877 Neka Pasquale: Founder & Chief Product Officer of Urban Remedy

0:00I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be.

0:09Kara Goldin:You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out. So your only choice should be, go focus on what you can control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin Show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can't wait to get started. Let's go. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Hiring Pro. Hi, Kara here. For small businesses, every hire matters, but so does your time.

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5:19Kara Goldin:The food industry talks a lot about health, but every once in a while, someone builds a brand from a much deeper belief that food is not just fuel, it can actually be healing. And that's Nika Pasquale. Long before clean, organic, anti-inflammatory eating became part of the mainstream conversation, Nika was working with patients through acupuncture, Chinese medicine, nutrition, and lifestyle changes, helping people heal and feel better from the inside. And in 2009, she founded an incredible company called Urban Remedy, which is such an amazing company. I've been so excited to watch it grow over the years with a simple but powerful mission to reimagine the food system and teach the world that food really is healing.

6:10Kara Goldin:So today, Urban Remedy offers clean, convenient, freshly prepared meals, snacks, cold-pressed juices, and shakes that are certified organic, non-GMO, gluten-free, dairy-free, and refined sugar-free. The brand has grown significantly and is now a national brand as well, starting from its roots in the Bay Area. So I'm really looking forward to digging in and speaking with Nika today about building a brand that she has with a healing philosophy. So, so nice to meet you, Nika. Nice to meet you, too. Thank you. Absolutely. So for listeners who are just discovering Urban Remedy, how do you describe the brand and what makes it different from other wellness brands, prepared food brands?

7:04Kara Goldin:How do you describe it? I describe it as, you know, obviously, I think one of our biggest differentiators is we're certified organic. So I love to start with that. We're certified organic. And I feel like we make food that naturally lowers inflammation. So we make food that is minimally processed. We have fresh food, meaning we have salads with shorter shelf life. We have bowls and salads. We do all day parts. So we have breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, juices, shots. I craft everything, like I said, to naturally lower inflammation or have functional benefits, but really utilizing the simplicity of food's innate healing power.

7:47So in Chinese medicine, every ingredient has a taste and a temperature and a medicinal property. And so I try to make balanced and delicious offerings for people. Like if you have a cold, we've got, you know, a great shot called booster shot. We have like a great inflammatory reducing shot with like pineapple and turmeric and cayenne and ginger. So I really like to tune into the medicinal properties of foods and then incorporate those into items so that you can eat food that really tastes good, but also makes you feel good. And one of the other parts of Urban Remedy that I love, especially now that there's so much spraying of glyphosate in our forests and our water systems and monocropping farms, I really love to educate people on like every time you choose organic and you're supporting organic farms, organic companies, you're really creating land where you know for sure that is not being sprayed.

8:48And so there's so many benefits to supporting organic.

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11:14You know, I don't think so. I mean, I had some mentors when I was in acupuncture school in my first few years having my practice that really kind of educated me on looking at the energetics of food, meaning like food that's grown like in organic, mineral-rich soils, much more nutritious for you than food that's grown in dead soil. And it's interesting because that was before regenerative farming was really a thing. And now what we're seeing with regenerative farming is really that. But no, there was no company that was at that point that was really used looking at food as healing. I mean, I think part of my interest in doing this was that I was really discovering my practice, like how many inflammatory, chronic inflammatory diseases were related to diet.

12:01And that's when I was like, God, if most people just at least change their diet, that piece of the puzzle that they could regain their health. I mean, along with other things, but that's a really important piece of the puzzle.

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15:09Kara Goldin:So did you ever think that you would be starting a company that not only have products, but then physical locations and then products that were beyond drinks into food nationwide. Did you have this vision that this is what it would be from the start? Or did you really feel like I want to solve a problem for my patients, consumers and see where it goes? You know, I mean, initially, it was just local, you know, here in Marin. And I was like, Oh, I'm just going to do this kind of as a side thing. And then people just started loving it. And then I, somebody called me and wanted to make an investment at the perfect time.

15:54And so it all kind of fell into place. I would say that, you know, I started with a little store in San Rafael and that we grew out of that within six months. And that's when I was like, Oh my gosh, like I thought we were going to be there forever. And so we've steadily grown, you know, over the last 13 years. And now we're national. And I really never thought we would be, you know, like national in our own branded, you know, Whole Foods kiosk. Like that to me was something that I never thought of. I really was just doing this for local people that I thought, you know, wanted to eat clean and healthy and wanted it to be easy.

16:31And, you know, just like this grab and go kind of clean, organic food.

16:35Kara Goldin:I'd love to go back to those early days of 2009. We have a lot of entrepreneurs and also a ton of students too who are not yet entrepreneurs, but maybe aspiring entrepreneurs that look at your company today and think, You must have had tons of experience. You must have known exactly how to get into Whole Foods or open a store. But I'd love to hear kind of those early days of 2000 when you launched in San Rafael. What did those early days actually look like? Yeah, no, I had really no experience. I mean, I always think that, you know, I mean, I had experience running a business because I had my own acupuncture business and I had worked, you know, since I was 16.

17:30So I had a kind of a business sense. But, you know, when I when Urban Remedies started going gangbusters, you know, I was a CEO, I did procurement, and I had, you know, zero experience with any of that stuff. And so, you know, the first few years, I just made so many mistakes and I just learned. But it was so fun and exciting because as I was learning, it was just really cool to see how things work and how to grow. And then once you get into your rhythm and you've made a bunch of mistakes and then you kind of get on the right track, you know, it's so fun. And I don't think anybody, no matter what you do, even, you know, like with my Chinese medicine, I have my master's in traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture.

18:12But, you know, when you start your own practice, no matter what it is or your own business, I don't think you're ever totally prepared unless you've worked in an industry before, right? You just don't know. And there's so many different facets of business and you can't be good at everything, right? And so if you're lucky enough that your business like takes on and grows and expands, it's really good to surround yourself with other people that have experience or that are really good at what they do because you just can't be good at everything.

18:40Kara Goldin:I found too in the early days of launching Hint that I kept thinking, I've got to get these experienced people in and then they're going to wave their wand and make it so much easier. And what I didn't realize was that starting a company from ground zero is very different than coming from a company that is, you know, a hundred million dollar company or a billion dollar company, right? Did you have any of those moments too, where you felt like, you know, you're hiring people in, they're going to just solve the problem, but you realize that a lot of this is just, you know, learning, as you said, but also making a ton of mistakes.

19:24Totally. I mean, when I hired my first CEO, I was like, God, I don't know. Like, Like, you know, I was really worried about it. And I thought, but it's going to make my life so much easier. And when you start a business that's your baby and it's something that's like a little bit more niche, you know, your vision really guides it because it's, you know, you've created it. This is something that you believe in. And so it's very hard to find. You can find, and we have so many at Urban Remedy, people who so believe in our mission and our vision and they're so aligned with what we're doing and why we're doing it.

19:59but I mean, in all these years, I feel like I'm still the person that like holds that thing. And so, you know, especially when you take investment, right? Because then, you know, you have investors that want your business to grow and turn into, you know, get to this certain place. And so it's really easy along that pathway to make business decisions that might not be in alignment with how you see your business. And so it's critically important to, you know, always hold that vision for your company because it could easily, and I've seen it happen so many times, you know, go sideways if you're not really holding that vision.

20:40Kara Goldin:Yeah, I couldn't agree more. So when you launched and you went beyond the San Rafael store, was there a certain product or offering that made you feel like, okay, this is going to make it. I mean, people are really paying attention, and I just need to do more of that. You know, because, you know, we were doing juice cleanses kind of before people really started doing juice cleanses. So those were like really, really popular. But then I started doing a bunch of different food items and snacks and shots. And so I guess like when I look back, I'm like, God, I just I did a lot. You know, I did. We had a time where we had like 100 SKUs, you know.

21:26And so probably if I was talking to my younger self, I'd be like, you know what? Just really focus on maybe like less complexity. But because people love, you know, people want differentiation and they get sick of salads and then you want to do something seasonal. you know, doing all of the day parts is really nice for people because then people could be like, oh, I'm going to have an Urban Remedy shake for breakfast. And then I'm going to have a salad for lunch. And then I can have like a dessert or I can have a shot or, you know, so we really try to give that to people because a lot of people, you know, don't know how to eat healthy.

22:04The recipes are pretty complex. And so if you were to go and like try to buy everything and make it, it would take a lot of time and be really expensive. So there's always been like, like our bars have been just like, people go crazy. We are matcha bar, for example. We were out of it for a while and people are like emailing me. This is the one thing in my life that I can't live without. I can't explain it to you, but it's I wake up and I look forward to it every morning. You've ruined my life because it's out of stock. And people are very passionate about their favorite items, which I love. And so we have a lot of that, like people like different things, but I would say like our matcha bars, our chias, our shots, our meals, you know, we, people are fans of different products.

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24:19Kara Goldin:And even maybe even a few years in, people were, it wasn't mainstream yet. So how did you educate people without being in front of them? You know, when we first launched into the Whole Foods kiosk, I was at first, I was like, God, I just don't know. I just didn't see Urban Remedy like that. And, you know, and then my CEO at that time said to me, he's like, Nika, you know, this is a way to get this healing food to more people. And if your goal is to heal as many people as you can through diet, and that's when like my brain kind of changed a little bit. And I was like, yeah, that's, that's totally true.

24:56And so my philosophy around food has not changed very much. It's like really offering simple food that is naturally lowers inflammation, which means very colorful food. So we use a lot of different herbs and fruits and vegetables that are really rich in color that have like natural antioxidants and phytonutrients that naturally prevent different kinds of cancers and naturally lower inflammation. And when you take food and keep it as close to as close as you can, in its natural state, it naturally has a lower glycemic index, has higher water content, and it's just more healing. So that's what we've always tried to do Like, you know, somebody recently said to me, like, why don't you add, you know, something functional that was like a powder into a salad dressing?

25:45And I was like, you know what? Our salad dressings are simple and not as part of the reason that it's so beautiful. It's like olive oil has natural polyphenols. We don't use canola oil. We don't use soy oil. We don't use corn oil. We use, you know, a beautiful olive oil, apple cider vinegar, garlic, fresh herbs. Like you don't need to tell a different story. Like this story is still relevant. It's like simple and tastes good and adding powders and things that are functional is just going to make it processed, like celebrate the beauty of the simplicity of the ingredients. So that's really kind of my philosophy around it.

26:21Kara Goldin:So innovation, especially when you're going into some of the chains that you've gone into, everybody wants something new. Right. So how have you what's your thoughts on that? I mean, how often are you developing something new versus, you know, just continuing to really focus on the core? Yeah, I mean, I feel like I'm constantly developing new stuff. So I think people like Whole Foods loves newness and innovation. But, you know, I try to keep it into the framework of what Urban Remedy is already doing. I mean, we'll continually, you know, do like change out salads and things like that just because people want newness and shots and things like that.