Methodology - High-quality, Fully Cooked Meals for Busy People
This episode is brought to you by Sendlane. Methodology wants its consumers to feel creative, artistic, and proud when preparing its meal kits, says Julie Nguyen, founder of the meal prep service designed with sustainable ingredients and packaging. "We don't want to create a completely soulless experience where you're just popping something hideous into a microwave, and it's purely functional," Julie says. "There should be an artistry to it." Methodology's meals are delivered in glass jars, a decision that Julie says came for several reasons. "I want people to open (the refrigerator) up and be able to see all of the beautiful rainbow-colored foods that are going to help you feel amazing today, and they're going to taste yummy," she says. "Also, glass jars are amazing at keeping food really, really fresh." The same care and dedication go into the food's ingredients too. "It's all about using whole, unprocessed foods, she says. "We don't have any gluten. We don't have any refined flours. We don't use any wheat. We don't use refined sugars. Basically (we) avoid refined carbohydrates. We don't use dairy because so many people don't realize they have food sensitivities to dairy until they stop eating it." That mission can have its challenges, Julie says. Because of the meals' costs, providing value is paramount. "From the moment people get to the website to the moment they've eaten their last bite of food and are returning the jars to us, it needs to be seamless," she says. "To do something so complicated in a seamless way - in a world that's very labor-intensive - we've had to build custom proprietary technology that makes the lives of our chefs and warehouse workers easier." Future plans at Methodology include developing curated food experiences designed for "health milestones," she says. Those could consist of an upcoming wedding, a new baby, a relationship change, and more. The curated meals would be more targeted with specific goals. "There is no right one way to eat, but there are different ways you can eat more effectively based on different goals," Julie says. "I want to take Methodology to the next level where it's very targeted based on what you want to achieve with nutrition." In Part 2, Julie talks about: * The artistry of meal prep. * Why the meals are presented in glass jars. * Why the meal kits are dairy-free. * The challenges of providing value in a labor-intensive space. * The debate over the meals' cost. * Future business plans, including curated meal experiences. * Words of wisdom for other entrepreneurs. Join Ramon Vela and Julie Nguyen as they break down the inside story on The Story of a Brand. For more on Methodology, visit: https://www.gomethodology.com/ Subscribe and Listen to the podcast on all major apps. Simply search for “The Story of a Brand,” or click here to listen on your favorite podcast player: Listen now. * This episode is also brought to you by Sendlane. If all DTC companies were forced to turn off Facebook ads, they'd be dead on arrival. Why is that? They over-invest in paid acquisition and under-invest in retention. Luckily, Sendlane makes it easy to solve this problem. Sendlane is an E-Commerce Customer Experience Platform helping hundreds of DTC brands to tighten their existing customer relationships. Sendlane automates personalized customer experiences through Welcome and Abandoned Cart workflows, SMS, Deep Data Integrations with Shopify and WooCommerce, multi-store functionality, and much more. Plus, they don't stand for lazy customer support. Their San-Diego-based team has an average 1-minute response time from a live human, making sure you never get stuck in a chat queue ever again. Curious about how Sendlane can help your DTC brand grow? Schedule a demo with a Specialist. Visit https://www.sendlane.com/story