Prep to Profit Podcast: The Evolution of Mama Meals with Eric Stein

Podcast Transcript

[00:00:00] Johnny Watson: Yeah. So as everyone's arriving, we'd love as usual, if you just share like where you're You're joining from and the name of your service. And Eric and I, we're going to jump into part two of mama meals, Eric's amazing journey with his partner, Holly, who have created an incredible post mortem meal prep offering for mothers who are organic conscious and we'd love to maybe just start there, Eric.

So give us a reminder about how you came to build this business. And yeah, let's just, let's go with that.

[00:00:44] Eric Stein: Yeah, absolutely. It came through our journey through childhood, right? We about 15, 16 years ago we started becoming more conscious about what we were eating and we were just sick all the time.

Doctors, Prescriptions. Nobody ever really asked us about the food we were eating and we started learning about agricultural practices and what they were doing. And we switched it up. And then all these chronic conditions just started to go away and we're like, wow, this is amazing.

And so we really honed in on that had our 1st child. And did the whole pregnancy thing, did a lot of research and had a really great experience and then postpartum came around and it was just really hard. We, there was nowhere we could go to go get the food that we really wanted. Our family just was not really cooking stuff.

People were sending us food, but it wasn't like, up to what we really wanted. And and then Holly was also eating things like cold smoothies and raw vegetables and things that we thought were healthy at the time, but didn't actually help her postpartum. So then for baby number two, she read about Chinese medicine.

There's a great book. It was called the first 40 days and really details the more traditional practices in like a woman's life after they have a baby. And we learned that it was like soup and stew and things that were cooked in bone broth and. Like super nutrient dense. And so we prepped I think it was like 60 meals.

and froze them in our, the freezer in our garage, just had them in a stand up chest freezer. And then when the baby came, we were just pulling meals out of the freezer. And my life was a thousand times easier because I wasn't having to cook. She felt like a thousand times better. And we were just like, wow, this is great.

It made everything way easier. And and then she did it for a few friends as a gift. She's Hey, somebody was having like their third baby. And she's I'm not going to get you diapers. Let me stock your freezer. And her friends were like, this is the greatest thing anybody's ever done for us.

Thank you. And she just really loved doing it, and then we were friends with birth workers in the area, like doulas and midwives and. lactation consultants, and it's just like a community that we were involved in after doing so much research about birth and talking to so many people and then doing a home birth, you meet a lot of people through that process.

And they were all like they heard about our story with the food and they were like, this is a business you guys, like you need to do this because our clients need this and we'll refer you. And so my wife made a menu and she just put some items on there, some soups and bone broth and like lactation cookies or something.

And a little Venmo link at the bottom of a PDF. And these doulas put it on their Instagrams and strangers were just like Venmoing us money and then emailing here, this is what I want. It was crazy. And so that's how it all started out of our. Out of our house with a standup freezer and a couple, three, three quart stockpots or whatever.

It was like three gallons, stockpots, whatever they're, whatever the size are,

[00:03:31] Johnny Watson: it was incredible. And I think it is a familiar story for a lot of people who start these businesses. It comes from a place of. feeling just the signal from around them that people want this, that there is a need. And I think that's what's so incredible about your story that I heard on the podcast is how the midwives were like pulling you toward, like pushing you out of your comfort zone

to

[00:03:57] Johnny Watson: continue thinking about like, how do you go to the next level?

And how do you, how do I get to the next level from there? Where are you now at, Eric? So you started just delivering through Ubers, not even Uber delivery, just Uber Eats, straight up just putting food in an Uber and that was blocked, asynchronous, you can only do one of those at a time. Where have you got to since then?

How many states are you now shipping to?

[00:04:21] Eric Stein: Yeah, we started, I, the beginning was like, you got to pick it up from our house and it's two weeks away right now. That's how it all started. Then I started getting in my own car and driving around orange County. Then came the Ubers and then, yeah, so we got into a commercial kitchen.

We cut everything over to a FedEx. So we'd get everything frozen, put gel packs on it and then send it off. And then And then we started using dry ice because the summer, summertime is tough with gel packs for frozen food. If you're doing meal prep, like non frozen gel packs are great.

But for us as like this really premium product, it's got to show up like a rock. Like people are wanting to feel that, so now we're we ship two days a week and we do about a hundred to 110, 20, sometimes boxes a week. And we've got a great little system in place too. So we get all the.

We get all the food cooked in the freezer. And then I have a company that they actually originally reached out to me to offer us dry ice. And then I worked out something with them where they take all of our boxes that we ship in and they warehouse all the boxes, actually it's their boxes now they warehouse all the boxes, they build each box.

So each week, if we have 110 boxes going out, they'll build 70 of this size. 30 of this size and 10 of this size, and they'll print all the postage out for us to put the dry ice labels on the side of the boxes, and they'll bring the dry ice that needs to go in each box. So they'll show up. Here's 110 boxes.

Here's 110 boxes worth of dry ice. So all our guy has to do is go into the freezer, put the food in the boxes, put the dry ice on the, on top, and then tape it up. And then FedEx shows up with we have two pickups, we have a ground pickup where it's, it can get there two days on the ground. Or we have a express where it takes more than two days.

So it has to get on a plane. So we'll do that, that twice a week right now.

[00:06:12] Johnny Watson: Incredible. And has that operational system like changed since we last. Connected or is that something that you figured out and you're dealing with a new set of challenges?

[00:06:23] Eric Stein: I think it's a, it's pretty much the same right now.

I think it's gotten more efficient is really what we've gotten to. And our next step up actually is I'm actually this is like our proving the concept, right? So the next step up from here is where you, you use a co packer to make the food for you. And then use a frozen fulfillment 3PL. So the one where you're going to use is called grip shipping.

They're awesome. It was founded by the guy who was the head of logistics for butcher box. If you can imagine the size of a,

[00:06:51] Johnny Watson: and is that how you first heard of grip?

[00:06:53] Eric Stein: Yeah. Yeah. I reached out to Juan, who's the CEO of grip on LinkedIn. Back when Holly and I were still cooking food out of our house.

And I was like, Hey dude we're using your meat. What do you think? And he's Oh, here, let's jump on zoom. And he taught me everything there is to know about frozen fulfillment. So he started this company called Grip Shipping and what they do is they have like giant freezer warehouses in California Texas, Michigan, New Jersey, strategically placed across the country.

And what they do is they hook into your website and you get your product in their freezers. So when an order comes in, the grip software analyzes the order, analyzes the shipping location, and it'll say, okay, so this one's in New Mexico, you got product in California, or you got product in Dallas, which route are you going to use to ship it?

Which carrier are you going to use to ship it? What day are you going to ship it to be most successful and how much dry ice is going to go in the box based on what time of the year it is, and then they do all that like logic. And pick the warehouse and then pack your box for you. And you basically just get charged per box per shipment.

[00:08:02] Johnny Watson: So

[00:08:04] Eric Stein: that's what we're moving up into now. And then we're not there yet, but like basically integrations are happening and co packers coming online pretty soon. And that's the goal. If that makes sense.

[00:08:15] Johnny Watson: That's so cool. So how do you deal with the liner box logistics then? I imagine if you're thinking about having four different regions where your frozen food lives.

Even the frozen food itself, how do you strategically think about how many of these meals and resources you need to have around the country at any given time?

[00:08:35] Eric Stein: That's a good question. I'm making this up as I go. I, I think it's I like to, I know I don't have the answers, right?

I'm our C, our fractional COO, his name's Justin. He comes from a company that they did cat food. And they did frozen cat food, direct to consumer. So it was the same thing where we're doing frozen postpartum meals, direct to consumer. They did frozen cat food, direct to consumer. So I asked him what I should do.

And he's Oh, this is how you gotta, this is how you gotta think about it. And he's got a brain that like, it's beyond me when it comes to like replenishment is what he calls it. He's you're going to need somebody to watch replenishment. And I'm like, I think I know what that means, but those kind of things, like he's going to tell me what to do, if that makes sense.

[00:09:18] Johnny Watson: Yeah, absolutely. Listening to the first podcast, I heard you talk about a business coach you had early.

I love

[00:09:25] Johnny Watson: how she had a cookie business and you saw there's a lot of transferable knowledge here and she was pushing you to keep a margin of 70 percent and you calculated your ingredients in there.

Yours and Holly's time the packaging you were using, and I loved how you gave yourself all of this room or the things that creep in over

time.

[00:09:49] Johnny Watson: And one other thing to summarize that early conversation that I loved is that you were looking for like the most real whole ingredients that you could find as a part of that pricing strategy and trusting that.

You're going to attract the customer that cares about those things. And you've definitely proven over time that you've done that. But I'd love to ask you how you think about solving new problems, because it seems like you, every meal prep owner has a they overcome a hurdle. They push out their comfort zone and learn something new.

And then there's a new fresh challenge. So what is your process that you go through? When thinking about replenishment, for example.

[00:10:29] Eric Stein: Yeah, that's a good question. Gosh, when I think of a problem now, like I'm working on labels, for example, like I, we were, we're trying to move into the code hacker.

And we, here's one of our containers, but it didn't have a tamper evidence seal, right? And so they're like we can't do this if it doesn't have a tamper evidence seal. This is before we had this label. And so we're, we were literally about to change containers. Because. They were like look we're not going to do this.

I don't think anybody's going to do it. And and so how this was like a problem that I challenged her that we walked into and I just told him, I said, look I don't want to, I'm not going to die on this hill, but I want to figure it out. So let's try to figure this out. And we just sat there at the table for 45 minutes and talked.

And finally the, she got up the owner of the place and she's I'll be right back. And she comes back in with I wish I still had it. It was a nacho cheese dip label that like went around the package and created a seal about, she's what about this? And I was like, Oh, okay.

And how much R and D and conversations and design work. And all of a sudden I got these labels that go over the container. You know what I mean? So when I see, when there's a challenge, it's just, as a business owner, you have to like, expect it, right? Not everything's going to go your way all the time.

And the challenge just means that you're being called to fill a space. And once you fill the space, then the next thing is going to open for you, right? The next door is going to open for you. And if you look at those challenges and you're like, Oh God this sucks. And you're going to just, it's going to suck a lot.

Cause that's as business owners, right? There's going to be a lot of those. So that's how I would approach challenges. It's just, it's part of the game. It's something to actually look forward to and and have some faith, right? Like you're gonna figure it out.

You're like you got this far. What you're gonna stop. No, you're not gonna stop, right? I'm not gonna stop. Does that make sense? Does that answer your question?

[00:12:21] Johnny Watson: It does. I love that Yeah, it's the determination the will to move forward and see everything as a puzzle that And

[00:12:29] Eric Stein: you gotta have faith too.

Like you're going to do this, like it's going to work. You will figure it out. That's what I would say to everybody. Like you will figure it out. I promise.

[00:12:37] Johnny Watson: I love this. And was this similar back to when you were first exploring, like how to push out of your local area into shipping? I heard you had established some sort of relationship with a strategic partner who had more volume so that you could work with FedEx at a much more possible or practical, right?

Is this a similar situation we're talking about here where you were like, Oh, how are we going to do this? And then through conversations, you found somebody you could team up with,

[00:13:10] Eric Stein: That was, that was one that was just me reaching out and talking to people. And that's what I've noticed too, is like in this, Business is like half of, I don't want to say half my job, but like a decent part of my job is just talking to people, like yesterday I talked with a guy who is from greener pastures, chicken, and he's in Austin, Texas, and we're just looking to source like super high quality chicken.

And in talking to him, met him, heard his story the co founders, the ex NFL player Vaughn Miller, I think is yeah. NFL guy. And then we had a conversation. I'm like, great. I think we can order chicken. Da. And then I was in a meeting and and we're, we've been talking about bone broth Hey, I'm looking for some bone broth right now.

And so we don't have to keep making it. And when we moved to this new facility and he's oh, here, talk to the people at Denver bone broth. So it was just because I had the conversation with the guy. Now I have this conversation. I asked him for help, he gives me off to these other people who might potentially help us, just keep the conversations going.

I find that in this group of like entrepreneurs and people who are feeding other people I don't know, everybody seems to want to help each other. If anybody asked me for help, I'm always like, Hey. I'll help you out. What do you need from me? Like I can connect you to people, it's a pretty cool community from what I've seen in the food space around me.

So yeah.

[00:14:26] Johnny Watson: Yeah. Everything's connected. And another takeaway that I was surprised by is you'd worked with a larger influencer from Twilight, a movie. You had that conversation. You just started having a conversation. Hey, would you like to promote this to mothers in your network who might be going through Their first birth or second, whatever, and want to be nourished during that time.

And that didn't really go anywhere, but it was getting more connected to women who had that network around them of people who were listening for advice as they make those first steps toward becoming a mother. And it seems that reinforcement of it's all about networking community, working toward that same outcome or goal.

Yeah. And. That's what I felt from meal prep for sure. It's just, everyone kind of does want to support one another in the industry. And I think that's really beautiful.

[00:15:17] Eric Stein: And that influencer thing is too, it really speaks to relevance. And, like we had a, she had a couple million followers and she posted about us and it was like, nothing happened, but the girl who's got, 30, 000 followers and it's really specific to moms who are trying to be healthier,

like

[00:15:33] Eric Stein: it was gangbusters for us, yeah.

And that's that for meal prep in general, if I was starting a meal prep right now, it would just be like, okay, who is, who am I talking to? You know what I mean? Who's my customer? I know my customer is like pregnant or newly postpartum women, like very obvious, right? But if it's just I'm just doing for meal prep for people who want to be healthy.

There's that could be, that's everybody, basically, everybody wants to be healthier. Yeah, I would just hone in on the relevance, right? Who are you talking to?

[00:16:01] Johnny Watson: Okay this is a really interesting segue to a question I'd love to ask. We have a lot of different operators here who serve different target markets and different types of people.

If you wanted to take this passion that you have for clean, organic, real food and bring this to as many people as you could and you weren't already working with postmortem mothers and families, what would be your thought process that you would go through and starting another service?

[00:16:33] Eric Stein: Yeah, good question.

I think just touching on what I was just and maybe I got ahead of myself. Yeah, it's like knowing who you're talking to, right? And I think what we, why we were successful with mama meals is cause we were talking to ourself. You know what I mean? Like we did this for what would we want if I had the perfect meal prep right in front of me for postpartum women, what would it look like?

And then we just built that, and luckily they, the stars aligned, the people gotten, And I got introduced to the right people right without one. Telling me how to do the whole frozen shipping thing. Like where, I don't know, I guess we probably would have figured it out eventually, but he just shortcutted us by I don't even know how long.

But I would just get real, real clear about who you're talking to. What's your brand, like what, who are you speaking to with that brand and why, and what are you selling them, that's where I would start. And I mean, just me personally. I think that if you started a like organic only meal prep right now, or even restaurant, like it's just a restaurant where you can go sit down at, I think you would have a hard time failing.

I think you would, I think you'd be like beating people off with a stick. If you, that sounded weird. I think you just like getting people like kicking people out of your restaurant because they've been hanging out too long. I still can't go in my area. I can't go to a restaurant and sit down and just get organic food.

I can't do it. There was 1 place and it closed down because the lease owner got screwed over by something, but it was crushing it. They showed me their numbers they were crushing it and now they've had to start over. But it was like, it wasn't for lack of customers that they failed. It was because they got, they made some mistakes in the foundational movements of that thing.

But I still can't go do that. And that's where I, that's what I would say. There's a huge market for people who just want real food, huge. And as people spend less on other stuff, they're, like me, I don't care what the what the cost is at the grocery store.

To an extent, right? Like I'm not just throwing money everywhere, but like I read the ingredients and that's how I purchased the food. It's not I don't, I'm not price shopping, if that makes sense.

[00:18:37] Johnny Watson: Sure. Yeah. I can relate to that in full as well. And it does seem like there's a wider shift happening where there is more demand.

I'm curious when you think about this as An opportunity or a challenge in this like hypothetical scenario where you start a new service. Do you look at say, and this is just for the specific example, but I think it is a framework that applies across various different niches within meal prep.

Do you go after like organic as the target customer, or do you start to think about organic food for women who train at the gym four days a week? Like, how would you go about thinking it? Through that challenge.

[00:19:20] Eric Stein: Yeah that's a good question. Dad, right? So I would probably be like, all right, who are my dads?

What are, I know I have three kids, I have three kids. I got this business. Like I have all my list of things that I go through in my life. So what I would probably do is sit down and create a brand that talks specifically to those things in my life, because I can't say, oh, I would go after this niche.

Like Holly came up with the niche postpartum moms. I didn't come up with that. So she came up with a great niche and it was, she spoke directly to herself and then I'm been the guy that sort of built the thing to keep it going, but if I had to start over, yeah, I would probably be like, all right, who am I, how can I solve my problem?

How can I make my brand something that I would buy? And then you got that, you're going to have people like you, right? You're not alone. And yeah, I think that's how I would go about it.

[00:20:11] Johnny Watson: I think this is a really cool way to go about it. So from what I've heard from you, you would start with yourself, your own problems that, really intimately, you would build the brand around this and get like really dialed into this specific person.

You would start small, start local, your food into the hands of people, and then trust that by understanding the need and. Being able to identify who in the ecosystem around you speaks to people who also experience this pain. You can have conversations and build relationships with them to put, maybe put your foot in front of their audience.

And in this journey, you're just seeing the problem that's directly in front of you. Trying to find a mentor or just through sheer will and determination, push through and look a little bit further into the future. Think about what goals. You want to hit and just try and come up with a plan and execute to get to that next level.

Is that kind of how you would?

[00:21:16] Eric Stein: Yeah, I think so. I think what you just touched on at the air then is look into the future. Like I've just really, I really want to like, yeah, do that. What do you see? Where do you see it? And if you can visualize it in your mind and Hey, this is where I want my business to be.

And this is what I want it to look like. And you keep going back to that, keep going back to that. You're going to, you're going to impress that image on, everything around you. And now it's going to start to like slowly attract into your life. And yeah, that's a good point that I didn't even consider, but that's something that I do very regularly.

Daily. I look at what I want Momma Meals to be, and I'm Like I have my eyes on it and the doors keep opening. You know what I mean? We're still on the journey and we're not even at a co packer yet. We're still making and shipping all the food ourselves. I'll be at the kitchen tomorrow at 6am.

You know what I mean? I love being in the kitchen. But yeah, it's just like the, yeah, keep your vision, have a vision. How are you supposed to get what you want if you don't even know what you want? Good question. Oh, I just want some random, I want to make a lot of money. Yeah, you and everybody else, but.

Get clear with what it looks like for you. Yeah,

[00:22:25] Johnny Watson: absolutely. And you touched on it a couple of times there your vision for Mama Meals and you've also shared that this came as a result of Holly feeling this desire as a new mom for something different, I'd love to hear from you.

If you're open to sharing how the two of you have collaborated over the years, we have people reach out all the time. I want to start a service. I'm going to cook. My husband's going to take care of operations or vice versa. It seems to be something that happens very naturally. And if you're willing to share with us, I'd love to hear a little bit about the journey of how the two of you have gone about building this business together.

[00:23:04] Eric Stein: Yeah, that's been a journey. I'll say there should be a whole like, okay, husband, wife. business duo, like with a family too. There should be a whole podcast around that, just that, and there should be a whole community. That's what I would do right now. If I was starting something new, I might start something specifically for that because that was like one of the most challenging parts of it.

It was one of the most like. It was one of the reasons that we've succeeded and it was also like the most challenging, right? And so when we first got started, I was working full time and I was doing sales and, I was in the SAS world and, we're, we had started a bunch of different business testing things.

And nothing had really taken off. And then when this got going we like, all right, so here I am working, she started the business. So let's reverse. This was her idea. Okay. She came to me and she's I want to do this. And I was like, that's not very passive. That sounds like the most active thing you could do right now.

I was on the passive income kick. And I'm like, you're talking about cooking soup and stew from scratch. That's like an enormous amount of work. And she's I'm gonna do it. And she just started doing it, and I was like, okay, so it looks like I'm doing this, so I'm helping. And she was like, leading the charge.

And so she was in like the called the masculine seat. Of drive forward. And I was in the feminine seat of okay, just tell me what to do, and I'll, like you're in charge. And she, one of the things we realized that she her previous business was a wedding planner.

So you can imagine like somebody that's spending, I saw, I started to $400000 weddings where somebody is going to go, it has to be perfect. The amount of people and things that need to be put together to spend $400,000 on a wedding is like, And she's the person in charge of everything. So she's just like, you do this, do this, do this, do this.

And then we start this business and now she's doing that to me. And all of a sudden inside of me, I was like, yeah, no I actually joined a men's group and like our relationship was struggling. And they're like, dude, you need to stand up. If you're, she wants you to be the operator, she wants to have the vision and talk to the people and you're going to be the operator, like you can't let her tell you what to do. Like you have to drive. And this is like a masculine thing you have to step into. because of that men's group I we had that discussion and I was like, this is how things are going to change.

And our life was like this. And then it was just it just got crazy. And there's a, it was one of the most difficult times in our life. I remember two or three times I was like, I think I'm done. I don't want to do this anymore. Like I'm working, we have kids. We're fighting and it's just, this thing isn't even making money.

Like it's making some money. It's cool that it's working, but like I, my full time job is paying the bills. What are we even doing here? And so it was tough. So I made that switch and I really stepped into like my, like more masculine energy around it and gave her the space. Like I'm not going to be, when things went, when the old habits came up, I just let it go.

It's okay. Like I'm a rock and the waves kind of crash and. I'm still going to be like my I'm still going to be solid in my seat. And then things settled. And after that, I swear the numbers just go like this, like she gets to now talk to the people and have conversations with these women.

They tell her when she's, when they're pregnant, they like want to share their stories with her. She's having the greatest time doing this piece of the business. And I'm like the operational, make everything efficient, talk to the people, get the thing going. And that was a, but that it almost broke us, it almost broke us.

And I think a lot of people don't realize that, that there needs to be a level of like consciousness around what you're doing. If you're going to bring the business into the house and into your relationship. Like you can't just, you don't just leave the office and go home. You know what I mean? Like you're in the office all the time.

And yeah, so I hope that helps people and just remember it's, like I said, it was one of the reasons we succeeded too. Because we were both doing it. If she would have been doing it on her own, this would be, this would have gone nowhere. Nowhere. She couldn't do enough dishes. You know what I mean?

Think about the amount of dishes we had to do in our house. We did this out of our house for over a year. And if I tried to do it on my house, I didn't have the people. You know what I mean? My wife is the, she's the face. So we had to do it together. But it had to we were challenged to really step into our like, our new self, if that makes sense.

[00:27:30] Johnny Watson: Absolutely. And I'd love to keep exploring the dynamic with you and Holly. A quick question related to, how this can help and assist our audience, maybe at various stages and various types of working partnerships. They may be doing this on their own. How, from what you've learned about like the masculine and the feminine as energies.

How could that apply to somebody who, for example, may be doing this all on their own?

[00:27:58] Eric Stein: Yeah, that's a good question. I think you probably got to have a balance then. I would say, maybe, I don't know if I were a woman business owner, like doing this on her own, I would really take a I would look at that closely and be like, is it worth it for me to bring on a partner who can help?

Because that energy is feminine energy is going to be most fulfilled when it's expressing the feminine essence and doing the feminine things. But if you're stuck in that the driver's seat and you're driving all the time, I can imagine you might I don't know, you might not be that happy.

You might struggle with some depressive states. You might not feel like you're fulfilled, but having somebody else in there to like help with that, to balance that, it might be a great thing for you. You might also be somebody who just has that balance dialed in and you can handle it and you're awesome.

Okay. Like I'm great. I wasn't for, it wasn't me. And the same thing, I don't know, for like the operators, like the men operators, like I would definitely consult with the ladies, like they, they're more intuitive. Like they, they can answer questions in a way that you, we can't even really they're just different, you got to be careful with like you, you met, like they, they're more in tune with the theme and we're more in tune with the form, if that makes sense, right?

Like, how's the kitchen working? How's the food taste? How's it being cooked? And then the more feminine essence is who are we cooking for? Like, why are we doing this? And it's not to say that a guy can't tap into that. You know what I mean? If you're a solo operator, like you just, you'd be conscious about it and we all have those energies inside of us.

If you're going to be the solo person, just, I think be conscious about I'm going to spend some time in this and think about this and then come back out of it. And, know what seat you're sitting in.

[00:29:38] Johnny Watson: Yeah, sure. Yeah. That's really amazing to see like the impact you've had or the impact that the business has been able to experience as a result of more of this polarity is a potential word to use here.

I think it's cool what you said. I think there could be a scenario where somebody may feel. No matter which how they identify, they may have a more masculine or feminine, I think that's really cool. But yeah, I think typically as a broad spectrum, it probably looks that way where if I'm a solo operator as a woman, is there, are there men around me that I can lean on to play around with that polarity and then vice versa?

I think that's really cool. What did you see open up for Holly when you. Went to your men's group and started to unpack some of the stuff that you were experiencing in that more passive dynamic with Holly as she was, like, pulling this thing into creation. When you worked with your men and came back and started to shift how you showed up in the business, what did you see open up from Holly and how does that help serve Mama Meals?

[00:30:48] Eric Stein: Yeah, good question. she Just looks happier. If that makes sense. I know she can be the she can be the driver, like she can do it. It's obvious. And I just feel like she's I, she said to me, I just want to mill my own flour and make pasta from scratch, like.

That's like her feminine essence, like coming out, right? In, in her form. It was like, I want to make fermented sourdough and do all these like cool things for Scratch for the family, and it almost gives her space. To be that person, right? And, she may not even consciously know that she wanted that.

But like me, just being that person is now gives that to her. And yeah, at the end of the day, we're married. We're in a relationship there. Everything has its ups and downs. We have our seasons. We have the, just like anybody else. I'm sure. But I think we're both just happier because of it and we both get to do more of what we want to do.

[00:31:43] Johnny Watson: So in a way it's it's removing labels and expectations of who should do what. You've been able to come to a place in your partnership and your union in the kitchen and out of the kitchen where you've created a lot more focus on each other and what some people want to take more on and then take off as well.

[00:32:05] Eric Stein: I think the word is harmony, like we've created more harmony because we can all we can try to do this and try to do that. I can try to get on. Social media and talk to people, and I can do it but that's what she wants to do, and I've got a bunch of other things to do. So I think it's just created more harmony and it's helped us continue to grow.

Even though I've got a three month old right now and two kids. Like here we are like on a startup. That's just been. Like crushing and there's all this stuff going on and I have a three month old. So it's like the harmony is like mandatory at this point. If you, if there wasn't harmony and ease that was going on, then, the things that the wheels would probably be falling off, there would, there'd be a bunch of problems and unhappy customers.

And it just, that hasn't been the case.

[00:32:48] Johnny Watson: Congrats, Eric. That's so cool that you've welcomed your third into the world and you're still nurturing this other, maybe an infant now, not necessarily a baby. Yeah,

[00:32:59] Eric Stein: toddler. Maybe it's a toddler. I'll give it, some little sturdiness to it.

[00:33:04] Johnny Watson: Yeah. And before we, uh, we kicked off the podcast here, we were talking about you're exploring regenerative ag is a big part of it.

Interest and passion. Is that something that you are visioning into the future for Memo's Mule? Does it becomes a child, teenager?

[00:33:21] Eric Stein: Totally. I think, my guess would be look, it was like 15 or 16 years ago when Holly and I started learning about food. And we learned about what organic was. Like, oh, okay, they don't spray pesticide on it or they don't genetically modify the food.

Okay, cool. I go to the store, there's like none in the store. Like 15, 16 years ago, there was like very little, right? Now, look, I go to Costco and there's pallets and pallets of organic food everywhere, right? Like the label is everywhere, it's everywhere. My bet is that the same thing is gonna happen with regenerative.

Because organic is now like a buzzword. You can go get organic junk food at this point. So it's not really it's better, but it's still not as strong of a word as it used to be. So my bet is that regenerative, which for people that don't know what that is, it's it's a system of farming that, that approaches, they basically focus on soil health, increasing biodiversity like improving the ecosystem that it's, that's around it.

For example, they do something called cover cropping, where they grow crops that are not for consumption. It's just to cover the ground and create more diversity in the soil. Okay. They don't till the soil as much, like breaking up all that, all the root systems and all like the micro things that are in the soil.

They leave, they try to leave that intact, right? They rotate the crops instead of growing a thousand or, 20, 000 heads of cabbage every single season. And they do the same thing over and over again. They like rotate things around. So the soil gets a break from those plants and and all this stuff makes the food stronger and it needs less pesticide.

And it's just it just makes sense. So my bet is that regenerative is the next organic and that's why like I got, I'm partnering with regenerative farmers like force of nature, a great regenerative meat producer. We just got a box of some of their meat that we're gonna test in one of our, one of our SKUs.

I talked to that guy who's doing real great chicken farming. And we're gonna start ordering chicken from them now. And I just think that's where I would focus. And that's why I got so sold on regenerative ag. So it seems like it's the real deal,

[00:35:29] Johnny Watson: it's incredible conceptually. And I wonder for those who are listening who may feel intimidated by moving into something that At the offset could sound more expensive. Like how do you examine that and factor that in to the underlying costs and profit? Yeah, that's,

[00:35:50] Eric Stein: That's the big question, right?

Does your will your business support that? Fortunately, for the Mama Meals stories we built the cost based on what the cost of the product was. So I didn't say Oh, okay here's the cost. Here's my target cost. And this is what I think the maximum somebody will pay for it is.

And now I have to come in here and now here's my margin. I just built the cost out and was like, okay, so we need to make 70 percent on top of that. Okay. There's our price. And then we just did it. For an op for a brand that's already moving yeah, it's a it would probably just be a slow start, just do what you can.

Try to incorporate some of that messaging, cause people are going to be like, Oh, it's using regenerative ingredients. Okay. Even that, cause that might be hard for a lot of people to find. If you just source like regenerative beef, for example, like just one thing. Like you could now put that in your messaging and that's a big deal.

You know what I mean? Like for somebody like me, who, when I'm reading the labels on stuff and I'm deciding if I'm going to spend money on something, if I see the word regenerative on it, I'm like, that's immediately worth more money. I don't have a problem spending more on, on that, so it could just be a a sit down time and you just look at your ingredients and look at what you're doing and you look at your spreadsheets, right?

Like hopefully you have a spreadsheet that tells you your margin on every meal you make. And then, okay, so I'm getting, this beef at three bucks a pound right now, all right, what's going to happen to the margin if I get this one, that's nine bucks a pound or 12, even I remember we were spending 12 a pound initially just to get the highest quality we could, we've gotten the price way down, but so I'll get into the spreadsheet and then what does it tell you?

The cost needs to be. Okay, then just change the cost, like that's how I would approach it, but I get that there's a fear out there of oh if my price goes up, they're going to, they're going to just go to another meal prep, but that battle is going to that's going to be a tough battle to win the price war.

[00:37:47] Johnny Watson: I think it all comes back to the. The ideal customer profile that we spoke about earlier, who are you cooking for? What do they care about? And that allows you to pull certain levers from there. But what I am hearing is in this specific case with Mama meals, you're able to reconcile the vision and the values of what you want to create with the business opportunity as well, because introducing something, you can message it a certain way, and that can attract a new or bigger customer base than you currently serve.

And it does make sense from a business perspective to, it's not like you're just sacrificing your your margin for the food you want to be serving people. Although I know that is a big point of attention for a lot of people in this community is wanting to nourish and then balancing it with what it seems to be ever increasing costs.

[00:38:40] Eric Stein: You know what I would do too, if you're already moving, if you've got an email list, just ask your customers Hey, we're thinking about changing up some ingredients. The cost would go from this dollar per meal to this dollar per meal. Would you stick with us if we, we move to these types of ingredients?

I bet you people would say yes, and then, you got some customers there, you might lose some, but you can keep doing the price war thing. That's really cool. What's that?

[00:39:04] Johnny Watson: I was going to ask, and that'd be for you were heading is. What have you done historically?

How much feedback do you ask for from your customers? And how has that impacted the product over time?

[00:39:17] Eric Stein: Yeah, no, that's exactly what I was about to say is I've called a bunch of our customers, especially like, we're in California, right? If you order our biggest box, In Florida or New York or something like that, anywhere on the East coast, you pay almost a hundred dollars more for shipping.

And so those are the people I was really interested in. Like I call them up and say, Hey why did you order? Why did you pay another a hundred dollars for us to ship this to you? And the common thing was like there's nothing else like this around me. Like where else am I going to get this quality of ingredients?

And so I re what I realized, I'm like, that was me, right? Like I was just calling those people on the East coast. And those were just us. So we found them, and because of like social media and our ability to get like incredible costs through, through FedEx and the miracle of dry ice and all that stuff.

Like I can get that food to them when we found them. But yeah that's just made us to answer your question. It's just informed us that I don't care what the cost of the food is. I don't care what the cost of my raw ingredients are. We're just going to make sure that we charge appropriately.

And, we're not gouging people and, and we're going to, we're going to stick to that and, it's just been what's working until there's a bunch more competition out there. I guess we'll keep shipping it all over the place. You know what I mean? No, don't start it. Don't start a competitor to us, please.

No, I'm just kidding.

[00:40:35] Johnny Watson: I see the competition does drive more. And in this case I can imagine being a first mover and having that moat has definitely allowed you to push and grow this business.

[00:40:46] Eric Stein: We were, there were other postpartum meal companies out there when we started. And there was one, or there was two of them that were shipping.

And one of them was like more local to like the Bay area. And they had a lot of some following. But we like because we came in and we did frozen and we just did very simple We kept it like real easy Real scalable because we were able to come in and do that like we've been able to I think just blow past everybody yeah, just because of the scalability of it

[00:41:19] Johnny Watson: Really cool.

And what you said there about soliciting feedback and like really getting in there with your customers, you were able to learn something, which was, it wasn't like, Oh, do we have a problem? It might not always be that you're looking for. It gave you insights into how far you could push in a certain direction to realize the vision that you had and access more customers.

I think that's really cool. And you just never know what you're going to learn.

[00:41:50] Eric Stein: Yeah, you never know like you just got to talk to them. It's so important. So important. I spent a lot of time on the phone just hey, how you doing? Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, that's cool. That's fine.

[00:42:03] Johnny Watson: That's really good. So you will just you'll call customers and yeah, it's been

[00:42:06] Eric Stein: a while.

It's been a while since I've done that. But I used to just get on the phone and be like, Hey, it's Eric. I just want to say thank you for ordering. And they're like, how is everything? How did it go? I would get some, sometimes people would answer, but I'd leave a bunch of voicemails and somebody would, I also did one recently where we blasted our email list of like our top, like hundred customers in terms of spend, like they spent the most money with us.

And it was like, Hey, hop on a call with Eric and you get a hundred dollar gift card. And so we just, I hopped on a few calls and those are like your real champions who would just like, love you. One girl was like, I will buy anything Holly tells me to buy. So I was like, okay, all right. My wife's an influencer.

This is cool. This is cool.

[00:42:50] Johnny Watson: You touched on something there. It seems like a lot of meal prep businesses in our community that we've learned from is that they have that relationship with their biggest customers. They get into the community, they feed their food. In your case, you have a nationwide presence, and I'm sure Instagram is a big part of how you have cultivated this sense of closeness.

What advice would you give somebody who It's just seeing a wall there. They're busy. They're trying to handle the operations. What advice would you give this person to push past that discomfort and start to have more conversations with their biggest advocates?

[00:43:28] Eric Stein: Yeah, good question. Um, I think the shortcut to building connection is vulnerability.

So if you get, if you spend your time when you're talking to people and, using your social, whatever, And just get vulnerable, get, get your struggles out there, get your doubts and your fears, share your successes, share your excitement about something. If you just like really open up, then people will, Holly's really good at that.

And like people just open up to her, and I think it's across the board, whether you're a man or a woman, like You just get vulnerable and share. And, you might like, we hired a company and it was 800 bucks a month. And they did five posts for us a week or something like that.

And they did a pretty good job, like in terms of messaging and getting the content out there. It looked like all of a sudden, like this thing was going, we had a lot more work going. People like, Oh, your social media is active right now. Yeah. But it was just cause we were investing in it, so you could do that and then in the middle of that just get, share who you really are. And then you're going to create a good base of people that follow you.

[00:44:34] Johnny Watson: And then the people who are engaging with you are feeling that authenticity and encouraging you. And the more engagement, the more sales drives more dopamine and it creates the positive flywheel of wanting to get out there more.

[00:44:47] Eric Stein: Yep. Yep. A hundred percent. That's why vulnerability. It's a, I think it's a shortcut for. I think all relationships.

[00:44:53] Johnny Watson: That's brilliant. And we actually have Cameron who's in the chat, who's just sharing a lot of wisdom here as well. Definitely like in alignment there. Trust with customers, vulnerability is a superpower that shows transparency.

People want to either help you or they're intrigued to see what you will do next.

[00:45:09] Eric Stein: Yeah,

[00:45:09] Johnny Watson: absolutely.

[00:45:10] Eric Stein: Yeah, 100%. 100%.

[00:45:12] Johnny Watson: I don't want to like abruptly pull us back to the copack situation because this has been a really amazing conversation around connection and how we build trust with our customers, ask for feedback and build the business in alignment with what people want and need.

What did you learn through this copacking situation for those who are really intrigued by this journey of becoming a nationwide shipper?

[00:45:35] Eric Stein: Yeah let's see, you gotta, I had a bunch of people that warned me about it, you can lose quality you lose control in a sense I was bringing on a co packer for our East Coast orders because I would really love to offer free shipping over there, and we were going to bring on a kitchen over there, and it was like 8, like 10 months actually of conversations, and R& D, coming and visiting the place, fly back home, come back out.

Okay, let's pull the trigger. All right. I'm going to cut you a check for half right now. And I go out there to to oversee the first round of production. And it was just like, there was some honest mistakes that happen. And then there was one like not so honest mistake where they tried to, something went wrong and they tried to hide it from me.

And I, I don't think they were, I don't think they're bad people. I was just like, I had to literally just stop and then pull the plug on it. Because in that, like in that seat with our business, like there has to be a thousand percent trust, otherwise I'm not going to sleep at night, because of how high our standard standards are, like, if it's in, if it's in the hands of somebody that I don't think is going to act like me, then I have to, I couldn't do it.

So what I've learned is your homework, trust your gut. If you're getting like gut feelings that are off, really acknowledge that keep your eyes in it, be a part of it. And, uh, like any other struggle, it's just have faith. It's going to come out as it should.

Enjoy the ride while you can.

[00:47:01] Johnny Watson: Yeah. Enjoy the ride. And you're leaving room for another co packing partnership to come in or yeah. Oh yeah. Validate and explore.

[00:47:09] Eric Stein: Yeah. I already actually had another one. I was talking to somebody else. They're actually it's hilarious how it all netted out.

I've heard so many times that your biggest. Disasters are also like just your biggest like opportunities, and this whole thing was such a disaster. I don't know how many thousands of dollars, all this flight time and like all this energy that was lost, tears were coming when it was went through.

It was tough. But also this other facility has now offered us like this huge space. And basically they're going to run our product out of it only they're not even having another company in there yet because it was a new facility or not new, but like they just bought it. And he's this'll be all for you.

There's a freezer that you could drive a forklift in and it's in Vegas instead of like way over in Cleveland. So it's like way easier for me to get there. And the guy's really cool. And like the whole thing just ended up being a net positive, but in the moment, it was really, Like a tough situation, but I had to remind myself, right?

This is always, as it should always, as it should. Right. And yeah, so we're still moving forward on it. It's, we're hoping to be live on that in the beginning of the new year.

[00:48:19] Johnny Watson: Incredible. So there's people out there who are looking to grow their own business by partnering with people who have figured out the brand in a way you can have that nationwide presence building on top of other entrepreneurs, as long as the trust is there, there's multiple ways to make this happen.

It sounds like,

[00:48:36] Eric Stein: yeah, oh no, there's always a way. And there's there's co packers for meal prep, right? Like you could have a co packer do your meals for you. If you got if you got a great brand and you got some traction, like you can find somebody to make the meals for you for sure.

And like I could even help in connecting you with that, but it's important to know what you're doing, and get in the, get yourself on the right path for yourself. And then, yeah, then you get to just. Get out of your own way,

[00:49:02] Johnny Watson: incredible. I have two last questions.

Yeah. They're brief. The first is any other anything else you want to share with our audience of meal prep owners around what you think they could be doing in the year 2025 to push and grow their business?

[00:49:20] Eric Stein: Yeah. I'm just, I'm a big stickler for quality. And I try to teach my kids is if it grew or walked outside, then it's food, if it didn't grow or walk outside, then, there's some questioning to do there.

So I, I'm, I think the businesses that just really own that and create tasty meals that follow that are going to be the ones that, that succeed. And as people start to retract and watch their spending more, like they're gonna be really conscious about where they spend and that's one of those things that I think they'll spend on.

[00:49:52] Johnny Watson: Brilliant. Thank you Eric. There is a tradition on a podcast that I listen to called Diary of a CEO and love, where the prior podcast guest asks the next podcast guest a question. That will be asked there, and the themes can be around business, life, spirituality, anything that you can imagine a fellow entrepreneur is going through.

Just to put you on the spot, do you have a question that we could ask our next podcast guest?

[00:50:25] Eric Stein: Yeah. Do you believe in yourself?

I think that's it. Yeah. Did you have one for me? Did the previous no, this is, you're starting that right now.

[00:50:34] Johnny Watson: Yeah. Since this is the first podcast in the Facebook live, we do not have one, but maybe I could ask you the same question. Do you believe in yourself, Eric?

[00:50:43] Eric Stein: Oh yeah. I didn't always, but I definitely do now.

Definitely do now.

[00:50:49] Johnny Watson: Incredible. Thank you so much again for your time. It's been a really amazing conversation for me. I'm really excited to gift my wife's book. Best friend from throughout her life. She is set to give birth anytime in the next 10 days. So I'm really excited to gift her a box and get some feedback.

I'll be sure to pass it on.

[00:51:12] Eric Stein: Definitely do it. Do it now. It's best to have the food like in the freezer before baby comes. Cause then that's the hardest time the first few days after that's when you really want some good food around. So unless she has somebody there to cook for her, then that's the best.

Obviously.

[00:51:28] Johnny Watson: Now, this is amazing. It was all meant to be that we would talk right now and I could get her a box in time. So

thank

[00:51:34] Johnny Watson: you so much for your time. Hopefully we can do a part three at some time in the future. I'm sure things will continue to grow and evolve.

[00:51:40] Eric Stein: Yeah, I'll bring up to how about when we get up to frozen for like co packing to frozen fulfillment and I'll share what that whole journey was like.

And, yeah, any, anything that, if we start dabbling in meal prep too, then I can, help there.

[00:51:54] Johnny Watson: Brilliant. Thank you so much, Eric. And for those who are still listening in the comments section, I saw there was one came in there Rhonda. Please reach out to me if you'd like an introduction to Eric and I can make that happen.

Eric, we need to get you into the community at some point. Yeah,

[00:52:08] Eric Stein: I'm always happy to help other like food business owners. Food is so important and I'm a big I'm a big advocate. Yeah,

[00:52:15] Johnny Watson: incredible. Thank you. And for everyone listening live or the replay. There's obviously been some people here already who have given us a lot of love and a like or a heart on the video.

It goes a long way in helping us get the content through the algorithm to owners. And it's a busy week, of course, with Thanksgiving. So we'd love for as many people to hear these words of wisdom from Eric as we possibly can. But yeah, I hope everyone has an incredible Thanksgiving. For those who are self embracing and Eric, best of luck in the future.

Look forward to part three.

[00:52:48] Eric Stein: Yeah, looking forward to it. Thanks, Johnny.

[00:52:50] Johnny Watson: Thanks. Bye.