A well-worn business adage is to find a need and fill it, and Summit County has plenty of entrepreneurs who are engaging in innovative ways to fulfill the needs of locals and visitors alike. Among them are the people behind Biked Goods, Radiant Health & Wellness, and Moving Mountains

Biked Goods 

Tyler Zipperer began his company, Biked Goods, when he was still living in Minneapolis, nearly five years ago. He was working his first job out of college and felt like he needed something more.  

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“I just kind of found that the missing piece was I just didn’t have people or a community around me that shared the same beliefs and enjoyed the same things,” Zipperer said. 

He began biking, both in training and performance. 

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That’s what inspired Zipperer to focus on his nutrition. “I started reading books, cookbooks, just anything I could get my head around to learn about the whole world and nutrition,” Zipperer said.

Then, Zipperer moved to Colorado and the COVID-19 pandemic gave him an opportunity to focus on recipes and create a cookbook that he has since shared with the community. 

“It’s around just living a wholesome kind of healthy life,” Zipperer said. His mission was to provide nutritional recipes and encourage wellness so others could experience what he called “the ride of a lifetime.” 

Zipperer develops, bakes and markets all of his recipes in his own kitchen in Summit County between Breckenridge and Frisco. At times, for large events, businesses like Cool River Coffee House in Breckenridge have let Zipperer use their kitchens.

While making a profit, Zipperer simultaneously donates funds to organizations he supports like Smart Bellies and Team Summit.

“The two things that I really believe in and what brings people together is food and biking,” Zipperer said. “Combine those two together — it’s just a recipe for building community.”

Now, Zipperer organizes events centered around nutrition and biking. From handing out nutritional snacks to bringing folks together for a bike ride, Zipperer aims to bring people together and use the platform to support other organizations. 

In the future, Zipperer plans to hopefully get his recipe books on the shelf at a coffee or bike shop soon. In the meantime, he said he will continue to bake and plan events so he can keep giving back to the community. 

Recipes, events, products and more can be found at BikedGoods.com. 

Radiant Health & Wellness 

A few weeks ago, a patient came into Janet Graham’s practice with extreme discomfort. According to Graham, the patient had undergone a few shoulder surgeries and was still in “horrific” pain. The patient also mentioned in passing that she had a small nickel allergy. 

Instead of sending her away with pain medication, Graham’s practice enabled her to try something different. Graham ran a few tests and found that the nickel allergy was much more serious than she had thought — the patient’s shoulder implant was made of nickel, which was the source of her discomfort. 

After realizing her passion for functional medicine, Graham started Radiant Health & Wellness.

Graham is a former nurse practitioner who worked professionally for both Vail Health and Centura. However, “As a practitioner, the 10-minute visits and not getting to know your patients never appealed to me, and I never felt like I was doing a service to patients,” Graham said. 

Then, Graham switched jobs. At her new facility, Graham had an opportunity to spend up to 40 minutes with a patient, and had remarkable success helping them heal, she said. Inspired by her experience, Graham did more research and found functional medicine. 

She defined functional medicine as a practice based on systems biology and biochemistry that focuses on the root of a patient’s problem. There is also an emphasis on spending time with the patient. 

Graham decided to take classes through the Institute for Functional Medicine and ended up studying the practice for two and a half years. Now, she owns her own functional medicine practice and enjoys helping people heal. 

“My first visits are typically 90 minutes, and then it’s typically an hour at a time because they need to know everything about the person,” Graham said. “It’s very detailed.”

Graham’s services are by appointment only via Graham’s email at janet@radianthealthandwellness.co. Hours are Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Graham will also be hosting a one-hour informational seminar at the Summit County Community & Senior Center on Nov. 16 starting at 6 p.m.

Moving Mountains 

Professional hospitality business Moving Mountains has spent 25 years welcoming vacationers to Colorado. Now, it’s celebrating its first full year in Breckenridge. 

Moving Mountains is centered around a luxury second-home experience for vacationers — from stocking a visitor’s refrigerator before arrival to providing simple suggestions of where to go and what to do. 

This year, Moving Mountains will also bring back its 15-passenger vans to Breckenridge for their visitors. 

Nicknamed the “purple people movers,” these vans are intended to cut down on traffic caused by a high number of tourists said Moving Mountains Owner and CEO Robin Craigen.  

Craigen said he and his wife began Moving Mountains after finding inspiration from their previous business running a luxury charter yacht out of the British Virgin Islands.

He and his wife ran a fully-catered service for the yacht — they would pick up guests at the airport, provide every meal and drive them wherever they needed to go. Craigen said they aimed to take all the “guesswork” out of the vacation. Then, the couple decided to move on. 

“We wanted to move to land so we could raise a family in the states,” Craigen said. “And we saw an opportunity to replicate what we’re offering on a yacht in a ski chalet setup.”

The two started in Steamboat Springs in 1997 but quickly found there was a demand for their services. 

“During that time .. one of the things we needed to do to be competitive with our luxury homes was to provide this encore shuttle service coming taking you from the home that you’re staying in,” Craigen said. “To the ski lift, maybe taking you to the grocery store at the end of the day, if you wanted to restock the kitchen and also taking you out for dinner in the evening.”

Craigen added the vans also keep guests safe — Moving Mountains provides vans with snow tires and four-wheel drive as well as drivers trained for winter conditions. Lastly, Craigen estimated the vans will help to keep about 100 cars off of the road this winter. 

The shuttles are only for Moving Mountains customers, but they can offer shared rides while out and about by picking up and transporting multiple customers. More information can be found at MovingMountains.com/Breckenridge.