From Celiac Diagnosis to 20,000 Grocery Stores: Feel Good Foods CEO Vanessa Phillips

0:00Vanessa Phillips:Coming up in this episode of Professional Jealousy. There's no nine to fives in being a founder. Even when I'm sleeping, I'm working. It's an extension of myself. I want to build a brand that I can grow into, not grow out of. He would say, yes, I can. Repeat after me. Yes, I can. And it's followed me through my life. I was told to really just give up any hope of ever being in the food business. I was devastated. I didn't want to accept that.

0:37Hello, I'm Natasha Jakubowski, Chief Innovation Officer at Anomaly, a marketing agency in New York. And this is my podcast, Professional Jealousy, where I'm lucky enough to talk to founders, CEOs, and creative, interesting people that I'm impressed by and want to learn from and maybe a little bit envious of. Today, I'm talking with Vanessa Phillips, the co-founder and CEO of Feel Good Foods, a lineup of gluten-free and all-natural snacks and meals in over 18 ,000 grocery stores. So good to have you here. For anyone that doesn't know Feel Good Foods, can you give us the elevator pitch?

1:23Vanessa Phillips:Sure. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be talking to you. Feel Good Foods is a frozen food brand that's all gluten-free and focused on all of your nostalgic favorites. It's indulgent with simple ingredients. I started it after having a diagnosis of celiac disease, and after going gluten-free, I missed a ton of foods, so became determined to recreate all of my childhood favorites, but in a way where I can enjoy them and eat them as an adult. Yeah, that's amazing. And, you know, it's that classic kind of entrepreneurial aha, I had a problem, and then I solved it and, you know, created a brand.

2:11Can you talk about I mean, you were in the restaurant business, I was saying before we started recording that I've, I've enjoyed your restaurant Friedman's. And can you talk about how you went from like the diagnosis to thinking about actually creating a brand for everyone to enjoy?

2:34Vanessa Phillips:Yeah. So I actually grew up, I grew up in New York City in the restaurant industry. My family owned bagel stores when I was a kid, as well as Chinese restaurants. So restaurants was always incredibly familiar to me. I always thought, you know, one day when I was a kid, I was like, one day I will own a restaurant. I thought it would be more fine dining than what my parents did. But it was definitely something that seemed like a really natural transition for me. And I also always loved food. Like from a very early age, I was incredibly adventurous and curious. I have, you know, all of these memories eating, you know, soft shell crabs at three years old with, you know, black bean sauce.

3:20Vanessa Phillips:I was just like this little Epicurean that would eat anything and nothing was scary. But as I went into my teenage years, I was privately struggling with a lot of symptoms that I just couldn't explain and I couldn't trace back to what I ate. I knew that I was eating something all the time that was making me feel sick, but it was very confusing and, like I said, just really hard to trace. I would eat something in the morning and then not get symptoms for, you know, sometimes 24 to 48 hours. So I had, you know, these symptoms that I was battling. And finally, when I was in my sophomore year of college, I was diagnosed with celiac disease and was told by doctors that I had to go on a very strict gluten free diet.

4:08Vanessa Phillips:But also I was told to really just give up any hope of ever being in the food business. They told me that I needed to start ordering my food with no seasoning, no flavor, just grilled chicken, steamed veggies. And that was that that was like the prescription for me for life. And I was devastated. I didn't want to accept that. And I also challenged it. There wasn't a ton of information at that time about gluten free diets. But I just knew that the ingredients that I could eat could do a lot more for me. So I, you know, started working in restaurants and I teamed up with a chef and together we opened Friedman's, which was, you know, first of its kind, gluten free, quick service cafe.

5:05Vanessa Phillips:but that really focused on a lot of favorites that were foods that I missed that I wanted to bring back to consumers. I mean, and it was early, like I feel like gluten-free suddenly entered culture and became, you know, you saw every kind of food company jump on the kind of bandwagon, suddenly everyone was gluten-free, but you started before that. And I loved, I think I read that your mission was to make food that doesn't taste like cardboard for people to enjoy. But looking back, did you think it was going to move into Feel Good Foods or how did you make that transition from Friedman's to Feel Good Foods?

5:54Vanessa Phillips:Yeah, I actually did. And, you know, when we when we opened Friedman's, I think we were surprised by how many guests were coming in and ordering gluten free food. So it exceeded our expectations from that perspective. We knew that it would be popular. We knew that it would it would resonate because it was inside Chelsea Market and it really kind of tapped into like what the Chelsea Market, you know, people who worked in Chelsea Market, what they were looking for. It was really delicious sandwiches and salads and, you know, kind of like a lot of it had a lot of like Southern influence. We did like fried green tomatoes and it was great for brunch.

6:35Vanessa Phillips:So we weren't surprised by the success of Friedman's, but the gluten free component was surprising. And we were getting people from, frankly, all over the world that were we had at the time we had a gluten free guest book. And we were getting people from all over the world that were signing the guest book saying, like, please open a gluten free restaurant where I live. And it was, you know, Des Moines and, you know, Canada, like different countries. Right. So that kind of got me thinking, like, how do I reach more people? How do I get inside people's homes? I want to be able to give a solution to what the deprivation that people are living with outside my 35 seat restaurant.

7:20Vanessa Phillips:So that was, you know, kind of like I think the light bulb moment for me that it was going to be more than just Friedman's and it was going to lead to being a national food brand. Yeah, amazing. And definitely kind of mission driven. and it's such a clear focus. And it's interesting just seeing it kind of align with getting people getting healthier. You know, I definitely thought, I don't think I am gluten intolerant, but I definitely go for those options. So it's a nice kind of confluence of different trends that you've kind of leaned into. What was the inflection point? So I did not know anything about launching a frozen food brand.

8:04Vanessa Phillips:And I think that if I had done more research and I had known more, maybe I wouldn't have done it. So I think it's great that I didn't know anything because I just went in and I just started doing. And I think also that's sometimes what it means to be an entrepreneur. I had figured out with my partner how to make gluten-free potstickers. We didn't know how to scale it necessarily, but we knew how to make it and we knew how to serve it on our restaurant menu. And we were running Friedman's and we were blown away by the demand for gluten free. So we put the potstickers in a Ziploc bag and we sent it off to Whole Foods.

8:48Vanessa Phillips:and I remember typing a word document on how to prepare them and you know put them in a pan with some oil and water and I had like a mock-up of what the packaging would look like if it ever actually became real packaging and I sent it off to Whole Foods and and I you know it's funny because looking back now I remember a lot of people in my life kind of laughing it off they were like oh you're so cute. You're so funny. But I knew that it was going to launch in Whole Foods. I didn't know how and I didn't know when, but I knew that it was going to launch and I believed in it and I was passionate about it and I believed that there was a need for it.

9:36Vanessa Phillips:So even though I blindly sent the samples in a Ziploc bag, I wasn't very surprised when we got an email back two weeks later, letting us know that it was indeed launching in the North Atlantic region of Whole Foods. But that was when I had to have a crash course on everything consumer packaged goods related. And that was, you know, when the work really began. Yeah, that's insane. So how long till that from that email to getting into Whole Foods? About four months. Oh, my God. Insane. Yeah. And that's where you did. brand name, packaging design, figuring out the how to manufacture? Yeah, we had to learn all of it and we had to learn all of it very quickly.

10:27Vanessa Phillips:The brand name, we actually, we had had another name and we found out that it was trademarked. So, you know, these were just some of the early learnings. Yeah. What was the trademark name that you first wanted? Food matters. I mean, feel good food, I think, is better. Yes, yes. And feel good foods really, it really spoke to me. You know, I was coming from this, you know, personal struggle with not feeling good for so long. And one of the foods that I missed most was what I ate growing up at my dad's restaurants, which was potstickers. so having the first product be gluten-free pot stickers it it truly made me feel so good it made me feel so good physically it made me feel so good emotionally so it would the name resonated with me right away yeah and it it kind of works on many levels it's feel good physically if it if especially if you're suffering from a gluten intolerance but it also that there's just something nice about naturals it's feel good in terms of product quality and also who wouldn't want to feel good you know even if you have none of that it's such a good name um and then um yeah did you who did you bring on to help you for a while it was just me and my co-founder um you know we were really scrappy uh we moved to boston um and demoed every single day actually twice a day at Whole Foods, just the two of us for the first four months.

12:05Vanessa Phillips:And, you know, I look back so fondly. Those were the good old days. You know, it was really just two very passionate founders that went all in and, you know, nobody is going to sell your brand better than you. And we just got so much drive and joy over standing at Whole Foods for six hours a day, telling every shopper why they needed to try a gluten-free potsticker. And from there, we scaled quickly. That was a really incredible trial for us. And I remember four months later, we came out with gluten-free egg rolls and spread nationally pretty fast. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Did you have to raise money?

12:54How did you get this thing up and going? We did.

12:58Vanessa Phillips:I would say the capital side of the business was another element of just my early naivete around how much it really takes to grow a frozen food brand. You know, for the first few years, we were really scrappy. We went to friends and family and strangers. And, you know, my partner was really much better at it than I was. We'd be in the elevator and he'd be like, hey, can I tell you about a really exciting frozen food brand? But yeah, we were really, really scrappy for years and really choiceful around who we partnered with. And we kind of bootstrapped it. And then many years later, once it was more established and we really had distribution that we could stand behind, we went out and did more of a formal raise.

13:54Okay. Interesting. You did say that if you'd kind of known more, you might not have gone into... Frozen sounds hard to me. Out of all the categories, you know, I guess a fresh yogurt might be harder, maybe. I don't know. Like, if you were starting again, what would you change?

14:16Vanessa Phillips:I think if I were to start again, I would probably still do Frozen because it's the most authentic to me in terms of, you know, what I miss and what I think there's a real need for. I think there's other categories in grocery stores that are probably easier. Although, you know, that saying, if you put your problems in the middle of the table, you'd probably, and you had 20 people in a room, everyone would take their problems back. So I think every category has its own challenges. But yeah, I mean, Frozen definitely is. is a challenging category for sure. The reason I think I would do it again, though, is because, you know, being gluten free or even not being gluten free, like the way I eat is like I want indulgent, nostalgic, savory, delicious foods, not so much a cracker, but like I love mozzarella sticks, right?

15:11Vanessa Phillips:I love soup dumplings and egg rolls. So these are foods that I love. They're to my son. I think that they also are foods that really bring people together. It's really fun to have a dinner party or a Super Bowl party or to give your kids something after school as a snack that's not just like a chip. So I probably would do it all over again the same way. Maybe I would just have more knowledge. So I wouldn't be so surprised every time there is, you know, a headwind. Yeah. What, what were the biggest obstacles in getting consumers, investors, you know, retailers to buy into the brand? And when we first launched the category, frozen snacks and apps wasn't even a category in natural.

16:10Vanessa Phillips:It wasn't even a door. So we had to educate retailers why gluten-free and not even just gluten-free, like why natural appetizers deserve shelf space. We were really up against very legacy established conventional brands that had an ingredient statement. I mean, they still exist today, but they had an ingredient statement of like 97 ingredients. They had a very, very low price on shelf. And we had to challenge that that is not the way, you know, just because consumers want to indulge doesn't mean that they want to indulge and not have real food. So it, it was, we were very early. We were the first brand to really go into this category and create this category.

17:03Vanessa Phillips:And it was very challenging to get not so much consumers. We knew the consumer demand was there, but it was challenging to get retailers to want to give us space because there was really no one else at that time doing what we were doing. Yeah. Especially beyond the more kind of traditional, natural, like Whole Foods type channel um any any piece of advice that you'd give someone starting a brand in that kind of emerging category literally kind of creating category i just would say you just have to believe in it i mean you have to be obsessed with it you um have to be so stubborn and no matter how many no's you get, no one is going to change your mind that this is the best idea in the world.

17:56Vanessa Phillips:If you're even slightly on the fence, it's not going to work because you will definitely receive a lot more no's than yeses. And, you know, whenever I would get a no, it would just fuel me. It would drive me. I'd be like, oh, I'm going to show them. So, but that's because I believed so deeply in what we were doing. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, and that might be part of your entrepreneurial kind of, you know, personality, I guess. I mean, I've spoken to a lot of founders and there is like, I think you kind of have to have that slightly, like I'll prove them kind of mentality, like taking criticism and then backing down isn't necessarily a winning trait for a founder.

18:46What other kind of skills or traits do you think, looking back, helped you succeed as a founder?

18:54Vanessa Phillips:I think just being kind of more of this generalist and really learning so many different skill sets that are needed to build a brand. So I wasn't ever super skilled in like one area, I really tried to learn very quickly all aspects of my business. And I felt that like in order for me to really be able to build this to the scale and the ability that I wanted, I had to understand every part of this business, every single nook and cranny. So I tried to do my best very early on to learn the aspects of building a business that maybe didn't really even interest me that much or the areas that were kind of more intimidating to me that I would have probably shied away from before starting Feel Good Foods.

19:49Vanessa Phillips:But I just felt it was important that I know all of it, not just the parts of it that I liked. What are the bits that you feel like you like doing and the bits that you hated doing? I love building brands. I love getting really close to my consumer. I love intimately understanding what it is that the consumer wants and misses and what excites consumers. So, you know, the brand side was always really where my interest, you know, was like, I think that where I added the most value. I also was, it was very personal. I felt that I was my consumer. So I loved being out there and meeting our consumers and really listening to them and then using that to drive innovation, branding, and coming out with products that I was hearing that they wanted.

20:48Vanessa Phillips:The operations side of the business, you know, I did not have any experience in manufacturing. I can tell you that growing up, I was not walking a manufacturing floor. So, you know, learning the manufacturing side of the business and just everything it takes from making the product and then that entire journey to having it, you know, end up on a grocery store shelf. I mean, that is that is quite a journey. And I was intimidated by that process early on. It wasn't anything that I had any, you know, history doing. So, you know, it was something that at first I was like, oh, I'm going to leave that to the others to figure out.

21:24Vanessa Phillips:But then I just leaned in. And, you know, now today I love it. I love all the parts of what makes feel good foods feel good foods. But that was definitely the most unfamiliar part for me. Yeah. Interesting. What do you think? I'm always curious, especially having kids and what in your upbringing do you think helped you think like this, helped you with this kind of thought, I'm going to create something for myself. I'm going to be a founder. My father is an entrepreneur. And, you know, from a very early age, I have so many memories of the way that he encouraged me. And, you know, looking back now, he's incredibly profound because I used to go to him a lot with self-doubt.

22:17Vanessa Phillips:I would have you know whether it be like a project at school or you know something that I needed um his you know advice on and he would always like he would never give me like direct advice about what I was coming to him with like if I said to him oh I really need you know you to help me study for this test he wouldn't necessarily sit down and like unpack the material with me but he would always say to me just say yes I can yes I can and I'd be like well that's not what we're talking about right now? We're talking about this big project I have, and I don't know how I'm going to get there. And I really want you to go deep with me on this and figure it out.

22:53Vanessa Phillips:And he would say, yes, I can repeat after me. Yes, I can. And it followed me through my life. I mean, till this day, he's still, you know, we laugh about it now because it was totally his mantra and it resonated. And I remember going through so many different circumstances in my life where I would be walking into a room and I would have that self-doubt again and I would just repeat, yes, I can. Yes, I can. And it fueled me. It really got me through a lot of times of self-doubt. I mean that's pretty amazing and I guess as a I know you you have kids um I'm sure you think about that as you uh as you bring up your kids that's such a uh a nice and and surprisingly easy kind of thing to think about just reinforcing and creating that kind of affirmation yeah and it was so simple you know it was just three words um you know and I think a lot as a parent today I'm always trying to find these profound ways to reach my teenager um but sometimes it's just the most simple straightforward sentiment that works so yeah I think I mean like you know that really resonates with me it's Stephanie it's like how do you I think it is that like classic grace mindset, like which you talked about before, you know, never give up, think about I'm going to show you.

24:23And I think that is part of the yes, I can, you know, it's like, I can, I can do it. If I work hard, I'm going to do it. And yeah, amazing how you've kind of transitioned from like a scrappy startup founder to now scaling and really growing this business from founder to CEO? Like what have been the biggest kind of changes and ways that you've had to change?

24:52Vanessa Phillips:You know, it's so interesting because I was just having this conversation with someone the other day that I still feel like a scrappy founder. I still feel the same as I did when we were a$5 million company. Like it's the mindset actually hasn't changed that much. Um, I, you know, for better or worse, I still, a lot of times just do it myself. And I'm a huge believer in being part of the team and not outside the team. So I very much roll up my sleeves and I just get in there with everyone and do it because I, I operate very much from that place. Like there's a job that needs to get done and let's all just get it done.

25:37Vanessa Phillips:So I don't know if I feel much different now than I did five years ago. Obviously, as the company has grown, the needs have changed and the stakes are higher and it's more complex. But the fundamentals are the same. And I think my mindset is very much the same. I think that when you're a founder, you kind of are always, you know, coming from that place of like, I'm going to be a doer. And I'm going to get out there and I'm going to sell my mission. And I don't know if whether you're a$5 million brand or a$100 million brand, that that really ever changes. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. What's the hardest scaling decision you've had to make so far?

26:24Vanessa Phillips:I think the one decision that we kind of always come back to a lot is you can have an idea for a product that tastes delicious. And, you know, you all as a team get really excited and rally behind it and you, you know, think that it would, you know, be received really well by consumers. But that's not that's not where the work stops. Right. So not every idea is an idea that we can execute on and scale and launch. And I think that that's challenging because sometimes I just fall in love with a product and I want I want to launch it so badly. But the economics don't make sense or, you know, it doesn't work with our manufacturing system or process.

27:15Vanessa Phillips:So I think it's you can for me, I've fallen in love with products before and foods and I and I've been sad that I can't bring it to life and I'll and I'll become attached to it. and you know and I'll like still dream about the bench samples like months later that I no longer have so I think just like getting attached to to products that I'm you know unable but I've had products that I have loved and we've brought them to market years later years later like five years later so it's sometimes just not the right time right now how do you uh you know I think your your brand has a really clear kind of almost you know framework for you know for innovation you you're at the in section of comfort food and specific kind of natural and dietary needs so you have a kind of you have clear guidelines but how do you think about innovation and figuring out you know do you do consumer research how do you test new products to figure out if there's product market fit like what is your process for beyond the can we make it will it be profitable etc like how do you figure out if this is going to be a something that consumers want i will the process has evolved um if i'm being completely candid the process early on was just me and my me and my partner yeah and we i would say to him i missed this and then he would make it and then i'd say now I missed this.

28:53Vanessa Phillips:And then he would make that. But that obviously has evolved over the years. We now rely a lot on data. We look at kind of the total frozen food market, and then we try and find voids and see what's missing. We take a lot of inspiration from what's happening outside grocery stores. We look at trends in restaurants. We, you know, look at, you know, behavior of, you know, how people are eating, what they're gravitating more towards these days. We pool our consumers a lot. We'll ask our social community, what do you want to see us make next? So, you know, it's a lot that goes into it. We have an in-house R &D team and we are constantly intentionally cooking up food.

29:46Vanessa Phillips:I mean, it's every day. It's like, what's for lunch? And, you know, we also get a lot of inspiration from one another. And we do a lot of roundtable conversations. We talk about food. We talk about what we like, what we don't like. And sometimes we just land on something and we're like, yes, this is it. This is it. Amazing. How has your consumer changed over the years? Like, I feel like you're in a category that in many ways stays the same. And then in other ways, you've got like, you know, the growth of gluten-free becoming mainstream. You've got GLP-1s coming in, you know, changing everything.

30:26You've got things like Maha in there. Like how do you think about your consumers and your potential consumers and how have they changed in the last few years?

30:36Vanessa Phillips:I think our consumer base has just grown significantly. When we first started, we were pretty niche and we were really speaking mostly to the gluten-free consumer, whether it was the celiac consumer or the gluten intolerant consumer. I mean, there's many reasons why someone goes on a gluten-free diet, but I would say that was our core consumer. And today, the majority of our consumers actually don't have any issues with gluten. um you know we still have that you know that very loyal consumer base that is gluten-free but um most of the consumers don't have any issues with gluten a lot of them don't even realize that it's gluten-free or they we call them the curious consumer so they are shopping the frozen aisle and they're looking for something that's convenient um you know a lot of moms will buy are foods for their kids or they're looking for, you know, a meal hack, right?