Latest / The 403 Podcast / They Started With $0...Now They’re Building the Future of Nutrition | Sam Hale

Transcript

They Started With $0...Now They’re Building the Future of Nutrition | Sam Hale · The 403 Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_01: I'm Carissa Savage, a Calgary realtor passionate about sharing the stories of people who are building Calgary and our surrounding areas.
0:07
SPEAKER_01: From entrepreneurs and business owners to the city shapers changing our community for the better.
0:13
SPEAKER_01: If you're buying, selling, investing, or just want to talk about Calgary, I'd love to hear from you.
0:19
SPEAKER_01: All my contact information is in the show notes.
0:22
SPEAKER_01: Talk soon.
0:23
SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to the 403 Podcast.
0:25
SPEAKER_01: Today I'm sitting down with Sam Hale, co-founder of NutriMeals and Nourished.
0:30
SPEAKER_01: And I think what's really interesting about Sam's story is how far the business has evolved from where it started.
0:36
SPEAKER_01: About eight years ago, Sam and his co-founder, Grace, were university students starting a meal prep company and doing pretty much everything themselves cooking, packaging, cleaning, delivering meals, all of it.
0:50
SPEAKER_01: Today, that journey has grown into nourished, where they're working at the intersection of nutrition, technology, and healthcare.
0:57
SPEAKER_01: But what I'm really interested in today is everything that happened in between.
1:02
SPEAKER_01: How do you go from making meals yourself to building something inside the healthcare system?
1:06
SPEAKER_01: What goes wrong along the way?
1:08
SPEAKER_01: And how does your job as a founder change when the business becomes something much bigger than what you originally imagined?
1:15
SPEAKER_01: Sam, welcome to the 403 podcast.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
1:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, of course.
1:19
SPEAKER_01: No, I'm so excited to have this conversation with you.
1:22
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, before I hit record, we were talking about how we've crossed paths before and how I've been a customer.
1:28
SPEAKER_01: And I am so excited for this conversation.
1:30
SPEAKER_01: I really feel like your business has evolved.
1:32
SPEAKER_01: You've evolved as the founder.
1:34
SPEAKER_01: So we're just going to jump right into it.
1:36
SPEAKER_01: I just want to talk about the beginning.
1:39
SPEAKER_01: Take me back eight years ago.
1:40
SPEAKER_01: How did you and Grace go from university students to deciding you were going to start a meal prep company?
1:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, to be fair, like we both kind of look at each other when that question is asked because I blame her and she blames me.
1:51
SPEAKER_00: Um, but what kind of uh happened was when I was actually in university, I did an exchange to Japan for a semester.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: And while I was gone, Grace was super into uh health and wellness and specifically preparing for a bodybuilding competition.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: Although she wasn't competing, she was still doing all the prep.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: And then, of course, you know, one thing led to another, and she was then doing a lot of meal prep for herself.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: And then once I came back, um it was funny, like she always blames this one guy called Cooper.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: I don't remember this conversation, but apparently, like we were in the gym, we were just like explaining like our meal prep routines and what we're doing for working out and all this fun stuff, which we don't do so much anymore, unfortunately.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, one thing led to another, and then that person asked if Grace could do the meal prep for him.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: And we figured, well, maybe there's a real demand here where, you know, if Cooper wants it, maybe um other people want it as well.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: And so that was kind of our first attempt at doing an e-commerce website.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: And then from there we would advertise to friends and family, and it kind of snowballed into, you know, what you know today as neutral meals.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: So um really, I think it was her fault.
2:50
SPEAKER_00: She thinks it was my fault, but it really came from a passion of health and wellness uh and really conscious of what we're putting into our body.
2:56
SPEAKER_01: Did either of you actually know what you were doing?
2:59
SPEAKER_00: No, not at all.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: So when we were in university, uh Grace was an art student, turned finance student.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: I was a marketing student, turned finance student.
3:05
SPEAKER_00: So we were both like kind of number people.
3:07
SPEAKER_00: And you know, you might laugh now because typically, if you're a numbers person, you're not going to get into a low margin uh food company business.
3:13
SPEAKER_00: So that you know, we kind of joke about that as well.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah, we didn't know anything and we were really building everything from the ground up from you know hosting our own website to uploading our own products, doing all of our own product photography, making the meals kind of as you alluded to.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: We were even delivering the meals at the very beginning.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: Like we had no idea.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: We were kind of just, you know, drinking from the fire hose and learning as we were going.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: But again, um, once you start learning from your mistakes, you start making better decisions.
3:37
SPEAKER_00: So we we were soon, you know, making doing little different things in our businesses.
3:42
SPEAKER_01: So was Cooper kind of your proof of concept, or was there a big vision behind it when you started it?
3:48
SPEAKER_01: Like a bunch of sticky notes and an apartment, kind of that little bit of building a business?
3:53
SPEAKER_01: Or were you just building the e-commerce site and going, hey, we have this product, we have this idea, let's see if somebody will pay for it.
4:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, a little bit of both.
4:01
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we knew there was a proof of concept when like people were being to pay for our services, albeit it was way too cheap at the time.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: They're we're probably making zero dollars.
4:09
SPEAKER_00: So that's you know, that's the way it goes.
4:10
SPEAKER_00: But um we had proof of concept.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: We had customers before we launched, which is probably a good thing to have, although not many.
4:17
SPEAKER_00: And then we were kind of again just figuring out as we went and you know, navigating different product problems as we were going.
4:23
SPEAKER_00: Um, you don't truly know what you know until you don't know, and that's kind of where we were learning from the fire hose.
4:30
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I think from our point of view, it was just, you know, one thing led to another, and we were just seeing how we kind of get that traction.
4:37
SPEAKER_00: Um, of course, we started experimenting with Facebook ads, social media organic influencers, and all these things that are still very important today, but have obviously evolved into their own industries.
4:47
SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, like it was learning everything the hard way, making a lot of mistakes, and just feeling like a cat and always, you know, falling over, landing on our feet somehow, and just progressing forward.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: I love hearing about this stage of any business because once something has becomes established, we tend to clean up the origin story a little bit.
5:05
SPEAKER_01: But I've seen you talk about those early neutrumale days, and it sounds like there was absolutely nothing glamorous about it.
5:11
SPEAKER_01: Was this your full-time thing, or were you guys full-time university and this is part-time, like doing it from the hours of you know, 5 p.m.
5:19
SPEAKER_01: to midnight?
5:19
SPEAKER_01: How did you decide to make it your full-time thing?
5:22
SPEAKER_01: Maybe walk us through that journey.
5:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it was not it was never our full-time team thing to start.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: We were both full-time students um in the University of Lethbridge.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I happened to be in the Calgary branch, I guess you would call it, or the faculty, and then Grace was still down in Lethbridge.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: And then when we both moved back here, we ended up graduating in 2018.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: So we did a year of being a student full-time and doing this basically on evenings and weekends.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: And then once we graduated in 2018, Grace stayed on to do it full-time.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: And I did two years of corporate work.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: So I was in, I was a financial analyst at a large company here in Calgary called Nutrion, which was before that agreement.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: And I was kind of there doing their big uh merger with Pod Ash Corp.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: And then after we hit a certain revenue number, um I decided that, you know, it's not gonna grow anymore unless I put more of my time and effort into it.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: And so in the end, I decided to hand in my resignation.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: And then in 2020, which, you know, kind of funny, maybe the worst timing possible or maybe best timing possible, I ended up joining Grace full-time.
6:18
SPEAKER_00: So it was, yeah, it was definitely, you know, two, three years of part-time for me, and then, you know, one year part-time and two full-time, uh two years for Grace.
6:26
SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
6:27
SPEAKER_01: Did you just start with one neutra meal meal?
6:31
SPEAKER_01: Or did you start with 40 and condense the meals?
6:36
SPEAKER_01: How did you decide what to put in your product and how to deliver it to the end consumer?
6:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, the interesting thing, like we still formulate our meals to today the same way on the nutrient side.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: So, of course, with nourished, we also bring on multiple meal vendors now in our marketplace.
6:50
SPEAKER_00: But in Calgary specifically, we kind of, you know, we're a little selfish.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: We kind of own the market in nourished in nutrient meals itself.
6:57
SPEAKER_00: And so the meals are actually still constructed the same way.
6:59
SPEAKER_00: So we've always wanted to put five ounces of protein, half a cup of carbs, and a full cup of vegetables in some kind of creation.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: And at the very beginning, we probably had too many SKUs.
7:08
SPEAKER_00: Like we were trying to please too many people and we just couldn't do it, honestly.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: Um, when you try and please everybody, you end up pleasing nobody.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: And it was just too much from like a production standpoint because like we were always making to order.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: And you know, some of our large partners, they have you know frozen inventories, which they pull from.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: We don't do that.
7:23
SPEAKER_00: Even now we have our cutoff dates where we need to know the orders by.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: Our team makes it fresh to order and it's delivered the same day or next day, um, which is a really big part of the product freshness that we like to, you know, strive by.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: From the very beginning, like it was a lot of trial and error.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: Like, we obviously had the internet, luckily, you know, we were definitely pulling inspiration from online.
7:41
SPEAKER_00: But one thing that we took for granted was that Grace's mom is actually a Red Seal chef.
7:45
SPEAKER_00: And uh, she ended up helping us um really jazz up our meals so they can still be nutritious and delicious all at the same time.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: So um, we have a lot to owe to a lot of people that have helped us kind of get to where we are today as well.
7:57
SPEAKER_01: Having that family support and friend support is literally the best way to build a business.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: Literally, you know, if your friends won't support you, the strangers aren't going to support you in most scenarios, right?
8:08
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's the opposite, which you know is is neither here nor there.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, it's you're definitely right.
8:12
SPEAKER_00: If you have um a strong safety net or like a support system, it it helps a lot and it kind of keeps that motivation going as well because you're not doing it alone, which is really nice.
8:21
SPEAKER_01: 100%.
8:22
SPEAKER_01: Because I don't think people understand that entrepreneurship can be very isolating, especially when you're in the startup phase.
8:28
SPEAKER_01: There's no manual, right?
8:30
SPEAKER_01: You don't know if you're going the right way or if you are, you know, heading towards combustion, right?
8:37
SPEAKER_01: So having that family support.
8:38
SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
8:39
SPEAKER_01: You had that in that early days.
8:41
SPEAKER_01: What's interesting is that NutriMeals didn't just become a business.
8:45
SPEAKER_01: It also gave you years of being really close to the customer.
8:48
SPEAKER_01: You're seeing what people order, what they struggle with, what they say they want versus what they actually do.
8:53
SPEAKER_01: And eventually it seems like you started exposing a much bigger problem.
8:57
SPEAKER_01: What did running NutriMeals teach you about people's relationship with food and nutrition that you couldn't have known when you started?
9:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, that's a great question.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: I mean, um, I think you kind of nailed it, you know, what people say they want and what they actually want are two different things.
9:12
SPEAKER_00: And so we had to navigate that quite a bit.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: And so one of the things that we did early on is that we were like a la carte, so people selected their own meals.
9:18
SPEAKER_00: Um, but then we started personalizing the experience.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: And so that's kind of where nurse drive from is that um in the neutral meal side, we started implementing a food subscription, but we wanted to make it so um that it was so hands-off that people didn't have to think about what they were doing anymore.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: And so what we did is you kind of created like a recommendation system.
9:35
SPEAKER_00: At the very beginning, it was a person choosing the meals for them based on their profile.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: And so what that looked like is that in our Shopify store, we'd have an extension or an app that would allow us to have an extended profile.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: And then we would see what people like to consume, what they didn't like to consume any allergies.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: And so what we would do is actually have our admin, Carrie, who's also my mother, um, she would actually pick the meals based on that person's profile to ensure that they were liking what they were um eating.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: And then what we found was when we did that, uh, one, we made their life really easy, and two, they didn't have to think about what they were ordering anymore.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: And so we saw the customer attention really skyrocket.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: So I think when we first started, and again, this was early days, we were seeing like eight or nine orders on average from our customers, which is probably just below like industry average.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: But then when we started implementing this personalization aspect, we were like doubling it.
10:20
SPEAKER_00: So now we're at 18 to 20 uh orders on average per client.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: So when we're considering the cost per acquisition and lifetime value of the client, um, it starts to make sense, right?
10:28
SPEAKER_00: And so once it got a little bit out of hand, it was too much for um that process to be manual.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of when it went into um automating some of those tasks and making it um even more personalized and using AI as a tool that we've been using for the last five, six years now, which is coming to mainstream now, but uh we've been using it for a very long time.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely just you know evolving and understanding the customer's needs.
10:53
SPEAKER_00: And now we've kind of uh morphed into more of that healthcare play, like you mentioned.
10:56
SPEAKER_00: And now we're even taking people's uh chronic conditions into consideration when making those recommendations, and that's why we have that intersection of healthcare.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: Whereas before, when we had our of our customers, they would kind of give us their overall health and wellness goal and their eating preferences, and but they would select the number of meals they should consume, et cetera, et cetera.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: Whereas now we kind of even um based on their macro, micronutrient requirements and caloric needs, um, we would make the recommendation on how many meals they should be consuming a day.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: So literally it's like completely automated.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: So being that close to the customer really helped us because one, we would understand what they would like and what they didn't like.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: And then if we make a recommendation, the user had a chance to make a change and we would learn, you know, from that change what they're more likely to order the following week.
11:39
SPEAKER_00: So that really helped us.
11:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it's interesting you say that because I remember you actually going on the phone with me and talking about kind of my macro goals, you know, nutritional wants.
11:51
SPEAKER_01: Um, and I can imagine that would be pretty time consuming now with the amount of people you have as clients, right?
11:58
SPEAKER_01: So having to streamline that workflow.
12:00
SPEAKER_01: Um, it brings me to my next thing about nourished.
12:03
SPEAKER_01: Was Nourished born because Nutrumeals was working or because NutrumEals started showing you the limitations of what a meal company alone could solve?
12:12
SPEAKER_00: A little bit of both.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, column A, column B.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: Um, what I found is that, you know, typically meal companies had a really hard time with margin customer attention.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, we've always had the philosophy where, you know, it's really expensive and really hard to acquire a customer, but to retain them, we actually did a really good job.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of alludes, you know, to the next point here is that we saw there was opportunity where when we had a certain amount of customers, it was too much to do all those things that we you know mentioned to you and your viewers manually.
12:40
SPEAKER_00: And that's why we had to automate a lot of that, a lot of those systems.
12:43
SPEAKER_00: But as we started like, you know, automating those systems, we realized, you know, we're taking quite a lot of personal health information and we have to treat that as such.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: And so now if we understand someone's health profile and we also understand, you know, what they like to consume, we want to make sure that that those don't cross over.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, with nourish being the evolution, um, some of the things that we saw from like neutral meals being held back was like provincial borders and now state borders for us, is that it's really difficult to send packages like across the country, right?
13:14
SPEAKER_00: Especially like if you look at HelloFresh and other ones, they have you know multiple fulfillment centers, they have CFIA certifications, USDA in the US, things like that.
13:21
SPEAKER_00: Whereas like a little meal prep company here in Calgary is not going to have that because it's just so intense, right?
13:28
SPEAKER_00: And so that's when we started seeing the limitations that like, you know, neutral meals would always be like a small business.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, that's not a bad thing.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's a lot of successful small businesses, um, but that's just not where our aspirations uh were.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: And so if you have a meal company that's only, you know, restricted to Calgary and the surrounding area, yes, we do ship to like red deer and Edmonton and places like that.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: But realistically, the population size of Alberta is relatively small.
13:52
SPEAKER_00: And we didn't want to necessarily be confined by those provincial borders.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: And that's when we were like, okay, well, now um, why don't we think about doing this as a marketplace?
14:00
SPEAKER_00: Kind of similar to like a healthy version of skip the dishes, right?
14:03
SPEAKER_00: Where it's not just you're ordering one meal on demand, but now you're getting your weekly worth, you know, meal prep from multiple different vendors.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, going back to your point about making it really difficult, when we were having those conversations with you about your macro and micro um needs, you know, your health and wellness goals, we knew like the nutritionals menu really, really well.
14:21
SPEAKER_00: And so we can make those recommendations because we know all the nutrition facts off by heart, um, you know, all those kind of things that you do at a small business scale.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: But now we have, you know, four or five US vendors on our platform too.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: It's like we're never gonna know every menu inside and out.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: So that's how we had to implement the systems that would automate those for us.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: So now when we work with a meal partner or a meal vendor or a meal prep company, whatever you want to call them in the US, we upload all of their data into our system.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: And so we have all their nutrition uh fact paneling.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: And so when we do make a macro and micro recommendation, um our system pulls from the exact nutrition label that's going to be on that meal.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: It's USDA approved.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: And so we know exactly the you know, protein, carb, fat, calorie content of that meal.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: And now the system automates it, right?
15:04
SPEAKER_00: So that would be a massive uh limitation for a human to keep in the loop.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: But of course, there's definitely a fine line between automating everything and having that personalized, you know, human feel as well.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: So we're kind of now bringing dietitians to optimize that part too.
15:19
SPEAKER_01: But just out of mere curiosity, when you guys were talking about nourish and how to scale and realizing that NutriMeals, you know, is fantastic here in Alberta, um, but there are limitations and wanting to become a medium to large company and obviously sell for millions in the future, right?
15:38
SPEAKER_01: Uh if that's a plan.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: But was there that aha moment with Nourished, or did you or Grace come up with the idea?
15:48
SPEAKER_01: Did it come up in conversation?
15:49
SPEAKER_01: Talk to us about how it was created.
15:52
SPEAKER_00: Well, it actually we started it as um, we kind of had like a version 0.5 of this.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: And so we were looking to expand neutral meals into new markets.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: And so we actually explored having a co-packer make meals for us in Vancouver.
16:05
SPEAKER_00: And so what in that scenario, they were still branded neutral meals, but they were actually um produced and they were the recipes of a different company.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: And in the end, like we didn't do a great job of uh launching or scaling that.
16:16
SPEAKER_00: So like it didn't really go our way in, you know, kind of like a you know, a fail-forward uh event.
16:21
SPEAKER_00: Um, but what we noticed is that it was really hard to scale into a new market.
16:24
SPEAKER_00: And it was really, you know, for us, like we weren't in love with the SKU items and like the nutrition labels of those products.
16:31
SPEAKER_00: So we actually didn't want to be tied to that.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: And so when we thought about, you know, trying this again, it was to actually keep the branding of our meal partners as part of the marketplace.
16:40
SPEAKER_00: So then that way the customer knows who they're ordering from.
16:43
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, from a business standpoint, the liabilities with that food vendor, we're the marketplace that now um, you know, fulfills the actual ordering, but you know, we're not the ones sending the product or making the product.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: And so there's a partnership agreement between us that acknowledges that.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then when we were kind of furthering this point, is that we know, and and I I know I'm gonna call you out on this, but of course, we know that our users are all using our competitors anyway.
17:07
SPEAKER_00: So whether you're using Nutramil or, you know, anyone else in our local area, it doesn't matter.
17:11
SPEAKER_00: If they're on our platform, whether they jump between vendors, it wouldn't matter if it's um between us or somebody else.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: It's still gonna take the order through nourished, we're gonna facilitate the order, and the user doesn't have to leave that experience.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: And so we wanted to just ensure that when we scaled it um the next time, we did it that way.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: So then uh there's a bit more transparency for the user as well.
17:31
SPEAKER_00: And then it also gives a bunch more variety, right?
17:33
SPEAKER_00: So now we have vendors, you know, in uh Tennessee, uh Wisconsin, uh Texas, Florida, and you know, like some of them do ship nationally, but some people want to try different things, and so now they can choose back and forth between the vendors.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: And so that was kind of one thing that uh we kind of kept in mind as we were building Nourished.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: Um, where it's kind of gotten to today as like a digital health company, we didn't understand the regulatory behind it.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: So we've been learning a lot of that as we go, but we always did want to include um, you know, health practitioners just because what we found as a business is that if we had a meal plan that was like a 12 or 16 week duration, it's very good from a revenue standpoint because now you have someone, you know, paying up front for 12 weeks of food.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it covers your cost per acquisition and then some, and then now they get to work with a health practitioner, like a dietitian, kind of keep them on track.
18:21
SPEAKER_00: And so you see the results better that way as well.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it wasn't all mapped out perfectly.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: Like we have a lot of different pathways that we've taken through the years, but this was kind of the end goal, but it was never truly defined that well.
18:34
SPEAKER_01: Okay, quick break.
18:36
SPEAKER_01: Because after spending this much time talking about neutral meals, obviously we have to talk about the food.
18:41
SPEAKER_01: If you're anything like me, a busy working mom, some weeks I have great intentions of meal prepping.
18:48
SPEAKER_01: And then suddenly it's Wednesday, there's nothing in the fridge, and we're figuring out dinner at 5 30.
18:54
SPEAKER_01: That's where Neutromeals comes in.
18:56
SPEAKER_01: They make fresh, ready-to-eat meals that you can literally heat up and eat.
19:01
SPEAKER_01: No grocery shopping, no meal prep, no pile of dishes, no argument on whose turn it is to cook that night, which honestly might be the best part.
19:11
SPEAKER_01: And if you want to try it, 403 podcast listeners get 10% off neutral meals through my referral link.
19:18
SPEAKER_01: We'll put the link in the show notes so you don't have to remember anything while you're listening.
19:22
SPEAKER_01: All right, back to Sam.
19:23
SPEAKER_01: You talked about failing forward a little bit.
19:26
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a huge phrase we hear a lot as entrepreneurs.
19:32
SPEAKER_01: You know, if you don't take the risks, you don't know what could happen.
19:35
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you take risks and they don't work out.
19:38
SPEAKER_01: So talk to me a little bit about the vending machines.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:42
SPEAKER_00: So again, you know, we're happy to touch on this part as to some land here is that as a meal prep company, we always want to sell as many meals as possible in one order, right?
19:51
SPEAKER_00: So the vending machines were actually going to be rolled out across the downtown Calgary area just as a marketing strategy.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: And it wouldn't really make any money, but it would just bring the brand to awareness.
20:00
SPEAKER_00: And so what our goal was was that someone would uh purchase one meal in the vending machine, um, consider that our cost for acquisition, like our product, and then order the meal prep and or the multiple meals to their home.
20:11
SPEAKER_00: Um, but of course, like when we launched that, it was February of 2020, and you know, two, not even two months later, the whole world kind of changed and uh the office buildings were now vacant, right?
20:21
SPEAKER_00: And so absolutely, you know, it was uh coulda, shoulda, woulda, you know, kind of thing.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: Like it could, it could work, but now looking back at it, I wouldn't do it again just based on the unit economics.
20:32
SPEAKER_00: Again, it wasn't for like an entire business, it was an acquisition strategy.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, it's it's it's an expensive capital expenditure.
20:39
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's expensive to keep them maintained and running.
20:42
SPEAKER_00: We had a software uh that we developed, which has probably led us to the software developing now, where we had a mobile app where um you could do the inventory of the machine live, you could uh reserve the meals and then pick them up because they were already paid for through the app.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: Um, so it was kind of like a pickup option for our users as well.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: So it was really it was really cool concept and it was really good in theory, but unfortunately, there's some things that business that you can control, and timing is probably 90% of you know, um, the success in businesses these days.
21:08
SPEAKER_00: So that wasn't a good timing spot for us.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, we just we still have them, honestly.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: They're large paperweights.
21:13
SPEAKER_00: Two of them are broken in different ways.
21:15
SPEAKER_00: So if we combine one of them together, we have one working one.
21:17
SPEAKER_00: Um, but we don't use them for anything.
21:19
SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, it's kind of a good reminder to see, you know, not all your ideas are gonna work out, and that's just okay.
21:26
SPEAKER_01: I love stories like this because they're probably more useful to somebody building a business than hearing about another thing that worked.
21:32
SPEAKER_01: It's good to hear, you know, like we tried, it didn't work, it became part of our success story and becomes part of the book we're gonna write later in life.
21:41
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
21:41
SPEAKER_01: You have enough experience now to know what a good idea is and a good business decision are not necessarily the same thing.
21:47
SPEAKER_01: Are you better now at recognizing bad ideas?
21:50
SPEAKER_01: Or do you think entrepreneurship requires you to keep making bets that could completely Yeah, I think I'm both I'm I'm a bit ambitious still to this day.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: Like I haven't learned.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: my lessons completely to be honest.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: But that being said, I do analyze things just a little bit further now.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: So I have a bit more self-control when it comes to you know materializing ideas into reality.
22:12
SPEAKER_00: It's not for the faint of heart being an entrepreneur.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: So if you know you need a little bit of optimism when other people don't.
22:18
SPEAKER_00: So it's definitely a double-edged sword.
22:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
22:22
SPEAKER_01: Now did you guys start with heaps loads of capital or did you bootstrap it, maybe talk to um somebody who has an idea right now and really wants to go with it.
22:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
22:33
SPEAKER_01: How do they start?
22:35
SPEAKER_00: So when it came to neutral meals, we actually started with zero dollars literally our orders, because we already always took our payment in advance, our orders basically paid um for the cost of goods for the orders going out.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: Let's say we took an order in um Monday to Friday.
22:49
SPEAKER_00: We we don't make at the time at the very beginning we didn't make the meals till Sunday and deliver them that same day.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: And so we would get all the money first and then we would buy the ingredients and do all that fun stuff.
22:59
SPEAKER_00: And so we actually started with like zero dollars.
23:01
SPEAKER_00: Then we started putting a little bit more of our own capital in and buying um you know the proper containers and stickers and labels and you know all this fun stuff that kind of goes with it.
23:09
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, it was definitely bootstrapped from the ground up.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: We didn't raise any capital until we had the idea for nourished and that was now you know three and a bit years ago.
23:19
SPEAKER_00: And we had like a very minor friends and family round but we basically use all the metrics and neutrinos as the proof point saying like we've proved that we can make it work in like Calgary Canada, which is like a very niche small market.
23:32
SPEAKER_00: Imagine now scaling this up to like a national US uh scale and we basically raised uh$270,000 um of capital through friends and family to build the MVP proof of concept which we um have obviously outgrown now and then recently we raised a little bit more capital to extend that.
23:51
SPEAKER_00: Now we're actually just waiting um for some anchor partnerships to extend our current offerings on nourished and then expedite the commercialization.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: We're thinking about raising some more capital to do that.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: But in total we've only raised like 5000 US from our very you know inception of the idea of nourished and our largest competitors right now in the space have raised like$230 million.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: So for us like we've raised substantially less and the way we're looking at it is that we own the entire tech stack we've built it in-house we've also had some non-dilutive support from you know the Canadian entities as well like IRAP, CFIN and things like that that did help us get off the ground at the very very beginning.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: And so yeah if we kept neutral meal status quo, like that business still sustains itself that's no problem.
24:35
SPEAKER_00: We were using the free cash flow from neutramules to to grow nourished.
24:39
SPEAKER_00: It's all owned by the same company.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: So the only cash burn that we had was really from um technical resources um that we never knew we needed before because we went from being a you know a meal prep company that would leverage technology um and now we're actually the ones developing the technology.
24:55
SPEAKER_00: So uh us you know owning that IP is very important and that goes on our balance sheet.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: So all the money that we've used to develop becomes now a capital asset, right?
25:03
SPEAKER_00: So for us it's not the money is not being burned and not going anywhere.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: We have stuff to show for it, which is really nice too.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: But I mean there's no right or wrong way to do it.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: If I was technical myself maybe I would have built the MVP without having uh to hire a software developer, right?
25:18
SPEAKER_00: But just because um I'm I didn't have that background I figured it would be faster to go to market with an expert than it would be for me to learn it from the ground up and then implement it later on and miss the window of opportunity.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: And so we chose to raise capital to kind of um get to that uh part of our journey.
25:35
SPEAKER_01: That was really impressive though because raising money is no small feat and raising raising hundreds of thousands of dollars, I mean well done like you guys need to pat yourself on the back because that is very impressive especially sitting across and somebody that's watched your journey start to where you are today, right?
25:54
SPEAKER_01: So for somebody hearing, we touched a little bit about what nourished is but let's dive into it a little bit more beneath the surface here.
26:00
SPEAKER_01: For someone hearing about nourish for the first time, what is it today and who is it for?
26:05
SPEAKER_00: So Nourish as you see it today it's more of a health tech company where we actually integrate dietitians more so than the meal prep at this current moment.
26:14
SPEAKER_00: So how we've kind of evolved and this kind of goes back to those meal plans that we were talking about earlier understanding the macro and micro needs is that we realized that there was more than just weight loss journeys.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: We knew there was more than just weight gain journeys, you know, things like that.
26:26
SPEAKER_00: And so from our perspective we wanted to be able to help a larger group of individuals where they may be managing an autoimmune disease or a chronic condition like type of diabetes, renal conditions or things like that.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: And so when we were making our AI models, traditionally it was on like a weight loss goal because that's the best way to you know calculate the macro, micros and you know caloric intake needed for an individual.
26:48
SPEAKER_00: But then we kind of you know fell into this opportunity where in the US specifically they were now covering or they're providing coverage for medically tailored meals and for RD appointments.
27:00
SPEAKER_00: And so I'll kind of I know it's it's going to be a long segment but I'll kind of talk the differences between the Canadian healthcare system and the US healthcare system quickly.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah that'd be fantastic.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: In Canada um we're typically restricted from a paramedical expense and people don't typically use them for dietitians because it's the same bucket of money for chiropractor, physio, masseuse, and then dieticians and they typically get like you know the lower choice option I would say like people want their massages but they're not necessarily focusing on their diet.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: However in the US it's very different where nutrition has its own separate bucket and of course the insurance works differently there.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: But if you can provide preventative services there's actually no money taken from your insurance as a deductible or you know things like that.
27:39
SPEAKER_00: So I won't go into that detail.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: And so what we noticed is that there was actually an interesting market where we could provide more services for people wanting to have a more in-depth meal plan with the dietitian support.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: And we already did that here in Canada and by doing so we would see more orders because they were meeting with a dietitian, they were getting the support they needed and they were getting the meals they needed and so nourish itself is for the person looking to have the product and service in one place because typically when you're looking at you know having a dietitian on your care team they're working individually from your meal prep provider.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: They don't know the menus they're just giving you some you know broader generic recommendations.
28:18
SPEAKER_00: And so when we were building nourish we want it to be very personalized and very specific.
28:22
SPEAKER_00: And so now when a user makes a meal plan on our platform, if they're working with a dietitian the dietitian can see their meal plan, make lab recommendations sorry, make swaps and things like that.
28:32
SPEAKER_00: And so nourish as a whole is for actually someone managing a chronic condition that's wanting to use food as the medicine.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of like our main client right now.
28:41
SPEAKER_01: That's awesome because we don't uh exactly have a shortage of people apps and programs telling us what we should eat.
28:47
SPEAKER_01: The harder part seems to be actually doing it.
28:49
SPEAKER_01: So having it in one place is absolutely brilliant.
28:53
SPEAKER_01: Is that the ultimate gap you're trying to close between knowing what someone should do, making it realistic enough and then that they actually do it.
29:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah like our motto at uh neutrinos is actually we did these accelerators are like okay what's your one liner?
29:07
SPEAKER_00: And we were like where uh healthy eating and convenience coexist that was how it started.
29:11
SPEAKER_00: And then now it kind of evolved into the easiest way to eat healthy, right?
29:15
SPEAKER_00: Like you we literally have food vendors that make the food for you it arrives at your house.
29:19
SPEAKER_00: All you need to do is heat and eat it.
29:20
SPEAKER_00: We have RDs which know exactly what you're eating what you're ordering and how you're uh performing.
29:25
SPEAKER_00: And so they have the support along the way.
29:27
SPEAKER_00: And then we're actually right now also going to be implementing um nurse practitioners very soon where now we have the prescribing provider uh which could you know give you a GLP1 a statin an insulin whatever it might be from a chronic condition standpoint then you have your dietitian on your care team and you evidently get those meals as well.
29:44
SPEAKER_00: So then it's the full care loop for someone managing a diet related chronic condition.
29:48
SPEAKER_00: And so that's kind of our next step.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: We're not quite there yet but um that's what we're working towards at the moment and that gives us a bit more exposure into that healthcare system again.
29:56
SPEAKER_00: And that's how what our platform is very unique.
29:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah and I think the the big thing to mention there is technology sits right in the middle of that which is interesting because you're trying to use technology to make nutrition more personal while also saying that these situations where people need an actual human professional.
30:13
SPEAKER_01: Now let's explain the nurse for like I'm just a normal person who doesn't want to analyze 15 different numbers every time I eat sure exactly yeah yeah and so like we've been obviously talking about a lot about you know macro micronutrient requirements and caloric intake because that's how we started with new meals.
30:28
SPEAKER_00: But what we've kind of realized is that you know that's a lot of information for an individual to keep tracking and that's how we find like I'm sure a lot of people here have used food logging apps in the past.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: It's a lot of work right you have to understand what your intake is what you're consuming et cetera et cetera and so in our app, all you need to do is check off that you've consumed a meal and we know that now you've you've you've logged that meal you don't have to do all the hard work.
30:48
SPEAKER_00: But where the nourish score comes in is that when a user is managing a certain chronic condition or you know their goal is to do weight loss, we actually add a weighting feature to each micro or macronutrient.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: And so now when you make a meal plan, the goal is to get 10 out of 10 nourish score every day or as close to it.
31:09
SPEAKER_00: And so what we do is when we provide a macro micro and caloric range, we also add the weighting to the specific macro and micro nutrient.
31:19
SPEAKER_00: So let's just take an example here where let's say I'm on a body recomposition or I'm on a GLP1 support program where I typically have a suppressed appetite and I want to have lower calorie intake, but I still want to retain my lean body mass.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: So I want to increase my protein intake.
31:33
SPEAKER_00: So we'll obviously have a higher weighting on protein.
31:35
SPEAKER_00: And so now when a user makes a meal plan, they only have to worry about a single nourish score and it's unique to them, unique to their situation and their program.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: Now instead of worrying about the calories protein, carbs fats, sodium if you have a renal condition, they just worry about hey, am I like eight out of 10?
31:52
SPEAKER_00: That's good enough for me today.
31:53
SPEAKER_00: And so we've kind of built that proprietary score in-house and so that makes it really easy for our user to understand.
31:59
SPEAKER_00: And this was designed by our um nutrition team and now when our dietitians are onboard and trained, they understand how that score works and they can obviously promote that internally to their patients as well.
32:09
SPEAKER_01: It's really cool that you're focusing on different types of nutrition.
32:14
SPEAKER_01: You're not just focusing on weight loss.
32:15
SPEAKER_01: When we think about macros, micronutrients and hitting protein goals and we're trying to get jacked, I think what's really cool to reflect here is that you guys are actually looking at diabetes, looking at heart disease.
32:29
SPEAKER_01: Did you find that there was a gap in the market there with meal prep companies that you're trying to fill or did that just happen naturally?
32:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah no it definitely well one of our investors actually this is kind of what triggered it is that um he actually invested in I just like I don't want you to be another Jenny Craig or weight watchers.
32:46
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, that's good to know like we never were going to be but we know that that's on people's minds if they think about what nourish does versus what some of our competitors could be doing.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: And so we didn't want to only focus on weight although you know weight is a very big thing to watch because there's a ton of comorbidities that come along with it.
33:01
SPEAKER_00: We totally get that.
33:02
SPEAKER_00: And so of course um you know weight management is something that we really focus on but we do focus on those other conditions as you mentioned as well.
33:09
SPEAKER_00: And so for us like when we look at meal prep companies as a whole they typically don't focus on anything else except like providing convenient meals and they're they're they're considered healthy.
33:18
SPEAKER_00: But I mean healthy for me might not be healthy for you.
33:21
SPEAKER_00: It all comes down to the individual and what they're kind of working with.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: And so that was always too much work for a meal vendor to really focus on if they're all if their whole goal is to make revenue by scaling the number of meals they're making, they don't have time to focus on you know providing all that information to their clients.
33:37
SPEAKER_00: And we speak to a lot of them because we're onboarding a lot right now.
33:41
SPEAKER_00: And uh I sympathize with every single one of them because like I I know what they're doing.
33:46
SPEAKER_00: I've been in their shoes before I totally get it.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: And so when we say we can come along and basically take all that off their plate they're very thankful.
33:52
SPEAKER_00: And then us coming from a meal prep background the way our system's built is since I told you guys earlier that you know we're retaining all that nutrition fact information, well now we can also automate all the order fulfillment prep lists, you know, et cetera, et cetera, because we we know exactly how much of each ingredient is being ordered.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: And so we take a ton of other work off their plate in in addition to you know just providing that dietary support to their clients.
34:18
SPEAKER_00: And so what we find is like when we first initially brought on dietitians to support our clients, it wasn't for everybody, which is totally fine, but the people who used it really use it and the people who didn't want to use it just didn't use that functionality right.
34:31
SPEAKER_00: And so it's kind of the same thing here the gap is missing for the meal prep vendors but not every meal prep vendor is going to have a dietitian on staff.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: And so that's kind of what we were trying to do is like again bring that product and service all in one place and kind of bridge that gap.
34:44
SPEAKER_01: Where do you think technology and AI genuinely make nutrition better and where should the technology stop and the registered dietitian take over Yeah and so we kind of uh you know battle this all the time uh we've actually suppressed some of our features where you know you can have an AI chatbot, right?
34:59
SPEAKER_00: We use AI for recommendation purposes, um, but an AI chatbot could easily sift over the boundaries of providing healthcare information, which we don't want to do because one, they're not a licensed practitioner, the insurance isn't going to pay for that um advice whereas the insurance will pay for the advice from a registered practitioner like a dietitian.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: And then there's also no liability right so if uh well in a sense there's no real liability so if a dietitian is giving you a ton of uh nutritional advice um you can't consider that medical whereas if a dietitian is you know using the AI tools as a guideline or as a a starting point at least the dietitian still owns that advice and they're the ones liable for if anything goes wrong or you know X, Y, and Z.
35:39
SPEAKER_00: So I think there's a lot of ways that the practitioners can leverage AI um but again it can't fully replace the person uh for a many different reasons for now.
35:49
SPEAKER_00: But of course things have are advancing so fast that could change in months from now.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: So who truly knows but yeah I don't think the providers are going anywhere anytime soon but they're going to be leveraging AI uh technology to make their jobs a lot easier.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: So whether that's summarizing chart notes, understanding the user's health profile quickly just based on like a summary again we're using it right now for meal planning they can do that they can review that.
36:12
SPEAKER_00: So it's definitely being used a lot but whether it's good or bad like it's I'm not I'm not one to say but from what I've seen it's mostly been used for good.
36:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah as a tool not to replace right this is where I find your journey kind of hilarious when you zoom all the way out eight years ago you're actually making the meals.
36:30
SPEAKER_01: Now we're talking about AI dietitians insurance companies chronic health government and healthcare did you have any idea what you were signing up for when you decided to move into healthcare no not at all and of course like you know building a US healthcare company from Canada is very tricky.
36:47
SPEAKER_00: It's you know a lot of regulation a lot and it works a lot differently as well so I don't have any firsthand experience per se.
36:53
SPEAKER_00: And so I did not know that this we were going to go into I'm happy that it did.
36:58
SPEAKER_00: I I'm enjoying it a lot it's a lot of fun and learning a lot um there's a lot of opportunity but again like the US market is huge and there's a lot of opportunity there's also a lot of competition and there's a lot of capital that moves freely raising money when you're in the US versus Canada is a lot easier.
37:12
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of benefits um honestly and you have a 10 times bigger market right so for us exploring these new avenues we didn't really know what to expect I think you know when we founded the company we were what 23 22 like really really young.
37:27
SPEAKER_00: So um yeah I think the dominoes kind of fell in a direction that we weren't initially expecting but of course decisions over um the course of the business have pushed us in this direction.
37:39
SPEAKER_01: And that work has definitely led to some pretty significant milestones.
37:43
SPEAKER_01: One that just happened is becoming approved for the Texas Medicare provider.
37:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah Texas Medicaid yeah yeah Medica Medicaid there you go um what does it actually mean?
37:56
SPEAKER_00: So both for nourished and for people you're hoping to serve yeah so for the first time ever um going back to that paramedical uh where dietitians are treated separately so for the first time ever um through HB26 that's the bill that was just passed last uh about a year ago now I can't believe it's it's been a year already.
38:13
SPEAKER_00: But now for the first time ever, four million Medicaid members, which is the state based you know programs.
38:19
SPEAKER_00: Medicare is the national program, which so once you hit 65 or older, you're on Medicare.
38:24
SPEAKER_00: Everyone else is typically on private insurance, but you know some other people who are less fortunate are on Medicaid.
38:29
SPEAKER_00: And so that's what we're working with you know right now is being an in-network provider.
38:32
SPEAKER_00: And what that means is that all of our dietitians can be reimbursed for their consultations through the Medicaid programs, which is you know a big um market for us.
38:42
SPEAKER_00: Like if you think about Texas, the population is almost the exact same size as Canada.
38:46
SPEAKER_00: And so that's kind of our home base when we're down there.
38:49
SPEAKER_00: And in addition to that they've implemented um medically tailored meals specifically for the maternal populations.
38:56
SPEAKER_00: And so I believe it is for the first nine months of pregnancy and then the first six months postpartum meals are going to be covered for Medicaid members in that maternal health population.
39:09
SPEAKER_00: Then they're working on how that's distributed right now.
39:11
SPEAKER_00: So we're not currently working in that area directly but we have been approved as a provider and now we can start you know making the moves in those areas.
39:19
SPEAKER_00: So that's a bit different from what we've been currently doing which is through commercial insurance contracts and partnerships where these are employer sponsored programs.
39:29
SPEAKER_00: Like so imagine if you know I work for Nutramils, my company pays for my benefits through you know whoever and then my employer pays for that right so that's typically who we work with but now with the Medicaid piece it's just you know a government body where we can uh provide some of the similar services through which is uh new for us but that's typically how our competitors have been going to market is through those government contracts whereas we've done everything backwards of course and gone to the employer sponsored commercial plans first.
39:58
SPEAKER_01: And does Canada currently offer anything like that or is it just in the states predominantly Texas?
40:04
SPEAKER_00: There are some similar programs in Canada like for post-discharge.
40:08
SPEAKER_00: So for example in the US um there's a big thing around insurance providers they will not reimburse the full um they won't reimburse the provider with the full amount of the claim if the user's uh readmitted into a hospital and so they do post-discharge programs where the longer that the the patient stays out of the hospital the more likely they are going to be getting that entire claim back from the insurance company um and so they do something similar here as well in in Alberta I believe Meals on Meals has that contract.
40:38
SPEAKER_00: I don't know entirely what it looks like we haven't pursued it um but there are post-discharge programs here where once you leave a hospital you do get your meals covered.
40:47
SPEAKER_00: Again we don't do that here um it's not as big of a thing but you know if the opportunity approached us we would definitely be willing to help um in that space so if someone's listening to this you never know uh we'd definitely be interested in working together.
41:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah you definitely don't know who's ever going to listen and also being six months postpartum I could see a huge thank you I could see definitely a huge area of opportunity there.
41:13
SPEAKER_01: So just transitioning here into more about you do you ever have moments when you look at what fills your day and your day to day as an entrepreneur and go, man, how did this become my job?
41:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah yeah like we had a meeting recently and someone was like you know what you should do just for fun is get an Excel spreadsheet out and just mark down all the tasks you do in a single day.
41:37
SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of changed my um perspective on this a lot.
41:40
SPEAKER_00: Like my brain like it probably helps that I have ADHD because like I go from like topic to topic to department to department all the time.
41:46
SPEAKER_00: And so like the way our office is set up is that it's very open concept.
41:49
SPEAKER_00: So I'll be talking to the developers on the software side and the marketing team and then you know payroll and bookkeeping and then you know there's some production questions and this you know so I go back and forth.
42:00
SPEAKER_00: So no I never truly knew like what my days would uh consist of I think that you know there's probably benefits of being a bit more focused but like I've just never operated that way.
42:09
SPEAKER_00: But I mean yeah no I I I didn't know what I was setting up for at all.
42:14
SPEAKER_01: Because here's the other side of this when I tell your story in five minutes it sounds incredibly linear.
42:19
SPEAKER_01: You started neutral meals it grew you identified a bigger problem you launched nourished now you're expanding into healthcare and the US that's a beautiful story.
42:28
SPEAKER_01: I'm guessing it didn't feel nearly that clean when you were living it.
42:33
SPEAKER_01: Was there ever a chapter where the business looked successful from the outside but felt completely different from where you're sitting yeah I think it kind of always feels like that you know like it's uh the grass is always greener kind of thing.
42:46
SPEAKER_00: So a lot of times there's a lot of sacrifice you make too like as a founder.
42:50
SPEAKER_00: We could have easily taken the cushy higher paying sustainable jobs for the last decade um and you know we would have been well off and we would have been doing just fine I'm sure um assuming a few things but then you look at this and like there's a lot of risks that are bared on the the entrepreneur.
43:04
SPEAKER_00: So from us whether it's personally guaranteeing loans or having investor money that we have to make sure is growing or making sure that the products are being completed and dealing with customer problems and you know not getting any litigation or any problems.
43:15
SPEAKER_00: So like for us it's definitely um yeah just a a whirlwind and you know has never been a linear situation.
43:22
SPEAKER_00: Like at one time and I'll give you an example for neutral so when uh just before we started nourished we were in a commissary kitchen so we were in a shared working area where we had free range of it but it was shared between three groups and the landlord was like hey our business growing we have to close down the kitchen and we're gonna knock it down and there's gonna be no more kitchen here.
43:42
SPEAKER_00: Which is totally fine.
43:43
SPEAKER_00: And so at the time it was either okay do we bite the bullet get our own uh kitchen and be the head lease and build something uh or do we just shut down neutral like we had our run and we do something else because we're we're young and we can figure it out.
43:56
SPEAKER_00: And in the end we decided to do the the first one and then we took A lot more responsibility, debt financing, building out of a whole kitchen project.
44:04
SPEAKER_00: And at the time, it's like, well, maybe Neutrophiles wouldn't have existed now and nourish wouldn't have, you know, been the evolution of that if we didn't make those decisions.
44:11
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it's always interesting to see, like just out of a blink of an eye, something could change at any point.
44:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
44:17
SPEAKER_01: And you know what?
44:18
SPEAKER_01: Signing your first lease to a Birken Motor is very, it's intimidating.
44:24
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot to learn there.
44:25
SPEAKER_01: Like you said, there's no guarantee, right?
44:28
SPEAKER_01: You're just kind of betting on yourself.
44:29
SPEAKER_01: Rhys is betting on herself.
44:31
SPEAKER_01: Was there something you're really good at in the early days that you've actually had to let go in order for the companies to grow?
44:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say I was very good at it, but like I had a way more, I was way more supported in the marketing side from user acquisition.
44:45
SPEAKER_00: Um, but now our business has kind of changed less from direct to consumer to more B2B.
44:50
SPEAKER_00: And so now instead of us acquiring all of our consumers via social media or pay-per-click ads, um we're doing it primarily through um B2B2C.
44:58
SPEAKER_00: So although our platform currently is what the consumers use, um, we're actually getting referred to from the insurance providers and um other marketplaces.
45:08
SPEAKER_00: And eventually, you know, going to B2B, we actually want to be the infrastructure that powers food is medicine behind the scenes.
45:14
SPEAKER_00: And so we have some opportunities where we can provide the technology that we developed in a white label or a different brand.
45:21
SPEAKER_00: And so that will unlock a whole new bunch of skills that we never had before.
45:24
SPEAKER_00: Um, but apart from that, I still dabble in quite a lot.
45:27
SPEAKER_00: Like we're still a relatively small team, like we have US and Canadian team members, but in our office on any given day, there's four to six people in here.
45:34
SPEAKER_00: So I'm still very in the weeds, maybe more than I should be, uh, because these guys are a lot better at doing all their jobs than I am.
45:40
SPEAKER_00: But I always end up sticking my nose in somewhere just to see what's going on and you know, getting my um non-solicited input uh sometimes.
45:47
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I mean there's things I should probably be doing less of, so I should probably take that uh question to heart.
45:56
SPEAKER_01: I think we all reflect back and go, man, I should be involved less and and distribute more, but that's the part about learning and being a leader, right?
46:07
SPEAKER_01: And finding that balance.
46:09
SPEAKER_01: And speaking of leadership, you've had another person going through that evolution beside you the whole time.
46:16
SPEAKER_01: You and Grace haven't just been co-founders for eight years.
46:18
SPEAKER_01: You've gone from making meals together to making some pretty significant decisions together.
46:23
SPEAKER_01: I think it's really important for the people that are in a co-founder situation listening to this.
46:29
SPEAKER_01: So, how has your relationship as co-founders changed from the start to as the stakes grow, evolved now?
46:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, what happened?
46:38
SPEAKER_00: So I don't know if you know, but Grace and I are also life partners as well.
46:40
SPEAKER_00: So we just welcomed our first uh little baby boy uh also six months ago.
46:45
SPEAKER_00: So uh yeah, thank you.
46:47
SPEAKER_00: So our roles have changed quite a bit.
46:49
SPEAKER_00: Grace has actually been on Matt Leave, basically working five hours a week, which has been great for her to raise our son.
46:54
SPEAKER_00: But that aside, um, what was really nice about starting Nourished out of Neutromules was that um Grace was still the one managing the neutramules the other day, and I was basically hands-off completely, and it happened for the last three years or so.
47:06
SPEAKER_00: And then I was building um nourished with the team over here.
47:09
SPEAKER_00: So um it kind of felt like we could have a conversation at the end of the day, which we couldn't have before, which is like, oh, how was your day?
47:15
SPEAKER_00: Because before our days were so intertwined.
47:17
SPEAKER_00: It was we were together at home, we were together at work, it was 24-7, and we often joke that we spent more time together in the first five years of our business and being in a relationship than people do in their whole um lifetimes because typically you are away from each other eight hours a day and you see each other in the evenings and you sleep and you see each other in the morning for a little bit.
47:33
SPEAKER_00: And realistically, it's a few hours every single day, whereas um we saw each other literally 24-7 all the time.
47:40
SPEAKER_00: Um, and that kind of changed a lot.
47:42
SPEAKER_00: And so as things evolved, Grace handled um the neutrale side, which has now been handled, handed off to Marlo, which is our you know kitchen leader over there, and who happens to be Grace's cousin.
47:52
SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, again, very family forward uh company.
47:55
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then me handling, you know, a completely different business, although it came from the same roots, it was a a lot different opportunity.
48:02
SPEAKER_00: And so for us, evolving actually nourished has helped our relationship personally a lot because we weren't doing the same thing all day, every day.
48:11
SPEAKER_00: So that's been kind of interesting.
48:14
SPEAKER_01: That's crazy that we're on the same life chapter.
48:16
SPEAKER_01: Our little lady was born March 19th, so that's crazy.
48:20
SPEAKER_01: Um, well, congrats.
48:22
SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
48:23
SPEAKER_01: Being a new parent and running a business is definitely not without its challenges.
48:28
SPEAKER_00: So that's why I have bags under my eyes, probably.
48:31
unknown: Exactly right.
48:32
SPEAKER_01: Me too.
48:32
SPEAKER_01: It's covered in makeup right now.
48:35
SPEAKER_01: So, what do you think founders in their first couple of years spend way too much time worrying about?
48:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it depends on the situation.
48:44
SPEAKER_00: But what we found is that sometimes it's a game of attrition.
48:47
SPEAKER_00: So if you can just stay alive longer, you can read the benefits of the market because some of your competitors won't um still be around.
48:55
SPEAKER_00: Um but when it comes to like the founders, maybe um they focus too much on maybe worrying about what other people think of them and not just like getting on with it and just proving it, or maybe they're um too busy comparing themselves with people they see on social media because I can tell you like I'm not driving a Bugatti flexing cash on a windshield and like, you know, selling my course.
49:11
SPEAKER_00: Like that's you know, if you're comparing yourself to those kind of people, that's probably a big issue.
49:15
SPEAKER_00: But again, what they're doing wrong is completely uh different in every scenario and it's probably gonna be a good part of their journey.
49:21
SPEAKER_00: So whatever wrongdoing they're doing will hopefully turn into something good down the road.
49:25
SPEAKER_01: That's really good advice.
49:27
SPEAKER_01: If you get set across from yourself eight years ago when you're cooking, packaging, delivering, and trying to figure out whether any of this is gonna work, what would you tell that version of Sam?
49:36
SPEAKER_00: That's a deep question.
49:38
SPEAKER_00: Um I probably approach things a little bit differently and slow down a little bit.
49:42
SPEAKER_00: Like we've always been really agile and building very quickly, then it it ends up being a lot of iterations, which isn't necessarily a bad thing because you do learn what doesn't work.
49:50
SPEAKER_00: But if I could do everything in hindsight, um, I would definitely change my pace uh a little bit and also just kind of give in a little bit to the universe a bit more where not everything is in your control.
50:01
SPEAKER_01: And maybe that's the biggest difference between Sam eight years ago and Sam today.
50:04
SPEAKER_01: The problem you're trying to solve has gone substantially bigger.
50:08
SPEAKER_01: You started with how do we make healthy food easier?
50:10
SPEAKER_01: Now you're asking where nutrition actually fits into healthcare.
50:14
SPEAKER_01: So I want to end the business part of this conversation here.
50:16
SPEAKER_01: What's happening next that you're genuinely excited about?
50:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the next big thing is us actually being that backbone infrastructure.
50:23
SPEAKER_00: So, um, like I said before, we don't necessarily care about being the customer platform, but if we can be the platform um that powers it, think about like the Intel inside.
50:32
SPEAKER_00: That's the next big thing for us is that if we can white label this opportunity um into a you know digital health experiences that already exist at half millions of users, we don't have to acquire all those users from scratch.
50:42
SPEAKER_00: So that's the next big thing from our point of view.
50:44
SPEAKER_00: And then if we can make those uh partnerships, it helps, you know, us and them scale a whole new business line much faster.
50:51
SPEAKER_01: That's brilliant.
50:52
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
50:53
SPEAKER_01: Completely changed gears.
50:54
SPEAKER_01: I do this with all of my podcast guests.
50:57
SPEAKER_01: What is your favorite nature meals meal?
51:01
SPEAKER_00: Right now, I've actually been loving the soba salad uh because I've been doing my own meal plan.
51:06
SPEAKER_00: So since you know we welcome little Freddie to the world, um, I haven't been going to the gym.
51:10
SPEAKER_00: So I started a weight loss plan myself.
51:11
SPEAKER_00: I have lost six pounds, so that's very good.
51:13
SPEAKER_00: I'm an advocate, and I've been having a lot more meals that I've kind of ventured out I wouldn't usually eat.
51:18
SPEAKER_00: So instead of having the enchilada and the bulgogi beef bowl and all this, you know, tasty stuff that's a little bit higher in um fat and you know, things like that, I've been having uh a few more salads in my lifetime.
51:29
SPEAKER_00: But um, yeah, the the soba salad's been really tasty, but I've kind of worked into my meal plan.
51:34
SPEAKER_00: I've had like, you know, two really clean meals a day, then one like I can enjoy, and it still hits all my macros and micros and my nourish score, of course.
51:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would say my favorite are your waffles and the stuffed pepper.
51:45
SPEAKER_00: I actually had that for lunch today, so I'm like, you know what?
51:47
SPEAKER_00: I think like breakfast for lunch.
51:48
SPEAKER_00: I had the lumberjack breakfast with the waffles and the egg.
51:51
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
51:51
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
51:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that is that's definitely a Chris the Savage favorite.
51:55
SPEAKER_00: Which one did you like the least?
51:56
SPEAKER_00: I'm actually just curious.
51:57
SPEAKER_01: The least?
51:58
SPEAKER_01: Ooh.
51:59
SPEAKER_01: Anything that's like spicy, nothing comes to my mind or putting me on the spot, but that's okay.
52:05
SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't remember your least favorite, right?
52:06
SPEAKER_00: Like you'd remember your favorite, but then like I kind of forgot about the ones I don't.
52:10
SPEAKER_01: There was a salad that I wasn't super like a fan of, but um It probably had kale in it.
52:15
SPEAKER_00: I'm just kidding.
52:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's probably it.
52:17
SPEAKER_01: That's 100%.
52:18
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
52:20
SPEAKER_01: Um, but I like the um the butter chicken.
52:23
SPEAKER_01: I know you guys call it butter muss.
52:25
SPEAKER_00: Masala, yeah.
52:26
SPEAKER_00: Because you can choose chicken or paneer, yeah.
52:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
52:29
SPEAKER_01: So I like that one.
52:30
SPEAKER_01: I like the stuffed pepper um and the lumberjack.
52:33
SPEAKER_01: What was the worst neutral meals you made at the very beginning?
52:39
SPEAKER_00: Um I've burned a lot of food.
52:42
SPEAKER_00: Um, definitely.
52:42
SPEAKER_00: Like when we was just scraped and I were running around with our chicken with our heads cut off.
52:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
52:46
SPEAKER_00: And so I don't remember exactly, but we've had some incidents too where we've like dropped trays of stuff and to remake it, obviously.
52:53
SPEAKER_00: And so like at that time, you're just like, you know, heads in your hand, like, oh, I just dropped like$200 worth of chicken.
52:58
SPEAKER_00: I gotta remake it, you know, and these the margins are already small.
53:00
SPEAKER_00: And so yeah, I don't remember the exact worst meal I've ever made.
53:03
SPEAKER_00: I haven't cooked in the kitchen for who knows how long, five years.
53:06
SPEAKER_00: I'm not even I don't even know.
53:08
SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah.
53:09
SPEAKER_00: I just okay.
53:10
SPEAKER_01: It sounds like you're stronger in other areas.
53:12
SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's that's exactly.
53:13
SPEAKER_00: I should be not, I shouldn't be in the kitchen and I should be doing something completely different.
53:17
SPEAKER_01: Yes, exactly.
53:18
SPEAKER_01: You found your stride.
53:20
SPEAKER_01: Um, what is something Grace is better at than you are?
53:23
SPEAKER_00: Almost everything.
53:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
53:24
SPEAKER_01: Smart answer.
53:25
SPEAKER_00: That's the right answer.
53:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
53:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, smart answer.
53:28
SPEAKER_00: Very well.
53:28
SPEAKER_00: Like she's, you know, she I'm a little bit more the logical one, she's a bit more like the emotional one, but I think you need a bit of both to really make decisions.
53:36
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I think we're a pretty good team that way.
53:38
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, she's a she's very, very um good at the operation side of the business.
53:43
SPEAKER_00: Like she can go into a kitchen, find all the inefficiencies, do all of those things, and like it'll be right over my head.
53:49
SPEAKER_00: So she's very, very good.
53:51
SPEAKER_01: When is one business metric you check too often?
53:56
SPEAKER_00: Uh right now it's actually user acquisition.
53:58
SPEAKER_00: Um, how many users we're acquiring, you know, each day, month, week kind of thing.
54:03
SPEAKER_00: Um before that, I would do a lot of forecasting based on like, hey, current volumes, current meals, what is it gonna look like?
54:11
SPEAKER_00: Because that was, you know, that was my main priority.
54:14
SPEAKER_00: And then more recently it's been like, okay, just user acquisition and getting users on the platform.
54:19
SPEAKER_00: And now one thing I also do check a lot is number of appointments.
54:22
SPEAKER_00: Um, because we have to be very strategic on a lot of our competitors over hire, and then a lot of their dietitians are sitting idle and they maybe have a few appointments a week.
54:31
SPEAKER_00: We want to try and fill up the calendars as much as possible.
54:33
SPEAKER_00: So we want to make sure there's availability for the patient, but also not too much availability.
54:37
SPEAKER_00: So then the dietitians' days are spread out.
54:39
SPEAKER_00: And so I've been looking at the appointments a lot uh recently as well.
54:43
SPEAKER_01: Favorite Calgary restaurant?
54:46
SPEAKER_00: Um, great question.
54:49
SPEAKER_00: I actually don't eat out that often, but if I had to stay like the one I go to the most, it's gonna be so left field.
54:55
SPEAKER_00: It's actually called Rock Fort.
54:56
SPEAKER_00: It's an Indian restaurant um located off of Southland Drive and uh McLeod Trail.
55:02
SPEAKER_00: And we typically go there every Thursday as a team.
55:04
SPEAKER_00: We didn't go there today.
55:06
SPEAKER_00: Um, but it's like this little restaurant, so um, you know, unpresuming, and now they know us because we always order ahead of time by phone and we eat and we dine in there.
55:14
SPEAKER_00: So they our meals are basically on the table by the time we get there.
55:16
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, it's just I'm a big sucker for uh Indian cuisine.
55:20
SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
55:20
SPEAKER_00: It's my often, but like we go there every week.
55:24
SPEAKER_01: Every Thursday.
55:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
55:26
SPEAKER_01: All right, last couple morning person or night owl.
55:30
SPEAKER_00: Uh I used to be a night owl like through and through.
55:33
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of changed a little bit now over time, but uh I would still say I'm probably more productive later tonight than I am really.
55:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, me too.
55:40
SPEAKER_01: Coffee or wine?
55:42
SPEAKER_00: Uh neither.
55:43
SPEAKER_01: Neither.
55:44
SPEAKER_01: How do you survive without caffeine?
55:46
SPEAKER_00: I know.
55:47
SPEAKER_00: I people ask me how to be a new parent.
55:49
SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
55:52
SPEAKER_01: All right.
55:52
SPEAKER_01: One last one for you.
55:54
SPEAKER_01: Would University Sam believe you if you told him what your job looks like today?
55:59
SPEAKER_00: I think he would, and he'd probably be like, wow, I thought you'd be doing a lot more.
56:02
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, I was really hard on myself back then.
56:04
SPEAKER_00: So I think University Sam would be proud of uh where I am, but he's like, you know what, Sam, like you could have done a little bit better.
56:09
SPEAKER_00: But you know, that's just me beyond my myself.
56:11
SPEAKER_00: But you know, overall, yeah, who knows?
56:14
SPEAKER_01: We are our worst critics, like a hundred percent.
56:17
SPEAKER_01: So um, I don't know.
56:18
SPEAKER_01: I think you're doing pretty awesome.
56:20
SPEAKER_00: And uh we appreciate it.
56:22
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I think what I really took away from this conversation is that you didn't necessarily leave the original idea behind.
56:27
SPEAKER_01: You just kept getting closer to the actual problem.
56:30
SPEAKER_01: Neutral meals started by making healthy food easier and more convenient, but spending years actually serving people showed you that food is only one part of whether someone can realistically make nutrition work in their life.
56:43
SPEAKER_01: And that's ultimately what led you into something much bigger with nourished.
56:47
SPEAKER_01: So I always finish here.
56:49
SPEAKER_01: For someone listening in Calgary who wants to support what you're building, whether that's NutriMeals, nourished, or just following along, where should they go?
56:58
SPEAKER_00: Personally, they can follow me on LinkedIn.
57:00
SPEAKER_00: That's where I'm most active, which is still not very active.
57:03
SPEAKER_00: Um, but then if they want to follow the business, the the regular Instagram, LinkedIn, whatever, Facebook even.
57:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I'll put all of that in the show notes for Yeah, sweet.
57:13
SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, thank you so much for coming on the 403 podcast.
57:16
SPEAKER_01: It was an absolute pleasure having you.
57:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thank you.
57:18
SPEAKER_00: And thank you for doing this for the community as well.
57:20
SPEAKER_00: It means a lot and should be invited, and I think you're doing a great service for all the other entrepreneurs and people that are interested in this topic.
57:25
SPEAKER_00: So thank you.
57:26
SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
57:27
SPEAKER_01: No, thanks for saying that.
57:28
SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you.
57:29
SPEAKER_01: If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe to the 403 podcast as we continue introducing you to the people, businesses, and ideas shaping Calgary and Alberta.
57:40
SPEAKER_01: Because every city has stories, ours just happens to be told by people building it.
57:45
SPEAKER_01: We'll see you next time.