The Playbook for Busting Myths: How to Change Consumers’ Minds

0:00Where opportunity comes from is if you have a strong opinion and are sort of sitting on a truth that nobody else knows. What is something that you strongly believe that others don't yet? And for me, it was that we had stumbled upon this golden nugget of microwave cooking being a really great thing. Hey there, I'm Shuang Esther Shan, and you're listening to Shopify Masters, your companion for starting and building a business. Some companies are in the business of myth busting. Any Day is a great example. They've sold more than 200 ,000 pieces of high-quality cookware designed for the microwave.

0:47That's right. Microwaves aren't just for warming up frozen dinners anymore. Celebrity chef David Chang is also a big fan and advocate for the brand. Founder Stephanie Chang is here to share how any day is making microwaves cool again. Stephanie, thank you so much for joining me. So nice to be here. Very, very excited to chat because we all probably have a microwave at our home. We don't think twice about it. So how did you actually discover the powers of the microwave and wanted to build a whole business around it? It's funny because I think if you had asked me three years ago whether I would be where I am today in piping up the microwave on a daily basis as many times as I do, I would have thought you were crazy.

1:36I used it just like probably you do. Actually, how 90 % of America does, which is I used it to reheat my leftovers and reheat coffee. It was very serendipitous and basically by happenstance that I happened to stumble upon this idea that you not just can cook raw food from scratch in the microwave, but that it's actually an amazing thing to do that. I mean, like not just fast and hands off, which is generally what people associate with the microwave, but also it is really delicious, first and foremost. It's also healthier and very, very safe. And I'm sure people have thoughts about that, too. But stumbling upon it was lucky.

2:22I basically was in the process of creating a product that was actually originally intended to be basically like a high-end food storage container. It was a glass bowl, had a glass lid, had some silicone around the lid to keep that moisture in. I was not familiar with the fact that you could put raw food into the microwave and have it come out well. but one day we just decided like hey what else can this product do and so we decided like what if we roast a chicken in this thing and so we roasted it in the oven it roasted like a perfectly normal roasting dish but then we're like well what can we do to make this like better somehow and make it faster and we decided to put that raw chicken into the microwave in this glass container with a glass lid.

3:16And we were like, okay, cool. Well, maybe we'll like start this thing in the microwave and then finish it in the oven. And when we took it out of the microwave, lo and behold, what we had was this like insanely juicy and tender and flavorful chicken, like a very delicious chicken. And we're like, what is this? How is this possible? and it led me down this rabbit hole. Honestly, it started with a lot of internet research where I was Googling everything I possibly could about the microwave. I was Googling New York Times microwave, Food 52 microwave, the kitchen microwave, like all of my favorite food outlets.

3:58And that was where my background was. I was constantly very into food and in the food industry in different ways. And I noticed in these articles that the chefs that I had a lot of respect for actually had very positive things to say about cooking from scratch in the microwave. And it hit me then that there was something here that the larger part of society didn't realize, which is the microwave can cook really good food really quickly and really easily. Yeah, I love the way that you described cooking in the microwave, nutritious, flavorful, safe. These are some of the terms that might be counterintuitive to our listeners.

4:47So I bet you're actually working against some of these misconceptions. exceptions. So how did you actually start to convince people and actually get them on board to cook with the microwave? When I was developing this product, so pre-launch, it was actually a big worry of mine. How am I going to change that behavior when people are so accustomed to cooking out the stove, cooking in the oven? And in some ways, there's similarity to the Instant Pot. Think about like the Instant Pot and pressure cookers overall, maybe 10, 15 years ago before they were a big thing in the U.S. and in most households.

5:27But back in that time, people had a similar conception of the pressure cooker, right? Where it's like, it's not very safe or like, how do I use it? And maybe it's like not as healthy. And, you know, there was lots of like barrier to entry there. The microwave was the same. I think it actually still is the same way. And so we knew what we had to do was get credible, respected people on board with this idea that you can cook food from scratch in the microwave. Or even, like I mentioned, like get the people who already believe that to say it more loudly and to put themselves out there to be like, hey, the microwave is an appliance that's in 90 percent of Americans' homes, but you are underutilizing it.

6:16And take that scariness away. Bust the myth of people think that the microwave is unsafe and it kills nutrients, but the opposite is actually true. It's very safe. It's highly regulated by the FDA. And there's this conception that if you stand in front of the microwave, it's bad for you, right? But that's been debunked many times. And same with the nutrition piece, actually, that as counterintuitive as it may seem, microwave cooking is the healthiest way to cook. And by healthy, I quite literally mean like the most nutrient dense. so broccoli when cooked in the microwave versus when you steam it or when you boil it or when you pan fry it or when you roast it has more vitamins and minerals from microwaving versus any other method also your partnership with celebrity chef david chang is a big part of changing the narrative i'm a big fan of his restaurants and content so why was he the right person to be the spokesperson for any day?

7:19And what did you want to achieve from this partnership? I had known that Dave was pro microwave from doing some of that internet research. He had posted something on Twitter, maybe like a year before that was like, the microwave is the most underutilized appliance in your kitchen. Give it some love. And since then he had posted a couple of things about like how it's so amazing. And so serendipitously, I actually was on a call with Dave during COVID. and this is like deep, deep COVID, about a completely other topic. We had gotten connected through a mutual friend. And on his own, Dave mentioned to me that he thinks that the microwave is this amazing tool.

8:03And I was like, oh, I'm already working on any day. I have to tell him about it. I knew he would be a perfect candidate for us because Dave is known for being a little counterculture. Even back in the day, a lot of people credit him with popularizing ramen in the U.S., popularizing pork buns, popularizing MSG, or at least like reversing the narrative around MSG. That's something that Dave himself has told me that he deeply values is that he likes to take the things that society has thrown away, the treasures that society has thrown away, unnecessarily and bring them back to the forefront to show how valuable they are.

8:49There's almost no better contender for that concept than microwave cooking. But Dave is so passionate about that narrative. And I think that's a good filter for anyone looking for the right spokesperson, the right influencer to talk about their brand. Find someone who is really genuinely bought into this because that comes through instantaneously. And even when we launched, we were so fortunate to be able to launch with Dave. I credit Dave with taking Any Day from zero to one, basically. It's like getting that word out there to reach a critical mass and getting them to hear about it in the right way.

9:27He basically filmed himself with one hand on his iPhone and he would use his other hand to like chop potatoes and put these potatoes in the any day dish and then put it in the microwave. And so it was like Dave Chang makes mashed potatoes with one hand on Instagram in like five minutes. And it was very, very resonant with his audience and our audience as a whole. yeah I love watching his videos and I remember scrolling social media and seeing him like make different dishes like pastas with any day so really really happy that we're getting behind the scenes of that and I know that you had an extensive career within food so it made sense that you got connected with Dave but for founders who are starting out even if they had extensive industry experience, they might feel intimidated to actually reach out or speak up about their idea.

10:25So what is your advice for approaching someone to actually be an advocate and be a spokesperson for your brand? Ideally, you would find someone who can connect you because that goes a long way, right? It's coming from, you know, a mutual friend. Barring that, it never hurts to just try. Like if they resonate with the concept of what you're creating, that will be that. And a conversation will get started and a relationship will be formed. The first critical piece is what we talked about, which is like, make sure you find the right person. And then like the relationship itself, I think we're very fortunate to have a very close relationship with Dave and he's really in it as well.

11:09So there's like a closeness to it that's less formal. Like when we brainstorm together, the vibe is like such that he is like a part of our team. We're throwing ideas against the wall. I'm like, what if we did it this way? What if we framed it this way? And I think that type of relationship comes if you have made that direct reach out from founder to celebrity, take matters into your own hands and just go for it. Put yourself out there. If you get rejected, you get rejected, but at least you've tried. And like maintaining that relationship is also a task on his own because I understand, you know, David Chang's got his restaurants, his media arm of the company, his own podcast.

11:52So having him advise and create content for any day is also taking up his time. So how do you manage that relationship and still make sure that he's a part of the narrative? I think the best way to approach that is allow the person you're working with to create the content that they want to create, as opposed to trying to fit them into something that you have designated. For example, right now, Dave is passionate about his freezer and making best use of his freezer. And he literally just like makes full meals in the any day or otherwise puts in the any day and puts the entire any day dish into his freezer.

12:30And so it's really easy to reheat afterwards and to feed his family in that way because he is so busy. And I love that. Like, that's an awesome angle and not one that we've talked about much. But if Dave wants to talk about that, that's amazing. I love it. So it's similarly like when we've worked with other influencers, the more that that content feels genuine to them, the better it will perform in the end. So we like to give a lot of creative license to our partners. And of course, having a celebrity spokesperson is just one part of Any Day's success. We're going to chat about how you were able to follow up with your brand messaging and interactive content.

13:16I'm chatting with Stephanie Chen, founder and CEO of Any Day. If you're enjoying today's conversation or if you want to give feedback for the show, please leave us a review wherever you're listening and give us a follow or subscribe if you haven't yet. It helps others to discover the show. Thank you so much. So the myth busting is just the start of the customer journey. Now, once they get onto any day's ecosystem, the website, there's so many recipes and great content. Tell us more about that. So for us, once I was on this journey of like realizing the potential of microwave cooking, to me, it begged the question of like, well, if this thing of microwave cooking is so great, why hasn't it been done before?

14:05And to me, it comes down to two things after you get over the hump of the misconceptions. One is you have to have the right product that is specifically designed to make the best food possible in a microwave. And that's exactly what we did with the NAA dish. And the second piece is what you were referring to, which is it's so important to teach people how to do it. We're in a product category that is a brand new one. We're not one that is your typical cookware. If you look for like microwave recipes online, there is no single source of content that is reputable, that is good, that is tried and true and tested and actually based in expertise in science.

14:51So one of the key pillars of our strategy is to be that resource, is to have that content of really high quality tested microwave recipes that work. And that's a key part of it because it's for us, even if you had the best piece of microwave cookware in the world, it wouldn't actually matter if the consumer didn't know how to use it. For us, it impacts every stage of the flywheel, but definitely it impacts conversion because someone comes to our website, they see that you can make really perfect rice or crispy bacon or like flaky fish or, you know, tender chicken, like all of these different possibilities of what you can make in the microwave.

15:38And that seeing something that resonates with them, a food that resonates with them is very, very likely to impact conversion for us. but it's also a huge piece of onboarding. So a consumer buys the product. The last thing I want is for that product to sit in their closet or sit in their cabinet unused because they weren't sure how to use it. I want our consumers to, within the first 24 hours, cook something from scratch in the any day. It can be anything that you have in your fridge. And we want to make it so easy and so low barrier to take that first step because we know that the experience of cooking in any day in the microwave is so magical that it spins that delight piece of the flywheel so much faster and that word of mouth continues on.

16:28I love that because like you said, if I enjoy this cooking experience and I have people over, I'm going to tell my friends about it. So then whoever's using any day ends up being an advocate for more people to try microwave cooking. So we've put in a bunch of custom functionality into our Shopify site. One of the biggest pieces is on our recipes. So if you click and do any recipe on our website, it allows the consumer to select different things from different dropdowns to customize their experience. There's one difficulty with regards to microwave cooking, which is that everyone's microwave is a little bit different.

17:07So I have a 1 ,000 watt microwave. Someone else might have a 1 ,200 watt microwave. Someone else might have a 700 watt microwave. And those wattage differences, which translate to essentially just power differences, make a big difference in terms of the cook time. And because we're so focused on having a really optimal user experience with our product, it was really important to us to invest the time and effort and money to build this custom functionality on our site, which allows you to select microwave wattage in a dropdown, select the serving size that you want in a dropdown, and have the content of the recipe update dynamically to show an updated cook time, for example.

17:53So grateful that you brought that up because that is exactly what I wanted to ask you. AnyDay's website is literally one of my favorites to browse because aside from just the custom capabilities for the recipe page, even your homepage, your product page is so seamless. There's little GIF-like videos that just smoothly interact with you as you're browsing. So tell us the process of actually enhancing the user experience online and what are some tools that really help to create the site that it is today. I'm so happy to hear you say that. I will say very much a constant work in progress. It is never over.

18:35We have like a monthly or quarterly check-in with my team, my designer, my marketing team, where we scour every part of the website and we're like, is this working for us? It is a balance of gut feel with data. It's certainly not everything data. If we wanted to A-B test everything, it would just take a long time. And we might not always have the traffic to be able to come up with a statistical difference between A-B. But we also are consumers ourselves and have a gut feel sense of what will resonate based on our qualitative and quantitative customer surveys and talking to consumers and asking them what resonates with you.

19:20What are they cooking? What are they jiving with in our messaging? And we really try and take the lens of like, if you're a new consumer that has no idea that you can cook food from scratch in the microwave, what is the series of steps that is going to convince you to make a purchase? And over time, we've developed different blocks that on our homepage that are initially showing like what the value prop is. So like hook them with the benefit that they're going to see. And then once you do that, pull on that string a little bit more. So now we have an actually new homepage block feature that is like cook X in Y minutes.

20:00So like cook perfect rice in 22 minutes, cook crispy bacon in five minutes, cook foolproof eggs in two minutes. so that, again, it bangs down on that focused point of cook very, very quickly and very, very well. And then we show the how-tos, like the step one, step two, step three, step four, and then show those recipes. But yeah, it's a constant work in progress. Right now, I think we are using Google Optimize to run a couple of A-B tests, especially on the PDPs. And it's important to us to have really good creative assets to pull from. So we invest a lot of time in creative, especially in, well, a combo of both photo and video and GIF.

20:43Because we know, especially on the video and GIF front, it's important to be able to show consumers how this product works in practice. Because it can be, without that, it can feel a little bit intangible. speaking to photos videos and gifts i think like this is something maybe founders don't realize until they have to execute it is the fact that having consistency and almost like a style guide to how you approach content is very important because for any day it looks like everything is in the same lighting everything is so cohesive and achieving that i'm sure took a lot of difficulties. So tell us, what advice would you give to achieve that cohesiveness in content?

21:29It is important to start with an awesome foundation. So, you know, we worked with an agency to establish a brand identity, establish some rules. But then just as importantly is the way you go about executing that identity and that vision. We have an awesome team of people. our marketing team runs awesome creative shoots, photo shoots, video shoots, that where it is really intentional to be cohesive and intentional to have recipe photos shot in a certain way, lifestyle photos shot in a certain way, to have that consistency. Doesn't mean though, that we can't continue to experiment and push the boundaries of our brand, which is something that we always strive to do.

22:11And that is one of the beautiful things about being a D2C brand, or at least like starting out as a DTC brand is that you can have a hypothesis of where you are today and that might change. And you could test that pretty easily, right? You could test that on your website. You could test that on Facebook ads. You'd get a response on what's resonating pretty quickly. So we use that as a tool a lot as well. Once you have great content is also making it easy for media outlets who want to write about any day to cover you. Tell us how important PR has been to actually get the word of mouth out there to a bigger audience.

22:51It's been critical because, again, like for any day, because it's a new category, any source of credibility is going to be of utmost importance to us when we are convincing people. So Dave was a big piece of that. And PR is honestly another humongous piece because when you read Bon Appetit or Food and Wine or The Kitchen or Epicurious, write a piece that talks about how they were shocked by how good the food coming out of an any day was. It's a very, very big deal. And it has a huge impact to our conversion rate, too. So it's like the people that arrive on our site are very likely to convert when they read something like that because it is from an outside organic source.

23:34It's not the brand telling you like, oh, we are so great. And I think especially in today's world, PR and organic traction generally, whether it's from PR or influencers, is really, really important to stand out from the crowd. There are so many brands out there. And it's actually an amazing thing for entrepreneurs to be able to use Shopify, spin up a website, put it out there, see if something is resonating. but it does make it a lot harder to stand out. And so those organic sources of credibility are the basis of the future of how consumers make decisions and already are today. And I think our listeners are in similar boats.

24:22They want to get their stories out there. So any advice for approaching their PR strategy and reaching out to media outlets? The most important one is that you have to have a compelling story to tell. and there has to be a reason for the outlet to write about you. Like, what is your angle of difference here? For us, we were lucky because the idea of cooking in a microwave is quite foreign and is an interesting hook for readers to read about. This idea of making the microwave cool again is a nice story. For others, that is the biggest challenge with PR is having the right thing to say. Yeah. I mean, this is what I wanted to ask you as like the heart of it, because when you were mentioning in the beginning of the show, you were already developing products that were for food storage or it could be used even to cook in the oven.

25:16So you could have totally gone another direction where there was already an existing market. You could have gotten some market share from customers who are looking for better quality food storage or oven cookware. But you decided to take this completely different path. Like, it sounds intimidating. Did you ever get talked out of this idea? Or has friends and family told you, like, why don't we just take that first easier approach instead of trying to bust myths and create a whole new category, essentially? Absolutely. Absolutely. It was a big struggle in the beginning as we were developing this pre-launch.

25:55And there was a lot of second guessing because of how difficult it was. We even talked to some bigger companies and hinted at the idea of like, have you ever considered anything with a microwave? And they were like, oh no, like we would never touch anything related to microwaves. Consumers feel too deeply about this to be able to change their minds. And that's scary when somebody tells you that that's their assessment of the situation, it would have been in many ways easier to take that other path of, you know, let's go with high-end food storage. And Any Day is actually a brand within Meyer Corporation, which is actually my family's business.

26:33And so my dad was deeply involved in talking to me about where we should take this. It was difficult to get him over the hump of the microwave. And I ended up pushing hard to convince us to go into this microwave cooking direction instead of like the safer food storage one. But I did it because this is relevant for a lot of entrepreneurs. Where opportunity comes from, I think, is if you have a strong opinion and are sort of sitting on a truth that nobody else knows? What is something that you strongly believe that others don't yet? And for me, it was that we had stumbled upon this golden nugget of microwave cooking being a really great thing.

27:25And I felt that like the truth was on our side, as long as we could tell the right story and get the word out there, there was potential and there was that gap in the market and white space. And so I stuck to my belief and I'm glad it did because it did pay off. Yeah, no, it's super interesting to hear the behind the scenes of those discussions happening as your product developing. And this is just one part of the switch in users' lifestyle. What are some other ways you're expanding and growing any day in terms of new products or content to continue that consumer change? Our core value prop as a company is that we save time and make it really easy to cook good food.

28:14The microwave was the first frontier, I would say, in terms of utilizing this thing that's already in your kitchen. The second frontier is the freezer. Again, everyone has one. But they may not be utilizing it in the most maximum way possible. So earlier this year, we released products that are freezer trays that are intended to work very in a very complementary way with the Any Day dishes. So the idea is like you can cook food in your Any Day very quickly. You can also cook extra food, put the leftovers in your freezer trays. And then when you're ready to eat again, you just pop them out and then you reheat them in the microwave.

28:58So dinner, instead of taking an hour and a half, takes one and a half minutes to reheat. That is really powerful. For me, I'm actually a fairly new mother. I have a son who's 16 months old. And if he's hungry, he needs food like yesterday. day. So I need to be ready and have food ready to go for him. So like I make use of the freezer all the time in that case. Amazing. Well, I think we'll love to watch some of those content about prepping different types of food that you could store in your freezer, whether it's baby food or for ourselves. Thank you so much for joining us today, Stephanie. So nice to be here.

29:41Thank you so much for having me. That's Stephanie Chen, founder and CEO of AnyDay. And thank you for listening to this episode of Shopify Masters. Our show is produced by Megan Coyle and it's mixed and engineered by Miku Betlam. Gogo Zogger and Matt Schwartz round out the rest of our production team. Benjamin Gottlieb is our supervising producer and I'm Shuang Esther Shan. We'll catch you next time on Shopify Masters.