitchen, a product-development and commercialization studio behind dozens of snack, confection, and savory launches, and is the co-founder of FruitFarm, a kids’ fruit-snack company powered by patented de-sugared fruit-juice technology. Across his career, Claycamp has guided products that have generated more than $100 million in cumulative retail sales.
Over the last decade, Claycamp’s work has centered on food product development and disciplined commercialization—connecting culinary insight to manufacturable specs, resilient co-manufacturing networks, compliant quality systems (PCQI/HACCP), and clear unit economics. He is hands-on in plants and equally comfortable with buyers and investors, aligning pricing, broker and distributor mechanics, and promotional planning with target margins and velocity goals. His portfolio includes leading the HighKey product line during its breakout growth years (2018–2024), scaling Mini Cookies into Amazon’s No. 1 bakery product and supporting the brand’s expansion to approximately $57 million in net sales by year four, including ~300% YoY growth in 2020.
Claycamp also founded Cauldron Broths (2013–2019), raising over $2.5 million in capital to build and operate a production facility supplying chefs, hotels, and consumers with long-simmered stocks and cooking fats before selling the business. Earlier ventures include co-founding Seattle’s Culinary Communion cooking school, launching nationally recognized pop-up dining programs featured on Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, and founding The Swinery (2009), Seattle’s first sustainable, whole-animal butcher shop. Today, as co-founder of FruitFarm, Claycamp oversees specification management, co-manufacturer onboarding, HACCP compliance, and commercialization planning from pilots to scale.
Business Manager
Joshua Frank
Joshua Frank is a people-centered business and operations leader with a passion for building high-performing teams and scalable systems. At Alchemy in the Kitchen, he serves as Business Manager, connecting strategy with execution across client projects, finance, and R&D commercialization to help CPG brands bring products from concept to market.
Frank has led organizations through strategic transformation, process optimization, and team development, establishing systems that support growth while maintaining operational excellence. He manages multi-department operations, oversees vendor and partner relationships, and ensures projects run smoothly from ideation to launch. Startups work with Frank because he combines empathy, structure, and results orientation, keeping teams aligned and projects on track.
With a background spanning executive support, HR, nonprofit program management, and hands-on operations, Frank leverages his breadth of experience to help Alchemy’s clients launch products efficiently and sustainably, turning creative ideas into measurable market impact.
Research and Development Specialist
Dia Lugo
Diahann Lugo is a culinary content strategist and recipe developer with more than six years of experience creating food-first digital content for consumer brands. Her work sits at the intersection of culinary creativity, recipe formulation, and digital storytelling, helping brands translate ideas into compelling, high-performing food content.
Diahann has developed 200+ original recipes across diverse categories and markets, guided social media strategy for growing CPG brands, and helped launch a TikTok presence that scaled to 20,000+ followers. She specializes in turning trend insights and ingredient research into scroll-stopping visuals, approachable recipes, and cohesive brand narratives that resonate across platforms.
Her approach blends technical culinary skill, creative concepting, and food styling expertise, enabling her to craft content that drives engagement and strengthens brand voice. She’s passionate about making food accessible, inspiring, and visually irresistible — whether she’s building a recipe from scratch, styling a photo set, or translating flavor ideas into consumer-ready formats.
At Alchemy in the Kitchen, Diahann brings her multifaceted skill set into the world of product development, supporting the team with recipe prototyping, culinary testing, flavor development, and content creation. She’s excited to contribute to Alchemy’s mission by bridging the gap between R&D and storytelling — turning innovative formulations into delicious, relatable culinary experiences.