Stacy Martin doesn’t have a stomach. She gave it up to survive.
Not metaphorically. Not in the grit-and-hustle way entrepreneurs love to romanticize. Martin, founder of Seahorse Snacks, literally had her stomach removed in 2019. She had a gene that gave her an 80% chance of getting a kind of stomach cancer so sneaky, it usually isn’t found until it’s too late. She didn’t wait.
“I’ve always been an underdog,” she says, standing in the small commercial kitchen where she handcrafts every bag of savory and sweet nuts herself. “But this wasn’t something I wanted to risk my life on.”
Around her neck, a small golden seahorse – the namesake of her company and a discreet badge of resilience – glistens on a chain. Seahorses, it turns out, have no stomachs.
A one-seahorse operation
“We’re currently a one-seahorse operation,” Martin jokes, gesturing around her 1,250-square-foot workspace at the Hamilton County Business Development Center. “But I’m working on that.”
Martin is the founder, recipe developer, operations manager, head of marketing and shipping coordinator of Seahorse Snacks, a small-batch snack company known for its protein-packed nut blends like Chili Turmrific Cashews and Maple Chaitastic Pecans.
She produces, packages and ships them herself — often after hours, on weekends and during lunch breaks from her full-time sales job.
“I work nights, Saturdays, Sundays,” she says. “It’s hard. But this is part of me now.”
Seahorse Snacks was never supposed to be a business. It was born out of necessity. After her total gastrectomy – a radical surgery to remove her stomach – Martin had to eat small, frequent meals rich in protein. Nuts quickly became a staple.
“I became a professional snacker,” she says. “I needed something with protein that tasted good, that I could throw in my purse and eat on the go. But so many snacks tasted fake. So, I started making my own.”
What started as personal survival quickly became something more.
“I started playing around with spices,” she explains. “I’d write down what I used, how long I baked it, then taste it and make notes. I’d tweak it until I found something I wanted to eat.”
Before the snacks
The seeds for this pivot in Martin’s life were planted in a genetics office at the Mayo Clinic, where she accompanied her mother for a routine cancer screening. Her mother had just finished chemo for stage 4 uterine cancer. The appointment was supposed to be a follow-up. Instead, it became a bombshell.
“That’s when we found out she had a genetic mutation called CDH1,” Martin recalls. “It gives you an 80% chance of getting stomach cancer and 60% for breast cancer.”
There was a 50% chance Martin had inherited the gene. After she was tested a year later, the result came through on an app: CDH1 positive.
“I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know if I was going to die. I didn’t even have a doctor in Chattanooga,” she says. “I thought I was going to fall off a cliff and I didn’t know which step would do it.”
Martin began making calls, digging into research and traveling for answers. After a round of clear tests at the Mayo Clinic, doctors gave her a choice: undergo stomach surveillance every six months or remove her stomach entirely.
“I didn’t want to live in six-month intervals, wondering if they’d missed something,” she says. “So I chose surgery.”
The surgery came in September 2019. Two weeks later, the pathology report revealed 17 spots of cancer in her stomach.
Her decision, she says, had saved her life.
Second acts
Seahorse Snacks began during Martin’s recovery – first in her home kitchen, then at pop-ups at the Black Creek and Chattanooga markets. Friends started asking to buy her nut blends. Then came the logo, the labels, the website and eventually a commercial kitchen space through Launch Tennessee.
“It wasn’t until people started buying them at markets that I thought, ‘Oh, maybe this is a thing,’” she says.
Martin built the business while undergoing a double mastectomy, working part-time and making advocacy trips to Washington, D.C. Samples of her snacks now sit on the shelves in congressional offices, including Marsha Blackburn’s and Chuck Fleischmann’s.
Her brand color? Purple – the color of stomach cancer awareness.
“Everything I do is on brand,” she says, half-laughing, half-serious. “It’s my way of letting people know without saying it out loud.”
Going viral
Seahorse Snacks went viral on TikTok during a short stretch in 2023 when Martin was working on the business full-time.
“I got up to 38 stores in seven states. It was huge,” she says. “But the mortgage company doesn’t care about TikTok. It wants its money every month.”
Even as her brand gained traction, Martin went back to full-time sales – filling snack orders in her off hours.
“It’s a gas-and-brake thing. I go as hard as I can when I can, then I pull back when I have to.”
Despite that, Martin keeps showing up: at markets, in local stores like Blue Fox Cheese Shop and at the former Lookouts stadium, where her Curve Ball Crunchies were sold.
“People don’t always love them. I’ve had people spit them out in front of me,” she admits. “But I made them for me first. I made them to survive.”
Built from the inside out
Martin grew up in Wisconsin, but has called Chattanooga home for nearly eight years. It was supposed to be a job relocation until it became a life reset.
“I’d moved every two years. This was the seventh state I’d lived in,” she says. “I didn’t know what it was like to stay somewhere, so I intentionally bought a house in a neighborhood. I wanted to be a part of a community.”
Today, Stacy is part business owner, part advocate. She speaks on stomach cancer awareness; she pushed to get November recognized as Stomach Cancer Awareness Month in Tennessee and in Chattanooga; and she’s a board member for No Stomach for Cancer and a trained patient reviewer for Department of Defense cancer research grants.
“They spent money to save my life,” she says. “This is what I’m doing with it.”
Martin hopes 2026 will be a breakout year for Seahorse Snacks. For now, she’s scaling smart, building infrastructure, hiring seasonal help and pursuing airport concession certifications in 12 states.
“We’re trying to put systems in place so it can grow without me being in the kitchen every night,” she says.
Still, the mission stays close to the chest – or in her case, around her neck. That golden seahorse glistening in the light isn’t just branding – it’s the whole story in a single symbol.