A 24-hour day care program.
A new "country-style" restaurant.
Stylish casual clothes made from recycled T-shirts.
A hot dog cart.
A cake pop business.
Those were just some of the 14 business ideas highlighted during Saturday's fourth-annual Jefferson City Area Chamber of Commerce "Pitch It and Win It" program.
"The committee started this as a way to encourage entrepreneurship and small business development," Chamber President Randy Allen said. "The idea here is to create the energy behind developing small business here in the community."
Donna Deetz helped start the first competition and has remained a part of it.
"It encourages new businesses," she explained. "Number two, it lets us as a community know what's out there, what is going on, that we have these new ideas, that we have possibilities."
And Leslie Tanner, a Central Bank vice president who served as one of the judges, reminded those who attended Saturday's session: "Our whole group was created because a lot of people have these ideas, and sometimes, they don't just need loans or they just don't need something - but they need help with other things."
Part of the competition is for a share of a money prize, donated by RMI, a Jefferson City-based economic development organization that provides some financing through the U.S. Small Business Administration in Missouri, Kansas and part of Illinois.
Executive Director Ken Lueckenotte told the group Saturday morning: "We try to give back to the communities that support us."
This year's competition had been advertised as entrepreneurs making a pitch for a possible share of $5,000.
Each presenter was given five minutes to make their pitch and another five minutes to answer judges' questions.
After hearing the presentations, Lueckenotte raised the pot to $10,000 - and seven of the 14 presenters won some of that money.
There were three $2,000 winners, including Phillippia "FeFe" Rome, who moved to Jefferson City only three weeks ago to launch a new restaurant on East Dunklin Street.
"I've always wanted my own restaurant, ever since I was 17 years old," she explained, noting her brother - Lincoln University President Kevin Rome - called her last month and said if she still was interested in that dream, he had found a location for her and she had a week to make the move from Columbus, Georgia, where they both had grown up.
She told the News Tribune she decided, "Why not? Now is the time for me to follow my dream."
Rome said her style of Southern Country cooking will fill an unmet niche in the local market, with food "cooked with a lot of heart, a lot of love and a lot of soul - grease and butter."
The two other $2,000 winners were "Elizabeth's Garden" and "A Cake-Pop Shop."
The four $1,000 winners included "T-Shreds," a clothing business that makes one-of-a-kind styles from vintage T-shirts.
Owner-designer-seamstress Tess Morgan said: "It may be a swim suit or an evening gown or a prom dress."
She said there is "a huge market for it - I sell probably five or six a day. It's a consistent market - everybody wants to be the it girl at their rock concerts and stuff."
Morgan plans to use the money to help with her online marketing efforts.
"If I have the money to get out on websites and search engines, I'd be fine," she explained.
Deborah McAlexander was another $1,000 winner - money she plans to use to help buy a computer to run part of her presentations.
"I'm a life's ride champion - a performance expert," she explained. "I take my experiences and I provide a plan that anybody can apply to their life - because everybody's got adversity.
"Everybody has things to overcome, no matter who you are, and being able to identify those and confront them instead of pushing them aside, helps you to become a leader in your own life and then it's going to help you."
McAlexander is a music educator with a master's degree in piano performance, a champion equestrian and - because she has retinitus pigmentosa - she's legally blind, with only a 10 percent field of vision in one eye.
Her presentations are customized.
"I tailor what I'm talking about to that group," McAlexander explained.
The other $1,000 winners were "Waddup Dog," a portable hot dog stand that sometimes has set up on the northeast corner of West High and Broadway streets, by the Capitol and St. Peter Church, and "Joy and Gladness Children's Academy," a 24-hour day care program that has been located in a home and soon will move to a stand-alone location.
Deetz noted: "We're not having these big manufacturing companies especially coming to Jefferson City.
"We are a small business community and, knowing that that's out there, and that there's people willing to put their future on the line, it's important to the growth of Jefferson City."