How Establishing Internal Processes Can Equal Success for Your Food Business with Jesse McBride
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How to Keep Your Meal Delivery Business Running Smoothly…
This month, we’re highlighting members of Hudson Kitchen on the podcast and today, I’m chatting with Jesse McBride, founder of Mademeals, an organic meal delivery service focused on high-quality ingredients. Jesse has faced some challenges along the way in launching his business, but his tenacity in establishing processes for success in his business is admirable.
In this episode, Jesse shares how Mademeals came to be, why establishing business processes has vastly improved the performance of his team, and how he mitigates customer attrition in his meal delivery service.
We also chat about what being a “content founder” means for Jesse and how that translates into not only his business life, but also his personal life.
Subscribe to the Food Means Business Podcast with Hudson Kitchen founder Djenaba Johnson-Jones to hear the personal stories and “secret ingredients” of abandoning your day job and starting a CPG food business.
In this episode, you’ll learn...
[00:44] Jesse’s cubicle to founder story, why he decided to start Mademeals, and the bumps he faced along the way
[04:12] The importance of giving back to the community, and the challenges Jesse has faced as a business owner
[08:00] How Jesse has approached the processes of his business and relaying that to his team members
[10:54] What being a “content founder” means to Jesse and how it impacts his overall life
[12:29] How he is mitigating customer attrition
[18:07] How entrepreneurship has changed Jesse, what he’s thankful for, and how he incorporates self-care into his life
If you want to hear more about establishing internal processes for your business, be sure to tune into this episode:
Links mentioned in this episode…
About Jesse McBride:
Jesse McBride is the founder of Mademeals. The seed for his business was planted in 2016, after he was diagnosed with mild ulcerative colitis (an inflammatory gut condition).
He began to examine what he was eating more closely and started trying to improve his diet, going mostly gluten and dairy-free, and searching out organic produce, wild-caught fish, and antibiotic & hormone-free meats. But finding the time to plan and prepare meals in a more mindful way was a challenge. And thus, Mademeals was born.
Our mission is to help our customers eat mindfully by delivering fully prepared meals made that are ready to heat and eat each week.
Connect with jesse mcbride:
Connect with Jesse on LinkedIn
Stay Connected with Djenaba Johnson-Jones:
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[00:00:00] Djenaba You are listening to the Food Means Business Podcast, which features the personal stories and secret ingredients behind what it's like to abandon your day job to start a CPG food and beverage business. I'm Djenaba Johnson-Jones, former marketing executive turned entrepreneur and founder of food business incubator Hudson Kitchen. Join our community of fellow food business owners and subject matter experts to learn and laugh with us as we explore a startup world that's a little more culinary and a lot less corporate these days. All right. This month we are spotlighting Hudson Kitchen members. And I'm so happy that I have with me today Jesse McBride from Mademeals. Hi, Jesse. Welcome to the Food Means Business podcast.
[00:00:41] Jesse Hey, happy to be here. How are you doing?
[00:00:43] Djenaba I'm good, thank you. So before we jump in and learn all about your business, which I knew about, but you can tell everybody else about. Tell us your cubicle to founder story. Why did you get started and what were you doing before the business?
[00:00:54] Jesse Yeah, so I was a design recruiter helping startups hire designers and such. And I was always passionate about health, wellness, fitness. I used to meal prep on my own. I wanted to do a career in something related to nutrition, but I just thought I was too far along on my college degree at that point. So I just reached a point in 2016 where I felt like I needed to do my own thing, and I knew that that was kind of my calling. I looked around and saw the industry and I started ordering meal prep services for myself, and I just couldn't find one that had high quality food, good customer experience. I just couldn't find it. So I set out to create one of those myself. And that's kind of it in a nutshell.
[00:01:34] Djenaba Cool. So tell us about Mademeals.
[00:01:37] Jesse So, you know, what we do is pretty straightforward. We provide meal prep services. So we have a commercial kitchen at Hudson Kitchen, and we, you know, take orders in advance. We source all of our ingredients from local farms, grass fed pasture raised organic, as responsibly sourced as possible. And then we have an entire production process from prep cooking, cooling, packing and then delivery so that we can, you know, serve our customers high quality prepared meals to help them with their busy schedules. You know.
[00:02:08] Djenaba So talk a lot about getting started because I think I seem to recall some kind of bumps in the road along the way kind of prior to the launch and then like in the launch process.
[00:02:17] Jesse Yeah, a lot of bumps. I mean, I've learned so much coming into this industry without culinary experience or without food business experience. I think one of the first things I did was take a food business bootcamp that you hosted. Actually, you know, I think some of the biggest things I've learned along the way is, well, kitchen space. But who you're working with, who you're partnering with, you know, building a team is really hard if you don't know what you're doing and working with people that have a good heart, that treat other people well is more important than anything. You can hire the highest Michelin star chef or, you know, somebody that runs, you know, massive catering operations that has all the experience. But if they don't, you know, have the heart or the leadership experience or the ability to pull other people in and pull everybody together and for one, you know, one mission, yeah, you're going to have a really, really difficult time. And so I had a couple bumpy partnerships. I didn't really know what I was getting into. And not that they were bad human beings. They just weren't the right fit for what I was trying to do. And the other biggest bump in the road was kitchen space. So we were in various kitchens from, you know, sharing a space with the barbecue company in a basement in, you know, an hour and a half away from my home. You're leaving there at 1:30 in the morning after we packed meals, we were in a commercial kitchen that shut down and they gave us three days to vacate the premises and other business as well. So there was a lot of back and forth with space that was difficult, you know. So I would say those are the major bumps.
[00:03:49] Djenaba I will say I think you now have a really great staff for sure because I get to interact with them I think a little bit more than some other people do. So I get to see them there. They're fantastic. So I think you're right about having people with heart. They really do care about what they're doing and they care about. For me, that's important. They care about the space and respect the space as well.
[00:04:08] Jesse Yeah, that's right. Exactly. Yeah. It's an honor to be working with them. They're great.
[00:04:12] Djenaba So talk about when you guys first started with Hudson Kitchen. I know you were doing it in kind of a community give back because I can talk a little bit about that importance of kind of participating in those types of programs.
[00:04:22] Jesse Yeah. So when we first started, I was trying to navigate how can we give back to the community and do right by, you know, some of the things that I'm passionate about. So when we started up, we were working with reentry programs and hiring people out of those programs in our kitchen. We don't do as much of it anymore, not for any specific reason, but that we you know, we're kind of where we're at right now. But that was one of the things we were doing when we started up. And then during COVID, you know, we got involved with a program called the Hudson County Hunger Project, and that was basically a band of restaurants helping to make meals and deliver them to people in need, food insecure people in the community. So we were doing that. I think we had about a list of 100 people in Hudson County, and that was great. I think we delivered maybe six meals a week on three different delivery dates, and it was really great to know that while we were, you know, serving our customers and making revenue and keeping the bills paid, we were able to give back. And I think that that's core to our mission. One of the core pillars, and we're always trying to find ways where we can get back and get involved and serve the community. Yeah, and.
[00:05:31] Djenaba It was really cool to see you guys making meals. And then also there was another company in the facility that was doing it as well. At one point the walk in was just like full of meals and it was really great to see that you guys giving back. So touched my heart for sure. Can you talk about some challenges that you may have faced in kind of getting started and kind of how you kind of got through that and came up with some solutions? I know there's always challenges as a food business owner, but curious about your own challenges.
[00:05:57] Jesse Yeah, I mean, I think starting from nothing with zero processes, you know, it's tough because you don't know what processes you should be following. I dove into a lot of different groups and tried to look at other meal prep companies and learn from them. Talk to the founders. It's a little tough, especially with local businesses, because they, you know, they see this competition and don't really want to help you out. So I kind of found success in reaching out to companies that were in different states, that there was no competition. And several people were very happy to share their experiences. And I still speak to them this day. They're like mentors and, you know, building on the processes, you know, an internal standpoint in terms of you know, managing people and production to software to figure out what pieces of software to use for different aspects because there's so many different routes you go. But I'm a very process oriented person. So I think at every step of the way, I was really trying to figure out, okay, what's scalable, hat can we do that I can train somebody else on doing that's going to be the least time consuming? So I think figuring all that out and then also making decisions about whether to go national or stay local because you have some big players. I remember when we started out Freshly was really just kind of getting their bearings and right. They actually came and did a panel and there was a person from Fred, the CEO of Freshly came and spoke at my my old design firm, and I was just in the back taking notes and trying to learn from what he was saying about the difficulties. And, you know, they just shut down about 8 months ago. And so I think I've learned a lot about what this business takes and how it can be sustainable and what it means to be a content founder and have a content team rather than running a massive production facility where it's just like a, you know, an assembly line, basically. So figuring out all these little things about how we want to grow the business and where we want to be and what our goals are, and learning those from companies that we look up to and that we want to be like. Those are the challenges growing that I had to kind of deal with and and, you know, make decisions on.
[00:08:00] Djenaba So let's dive into processes for a second. So what is the best way that you found to create the process and also to relay it to team members? Like, I know some people do videos and people do write up notebooks that kind of give us your idea of how you approach process.
[00:08:14] Jesse Yeah. So I am a big believer in checklists. I think when we first started, you know, I started our Google Drive and that's kind of where we have everything organized. And I was always like, you know, you get to a certain point where you dump so much stuff in there and it's so unorganized. And yeah, I think I've learned that having major categories, food operations, HR, you know, finance, taxes, things like that. And i really just naming each of your google sheets, your documents according to exactly what's in that. It's easy to find it. You can just go to the search bar and find it. And so we have lots of different checklists. You know, either we'll have a google sheet for a prep cook, Google sheet for the kitchen manager, and we'll have daily checklists in there. And those can always be edited. But really going in and writing exactly what a process is. So I found somebody his name is Ryan Grant, and he is a food industry professional down in Texas, I think. And he has a whole bunch of videos that were super, super helpful for me, especially when my wife moved to Connecticut and I was traveling about an hour and a half from Connecticut down in Jersey. I would just binge on his videos and he's huge on processes and checklists. And so I kind of took his advice and went through going through the process myself, making sure I start the nuances and I put it's not just about doing it this way, but this is why and this is the certain nuance here. And then training a team member on that. Sometimes I do screen record videos and I'll send it to team members in that Google Drive file with, you know, an instructional video. I started using QR codes so that new people, when they come on, they can scan it and it links them to an instructional video. So I'm still learning. I'm still, you know, perfecting. But I think having checklists is important, whether it's for an event, you know, making sure you have all your supplies and everything to write, you know, how to handle customer service inquiries and stuff like that. So.
[00:10:05] Djenaba Yeah, it's definitely something I'm still working on with the kitchen, but I've gotten a lot better at. What's been working for me lately is I had somebody set me up on Clickup and so like, I keep all like my to do list on there and then we will be like rolling out like member portals as well. So like you'll be able to upload all your documents and everything and keep that straight as well. So I'm like, we're, I'm really excited about that. So like, I'm really big in the process. I heard about Quick Yeah, yeah. I like it's where we track everything. So it's like my to do list anything like, you know, Brittany's our new sales person. So we have like all the sales leads and stuff is in there. And so like she can go in and update or I can go and have the conversations and talk to people and, and with Liz and programing like we have a whole like project plan built out in there as well.
[00:10:47] Jesse Got it, Got it.
[00:10:49] Djenaba Keep up with each other.
[00:10:50] Jesse So yeah, I have. I've seen their billboard and stuff out the check out there. Yeah.
[00:10:53] Djenaba Yeah yeah. So you also mentioned about being a content founder. What does that mean to you?
[00:10:59] Jesse Yes, I think I always go back to the example. I connected with a meal prep founder in California and she was small. I think she had about 100 clients. And when she told me, she said she has about 5 to 6 full time staff members. She lives about an hour away from their commercial kitchen. She has a a little small house off the grid in the mountains. And she's happy. So she is able to have her business run. Her employees are happy. She has a happy life. She has balance and she's able to pay her bills. And she you know, that's what happiness is there. And it really made me think that, you know, you can run a national corporation, basically a national company that is shipping all over the states. But you have so many headaches, you have so much to think about. And it takes away from your happiness because you don't really you know, you don't have balance. You just have to work all the time. So for me, being a content founder is having a team of people that respect each other, that get along, that enjoy their work. And then me being able to, you know, have time with my family to do the things I love to maybe, you know, get involved with other hobbies and passions. But to be able to still have, you know, my income and my business and most importantly I think is to take care of our customers the way that they want to be taken care of, to listen to them, to take the feedback, to integrate that feedback into our new products and our new systems and stuff. And I think if you can hit all those marks you're doing right by your customers, by your team, and by yourself, by your mental health, you know.
[00:12:28] Djenaba Yeah, that makes sense. So can you talk a little bit about the customer attrition, what you go through to kind of attain a customer and kind of what happens when they leave? But I'm just curious about that with meal prep because I know that you get people from time to time, they really excited. They're ordering from me for a year and then all of a sudden they stop, right? So it's like, can you talk a little about how you manage that within the business? And I'm just curious.
[00:12:49] Jesse Yeah, it's kind of just built into the business. I think for us, we try to address that. I mean, we analyze the data every once in a while to see, you know, there's a lot of people that do come in. They get they make one purchase that kind of head out the door because it's not for them for whatever reason. But we've gotten better with with our attrition rate. And I think that it comes down to the sequences, the welcome sequences and the win back sequences. So we have things set up where if somebody comes in, you know, we have a welcome sequence that encourages them to purchase at least three or four times through discounts. And once they order first, it's like a personal note saying thank you and everything. If somebody doesn't order for a certain amount of time and we have a couple of different sequences set up for two weeks, three and a half weeks, five weeks, etc., some other business and they have like 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. But we have to kind of capture them while they're still warm. And those things have helped, you know, the personal touch points and then the customer service, you know, making sure that if they have questions were quick with responding. And I also goes back to having, you know, relatively small our customer base and not having a massive group customers. But it's yeah, it's always an issue. It's frustrating sometimes because you want to hold on to people and you want to be able to serve them for longer. And but I think it's just about finding a balance with how your ads are performing, how many people are coming into the pipeline, what you're doing to retain them, and making sure that there's a balance in all of that. Because if it goes out of balance, you may either go down in customer count and not pay the bills or you may right over, you know, over inundated. So we can we're kind of careful with our budgeting per ad because if you scale up too quickly, your consistency is going to go down, your quality is going to go down. So it's about finding that balance and that's easier said than done, I think, you know.
[00:14:38] Djenaba Right. So with the welcome series and the win back series that's all happening on email or do you also use text messages to communicate?
[00:14:45] Jesse We use both. All the sequences we have our on email currently. For text, that's pretty much just reminders we are about to. That is one of our initiatives is to dive into the text and set up the sequences in text as well, because that's definitely, you know, we a majority of our orders are coming through text reminders. So I think that's going be big for us, setting up the sequences on texting.
[00:15:07] Djenaba And just thinking about marketing. And I know you mentioned you're doing ads, but also like there's some marketing things that we do that are not necessarily scalable, but that kind of in the long run are really helpful like events. At one point you were like participating in events, doing some catering and those types of things. I'm just wondering how that, how that has shaped out.
[00:15:25] Jesse Yeah, that was a majority where we done for up until now. I mean, we're still doing it, but you know, we were doing tastings in luxury buildings and gyms. We found luxury buildings to be a little more successful. But like any CrossFit events, large expos, things like that, getting involved in those. We have a couple lined up for this year. We're doing the strong New York event is and that's like one of the bigger business events in New York City. Kenny Santucci and his team. And then we're doing a couple of different CrossFit events. We also just landed a huge deal with the New York City triathlon.
[00:15:58] Djenaba Amazing. Congratulations.
[00:16:00] Jesse Yeah, it's going to be like over 2000 people. We're going to be wow, We're going to be busy at the kitchen there.
[00:16:05] Djenaba Yes.
[00:16:06] Jesse Wrapping up a whole bunch of wraps, but doing things like that, just making sure that we're meeting the community. We're speaking to people not just about the digital ads that everybody sees for all these companies, but, you know, shaking hands, getting out there, letting people see that there's a face behind the food. I think that's huge. I think a lot you know, a lot of our customers that have been with us for a long time have met us at some sort of event, whether it's a farmer's market or one of these events. So I think that's huge. And it's a competitive advantage for people that are a bit scared to get out there that they kind of are maybe a little lazy to set up tables and they want to just write digital stuff. The people that are hungry enough to get out there is that's a huge advantage, I think.
[00:16:47] Djenaba I think that's great because you also it's like market research, Like you get to have a conversation with somebody that is tasting or eating your food and you get feedback from the customer in that way that you may not get it from a digital program.
[00:17:01] Jesse I mean, the things that I was saying at the events that we were first doing in 2017, 2018 is totally different from what I say now. I used to talk about how our sourcing practices save the planet and everything, and I was with that and I kind of learned that that's a secondary benefit to the way we source and our ingredients. But people don't want to hear that. They want to hear how we're helping them and our solving their problem. So. Right. The snippet I give now is like 10, 15 seconds in and nails on exactly what I know people are going to receive well and what they're paying attention to when we when we talk. So that only happens with time, you know, getting out there and doing the research. You know.
[00:17:38] Djenaba We've been this is my week to do podcast episodes. And so I just spoke with the owner of Sweet Kiwi. They were actually on Shark Tank earlier this year. And the one thing she kept saying is just what you said, it's like she got the pitch down. So like over and over again, we kept like tweaking the pitch, tweaking the pitch, and we got it down where she can just deliver it quickly and she hits the points that people want to hear. So I think that it's like completely important.
[00:18:01] Jesse Yeah, yeah. 100%. Yeah.
[00:18:04] Djenaba So how has entrepreneurship changed you?
[00:18:07] Jesse Man. It's evolved, I believe, all because of entrepreneurship. It's, you know, about to have a baby now. I feel like it's kind of trained me to be a father in some ways because it's about being a leader. It's about being able to treat other people with respect and lay down the law and have rules and have standards, but also, you know, treat people fairly and pull people together. And it's about, you know, a responsibility. It's about getting out there and every single day waking up with the goal in mind and not giving up and getting slapped in the face multiple times by failures and saying, yeah, that's just part of it. That's basically my school. Those failures are my school. Yeah. I feel like it's just made me a better person on so many different levels. And I think that, you know, at the beginning when it's more bad than good, there's more hiccups and falls and things, it's hard to see that. But if you make it through and you know, you build something sustainable, you're going to be a better person regardless, you know?
[00:19:15] Djenaba Yeah, that's so true. So what are you thankful for?
[00:19:19] Jesse Man, a lot. I'm thankful for the team that we have. I'm thankful for even the people that haven't worked out, you know, over the years, the people I partnered with, because they taught me a lot about myself and about life. I'm thankful for everybody that supported me during the journey that the little things like, Hey, what you're doing is awesome, or, you know, the Kickstarter contributions, the little people along the way that have kind of provided the momentum and the encouragement. They're so important. Grateful for my wife and my baby on the way. And just like being able to have a life that it's not easy, but I'm used to that. As an entrepreneur, you get used to not having things easy. But yeah, I'm just I'm grateful to be able to go into the kitchen. I had a moment actually last Sunday when I walked in and the team was there packing up the meals and everything, and about a year ago, two years ago, I would need to be there on Sundays for things to really gel. Yeah, you know, otherwise it was sort of like things kind of falling apart. And I went in and I saw people talking and conversating and like, I just felt like, I don't need to be here right now, like this has the culture of its own. And that was a special moment for me. Yeah. To kind of feel like, all right, they got this, you know, I need to be here.
[00:20:38] Djenaba And I've seen it for sure with your team, like the. Yeah, they you definitely don't need to be there. They got it down that.
[00:20:45] Jesse Good and I'm grateful for Pete. Yeah. He's amazing. Want to give him a quick shoutout.
[00:20:50] Djenaba Yes, he definitely is a good guy and good leader.
[00:20:54] Jesse Yeah.
[00:20:55] Djenaba Talk to me about self-care. I think as entrepreneurs, you know, we're really busy all the time. We're working all the time and like constantly thinking about our businesses. What are you doing to take care of yourself?
[00:21:06] Jesse Yeah, I mean, that was especially applicable until 16. I was diagnosed with an inflammatory gut condition, ulcerative colitis. And so at that time I was like zeroed in on my self-care, my diet. And I think as an entrepreneur, you know, you get super bogged down and, you know, you're taking care of yourself can fall by the wayside currently. I mean, I order the meals every week, so that's my form of caring for myself, my nutrition, but little things like we have a morning routine, so we do like a ten minute yoga stretch every morning. And so like keeping the body warm, I'm doing a triathlon this Sunday, actually.
[00:21:43] Djenaba Oh, wow. Really? A triathlon.
[00:21:45] Jesse Yeah. A mini triathlon. So it's a half a mile swim, a mile bike, three mile run. So. So but I like to set a, you know, one of these kind of things, a Tough Mudder or triathlon or something once a year or, you know, twice a year to kind of have something to look forward to, to train for. And yeah, just I think in terms of mental health, you know, part of the morning yoga routine we do is like being grateful. I asked my wife in the morning sometimes like, what are three things you're grateful for to me? And I plan on asking my baby girl that as well. You know, just kind of trying to keep in mind what we're grateful for, what we're doing here and and yeah, making sure that we're mentally okay. Physically okay. You know.
[00:22:33] Djenaba At Hudson Kitchen, we have our money bell in the lobby, which, you know, that we ring when people are celebrating something. So I'm wondering, what are you celebrating right now?
[00:22:40] Jesse Right now, this triathlon, you know, for the business is huge because it's not only like a great marketing opportunity and all that good stuff. It's kind of a moment where we are worthy of being chosen for the triathlon because we worked so hard to build the brand and to build our customer base and get our reviews. And really kind of it's the proof that we've actually been working hard. So we're celebrating that. Crazy right now. And I'm celebrating, you know, having become a father in my personal life. So I think those are the two main things right now.
[00:23:13] Djenaba That's so cool. Congratulations. Yeah. So I'm going to have to. I forgot. I have to hold this up. This is really important for people to see all of your packaging and your delicious meals that I have been a customer before, so I'm going to do first before we sign off it. Thank you so much for being a member. I appreciate it. It's been, I think, three years almost. And yeah, you guys are fantastic. Thank you for being a part of the community. So. Jesse. Yeah, please let everyone know where they can find out about you and Mademeals.
[00:23:42] Jesse Yeah. So we are on Facebook and Instagram at Mademealsco. Our website is mademeals.co. No M, just a co. You can see our whole menu there. We have a 15 hour minimum so you can place an order and yeah, if you want to reach out, just shoot a DM on the Instagram. I'm pretty responsive there and I appreciate. I just want to really quick say congrats to you because you have been an inspiration for me. You know, I started in 2016 watching you kind of, you know, follow your dream of creating a commercial kitchen. So as soon as you opened it up and built it, I remember going to the, you know, the frame out whenever it was kind of just rained. And so as soon as you started, like, I was like, I got to jump on this because I believe in you and I support you and I know that you're there for the community. So just it felt natural to get into the kitchen there.
[00:24:30] Djenaba So thank you so much. This is gonna make me cry. Thank you, Jesse.
[00:24:35] Jesse Yeah. Thanks Djenaba.
[00:24:38] Djenaba The Food Means Business podcast was produced by Hudson Kitchen. It is recorded at the studio at Carney Point and mixed and edited by Wild Home Podcasting. Our theme song is by Damien de Sandys, and I'm your host, Djenaba Johnson-Jones. Follow Hudson Kitchen on Instagram at thehudsonkitchen. And to get Food Business Bites right in your inbox, sign up for our newsletter at thehudsonkitchen.com/newsletter. Listen, follow and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get podcasts. Until next time.