Email From Whole Foods Launched My Entire Business

by Lionel Casey

The second Vanessa Phillips’s dream business — chef-inspired gluten unfastened frozen meals — inched towards fact befell. At the same time, a Ziploc bag was changed into sent through the mail to Whole Foods’ North Atlantic Regional Office.

“I knew absolutely nothing approximately patron packaged goods,” she stated. “Today, I assume that it turned into absolutely one of the excellent blessings in conceal because if I knew lots, I likely wouldn’t have done it. I put our dumplings in a Ziploc bag, typed up how to reheat them on a chunk of paper, and put it in a box with dry ice. I went to Kinko’s, printed a ridicule up of what the packaging would appear to be, and sent it off to Whole Foods thinking that I would never hear lower back.”

Email From Whole Foods Launched My Entire Business 3

But Phillips, on time a restaurateur in New York City, virtually were given a response. Whole Foods said they desired frozen dumplings from her business enterprise, Feel Good Foods, in 27 shops inside more than one month.

“It became that one email from Whole Foods that launched my whole business,” she stated.

Feel Good Foods merchandise, all gluten unfastened with top sellers, including bird potstickers and vegetable and fowl egg rolls, are now bought in 6,000 stores across the U.S. It has seen a seventy-five percentage year-over-12 months boom, possibly part of the resurgence of frozen foods. According to the Specialty Food Association, the frozen meals department became the fastest growing in expertise retail from 2016-18, with an increase of sixteen. Three percent. Feel Good Foods closed an undisclosed Series B funding round with City Capital last May.

The Digest spoke with Phillips about how her enterprise has developed because of its founding in 2011.

How did you get into this enterprise?

Before launching Feel Good Foods in 2011, my companion and I owned a restaurant collectively inside the Chelsea Market in Manhattan called Friedmans — I’m still a partner in it. Still, my brother and father ended up establishing seven more. We had a number of the alternatives on the menu available, gluten unfastened. The Chelsea Market is exquisite touristy and has humans coming from all over the globe. People were pronounced, “Oh, I wish I had something like this wherein I stay.” It got me thinking on a bigger scale, like how can I reach more excellent humans and have extra household penetration and be capable of serving our food outside a 33-seat eating place.

There became constantly this private dream of beginning Feel Good Foods. I have celiac disorder, so I can’t eat gluten. I continually wanted to pop out with a gluten-free logo that would attain many human beings and, in a profound manner, in their houses. But I by no means thought that Feel Good Foods was going to take off. It was constantly just a side hobby that I might dream about.

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