Hi everyone, you're listening to superwomen today's guest is Rachel Drury the founder of Daily Harvest. You might think you're getting all your vegetables in but Rachel doesn't think you are and she created an easy accessible affordable way for you to make sure you're getting your healthy fruits and vegetables in that. They're not laddered with pesticides and we talked about why that's important. Take a listen. So today's guest is the founder of Daily Harvest Rachel drawer. Hi. Hi. Hello. Well, I first became aware of what you had found it. I think someone sent so much. Maybe it was when you launch to my office. That's like what the hell is this? So now obsessed with the cookie bites and the all the great things. So will you tell my listeners a little bit about what Daily Harvest is? Yeah. So we basically make all of the food that you always want, but you never have time to eat. So as you're scrolling down your feed looking at These bloggers who have hours to make food look beautiful. And then they Instagram it to make it look even more beautiful. Meanwhile, you're eating like a sad bar or something that is less than you know, you should be eating the that's when we swoop at and we're here to solve that problem. And you've also solved it by making it really easy and portable. Yes. Absolutely. So we like to say we're for people who know they should be eating but don't have the time and the only way you can solve for that is by making really clean food that is Super convenient. So what were you doing before this? Yeah, and what got, what was that? Aha moment to start. This is working at got group at the time and I was hungry. I was you know, I had meetings booked back-to-back and I never had time to like go to the bathroom or eat food. So I would run into the Pantry in between meetings and there'd be stale birthday cake sitting there and I'd be like, all right, this will do and I just I knew better but I never had the time to really eat. That I aspired to so for myself. I had to solve the problem but then when I realized it wasn't just a Rachel problem. This is a problem. A lot of people were having it where it was a problem. A lot of people were having, you know, I saw the opportunity to solve for this need state which is you know, busy and hungry the two don't work together now, they're terrible when you make really fucked up choices. Yeah, really? I can't tell you my husband now carries like food with him because at a certain point if you're hungry I like your cognitive abilities just go away downhill and you start to say things that maybe you shouldn't say yes snap at your husband. Well that yeah, he's like here here just eat so you were at go group. When you thought of this idea. Did you look around the marketplace and see that? You know, like what was your point of view that you were able to tap into something that was unique and stand out and be different from all other sort of Delivery Systems. Yeah, so there is a lot out there. It was kind of the Heyday of the meal kit world and obviously there's There's still a lot of ambient Solutions in the grocery store. But you know for me they all had some sort of compromise for for a meal kid. I was like, this is a really romantic idea that I have 45 minutes at the end of the night to cook and you know that my schedule is predictable enough that I'm not going to have food rotting in my fridge like that's just not me and all the ambient Solutions and like, you know, you take food from a state where it's living and breathing to something that can sit on a shelf for a year to like, I don't know what the process is, but I don't want anything to do. With it. So, you know, then the options are like not great. We should we know we shouldn't be eating more fruits and vegetables fruits and vegetables are like nobody's ever argued with fruits and vegetables. I mean how crazy is like a long time ago said lets you let food be thy medicine, right but we've stopped doing that because we've traded care for convenience. So, you know really thinking about like, you know, how how this convenient side can be not only enabled through the form factor, but also through Technologies What got me really excited. So I solve the problem first by meal prepping for myself and I was like cool. So like this sort of solves the problem. I'm eating better, but there's no prepping is another romantic idea. That's like there goes our weekend and you know by Wednesday or food starts to get slimy and Thursday, you're like, I can't eat another turmeric piece of cauliflower. Like I know so I knew that I wanted variety I wanted convenience and I was like, God can pool. I wish somebody would just do this. S for me and then I was like, oh nobody's doing this ring. I kind of have to do it for everyone else and that was that moment. And so how long from the idea to whether you raised money or launched it like how long was that time period so the idea happened faster than the time it took me to raise money for me even to just quit my job. I knew that I wanted to somehow show that I had product-market fit which in the early stages is so hard to do. It's like, you know, you can make you can tell yourself all kinds of Lies. Sweetheart do that. Everyone needs a neoprene baby carrier is what I choirs and we just lie to ourselves all day long, but for me, I wanted to have some sort of objective metrics so that I couldn't lie to myself. So what I said is once I have five times more people who I do not know purchasing Daily Harvest and those who I do know then that's probably the point at which I'm going to quit my job and likely none. So I did it. It happened really quickly. It was like weeks not months which was really surprising to me and that really proved that I had actually good problem. How did you do it? Did you like go by containers how to do design the low load early event that took place about that. So early daily hers was the gross. I want to know about the girls I so I'm a marketer. I loved make things beautiful. But like once I go down that hole it's very hard to get me up. So I actually decided to lean on all the things that I didn't know how to do which was like how to make food and how to like build a website. I don't so I really focused on those things so the early Like MVP stage, it was really ugly it. Honestly wasn't that appealing? But what I said is if I'm really solving a problem. These other things are nice to haves like pretty branding is nice to have it if somebody's just buying something for The Branding they don't like the food and like I'm not I haven't solved a problem. It's not going to work so early days. I literally went to Trader Joe's and bought a bunch of Frozen fruits and vegetables and found myself a commercial kitchen and Long Island City after I found out that I couldn't make it. My apartment I was like, this is my I had no idea what I was doing. I got a food handlers license which like I'm still not clear on if I actually needed but like I got it because I was like, I literally don't know how to make food. So I got to figure out how to make food and you know just made everything with my right hand and my left hand and delivered it in my car New York City, you know built the website rudimentary was like very complementary way of saying like it was a piece of shit and You know the fact that people still bought it that people were still excited about it is what gave me conviction to then, you know, quit my job and continue to lean in and you know, I tried to raise money off the bat. I didn't really want to but you know, you need money to run a start-up. So when I when I first went out, I found that people didn't understand the concept like the people who I was speaking to or it like it doesn't it taste like Jamba Juice or like how big is a smoothie Market is like, I'm not me. Making smoothies like no, right but people like but I see a smoothie like it was It was kind of ridiculous. I've met so many investors kits so many frogs and people just didn't get it. So for me, I kind of went back to the drawing board and I was like, you know, what if this is going to work I can't make this a subjective decision because all these decisions right now in these boardrooms our conference rooms or whatever. They were VC offices were being made subjectively where people were like, you know, maybe my wife should I adore like, you know, I don't really think I'm your target market and so I went back to the drawing board and I was like, I need to show people objectively that this has legs that this is going to be successful. So, you know, I set more metrics for myself. I set more like Finish Lines for myself or still haven't reached a Finish Line but like midpoints for myself. We're just kind of set my sights on reaching certain goal posts. So when I had those early meetings actually went back to all those people And I just asked them simple questions, like what would the metrics of this business? What would my customer economics need to look like so that you couldn't not give me a check and I got a lot of feedback and it was all the same thing. So actually in the early days built the business to optimize for those metrics that way when I went out to actually raise which was a good eight months later. I had those checks really easily because I said to those people remember when you told me that this is what the Thousands wouldn't need to look like well, okay Fork it over. So but that first time was incredibly difficult and how did you sustain the business for those eight months incredibly Capital efficiently. I did everything by myself. I was like kind of insane. Yeah, was that pretty kids. So I like to call my oldest son. My co-founder is he was in my stomach during this? I can't believe that I mean like the craziest things happened. I got locked in a freezer one day with a a baby in my belly and I was like, oh my God, like what am I going to do in the phone? Didn't work. It was it was bad. How did you get out of the three things? Like they're somebody else came in? Okay, but like, you know the craziest things but there's never a good time and I had the idea of the moment felt right? So I just did it. I think it's amazing any time. I meet a woman who co-founded and or launched a company and had a kid at the same time. I'm like mind blown because I don't think I could have done it but like the amount of attention you have to have on like racing human and and really raising a Their baby is insane. I mean, I like to think of balance linearly instead of in parallel because now we have that works. I just I mean, I don't know that it does yet DVD those things that it's like like you have two lines side by side and they can be well, I just think that that's really hard. Like, I think people people talk a lot about impossible. How can you be balanced and you have a family and you papa there's also like myself which just gets totally neglected, you know, but I try to think of balance as like along Long a long game. So, you know, like right now I'm focusing on the business and I'm focusing on my kids and you know, I'll get to the gym at some point the few years then you know, there's just like a lot of trade-offs, but I just I think it's really hard to to be able to kind of live these multiple lives at the same time. So I think it is but I also think that it's probably been hard for men to oh absolutely and I think that we're all like I wish we could just have one big Consortium and just be like, let's Change the fucking work week. Yes. Okay, and let's not email each other at night so we can just all shut down Boomerang Brian is the best thing ever. What is boomerang so moving so I do my best work at night. Okay in the day during the day I there's so many meetings and so many people need answers to questions and I come home and I you know, my day is over it at 6:00 and I go home every single night because I want to put my kids to bed. It's only time that I see them and then like 7:30 or 8:00 after I've had dinner. That's when I guy actually think so I send off. Millions of emails but I use Boomerang. So no one gets it which is yeah. It's a Gmail or Chrome attachment and I just everyone gets assigned o'clock in the morning the next day when they go to their email at nine in the morning. Is it like 60 messages from you? Yes, but like that's all they're going to hear from me that right like and how do you avoid burnout? Like if you're turning back on at 7:30? Yeah, like I had to stop I'll do like a cursory check, but I have to stop myself in on the weekends because I was just reaching a point of like it never ends. I mean it's hard because even like the weekends are also exhausting. Yeah, how old are your kids? Oh, they're exhausting. They're that age. They're eight five and twenty one month. Yeah, like I have a tuna four-year-old and my weekends are fucking exhausting. Like I can't wait for Monday sometimes so, you know, you do burn out. It's a lot any tools are Trixie you that have been helpful outside a boomerang. I mean I try to focus on the things that I really love when things get crazy. So I love cooking. I love being part of culinary. Don't like at Daily Harvest. So whenever I show up in our in our Test Kitchen everyone's like all right, come here. What's going on? It's your therapy. It's my therapy and I just love it and you know with my kids I find it really overwhelming to be with like both of them and my husband cause I feel like there's just so many needs to to like take care of it once and that for me is like not regenerative. I mean, I love it and I do it of course, but I actually have have realized that Wing things with just one kid. It's like I will take one kid. My husband will take the other it's like real quality time and I actually really enjoy the time as opposed to just like the manager yelling every greater a little things know we started doing that with my daughter and her and her tantrums and her Outburst like I would say cut by 90% when I was like, let me take you out a loan or going to spend some time together. Yeah, but it also really had space for me because I just like everybody vying for everyone's attention at the same time. Time is just really stressful. So what have been some unexpected hardships that have you've encountered on your journey that you were like. Oh I didn't I didn't know that could possibly happen. I mean, there's so many where to begin even fundraising fundraising the beginning was like a full-on clusterfuck. It's like, you know, it wasn't just one round. It was you know, people just continued to not understand what the problem is trying to solve and even today when I meet with people when like we have this ridiculous track record. We've been Capital efficient. We've done things so differently from so many businesses out there and be if if somebody can't if you're not solving the problem for the person who is is judging your company. It still continues to be to be really difficult. I don't think I realized how hard that is and you know, I speak to a lot of Founders now and they're like, I don't know like I met with 20 people it's really demoralizing and I'm like, yeah it is and like it doesn't get easier. You know, like I like Play-Doh Teflon on TV where I'm like, you know, oh, yeah, I'm just going to brush it off but like it sucks and you just keep going, you know, I think that building a team is a time. So I feel so grateful for the team that we have and but it's really hard. It's really hard to find the right people who you know understand the vision who you know believe in the same things who, you know share values. It's difficult and okay, we know three doesn't have to be It is be two of those you're talking to people and fundraising feeling the you always need to have it together because I don't feel like I live in the center of a tornado all times at all times. But there's this I don't know if it's I don't even think it's Instagram. I think there's just this like expectation that if you are growing a company people are going to put their faith in you that like you just need to be buttoned up all the time. Like that's just not me. I drop f-bombs everywhere and totally inappropriate places, but like Like, you know, I'm just like my authentic self and and it's it is often in conflict with the expectations that that people have of me. And I think that that's really hard and it can also feel really lonely sometimes where you're like, okay, I have to like put on a happy face, but I don't feel happy and I've actually started just being really real with my team like I stood up in our All Hands today and I was like, you know, we're doing performance reviews and performance reviews suck like they're the worst who hates performance reviews. I hate them, you know and And we talked about about why we were doing them and like, you know how we wanted them to fit in the greater ecosystem. But I've just I've kind of like just recently have kind of been like I don't give a shit, right but you know until you get to that point. I think that that is there's so much pressure on that and totally unexpected and I was like, I can always be my authentic self. Like I don't know how to do anything else but you really can't be all the time. No, you definitely can't be all the time because you can't be like, oh the boat was rerouted because of a monsoon, so Right. We're going to have a glitch in paying the bill to care. Mom. Nobody cares know. They're like, fuck you and your Monsoon boat. Okay, right or like, you know, when there's a snowstorm over the Sierra Nevadas and your truck can't get over and you're just like, ah, I'm sorry or you apologize for shipping disaster and then a magazine like when you're pants are down like makes you feel worse about writing about it. Like I apologize and now you're writing an article to like shame even more. Thanks, right. Yeah. Great. So being that you didn't necessarily come from the food industry. How did you come up with your recipes and who helps that with you now? Yeah. So actually all of our recipes are co-created with our customers. One of the best huge benefits of being direct to Consumer is that we have this two way conversation with every single person who comes to Daily Harvest and you know through these conversations were actually able to understand exactly what people want and the nuances of different diets and different places around the world and what we've been able able to do is take that information and and turn it into the food that people really want to eat and what's so differentiated is that you know, when you think about big food and you know Innovation looking like, you know, I don't know macaroni and cheese now with sprinkles or like, you know Oreos now with more hydrogenated oils and in the middle, you know, one of the things that that we built early on that I'm super proud of is this ability to respond to customer needs and In a like a real timely manner, so we're able to talk to our customers ask what they want and then we built a responsive supply chain that allows us to respond in a really short period of time so six to eight weeks we turn something around and what this does is it creates this really trusting relationship with our audience with our devotees where they continue to tell us what they want and we continue to deliver. So that's really how we come up with everything we of course. We have an internal culinary team. We have nutrition as we have you no shame. Chef that we have a nutritional therapist also that works on our team who's really in tune with a lot of herbs and superfoods and kind of how it all comes together and food pairing, but it really the inspiration and the the like more specific asks come from our customers. So what is your goal with Daily Harvest? I mean you want to make and sell it. Yeah. Keep it Mom and Pop. I don't know the answer to that yet. So for me what what I'm really focused on is getting people to eat more fruits and Troubles I really think that there's so much noise and health Wellness nutrition and like there's so much work to do. Our mission is we take care of food so that food can take care of you. But like there's an endless number of things that we have to do to take care of food. So that humans can take care of themselves. Like we just we as I said, we've traded care for convenience. So for me, there's so much more to do that. I like I can't even think about that right now. It's just to get to make fruits and vegetables easy fruits and vegetables should be should be easy. Right like we know that their A good for us we know we should be they be any more but they're so difficult. They're so difficult. There are perishing there. You have to watch them. You have to cook them. You have to figure out how to make them taste good. They have to hide them in things for your children. Like there's you know, there's just a lot to it and then there's you know, all the regulation and all of the policies that are around food like we eighty percent of our calories today or from processed food, like that's crazy. So I feel like I can't focus on that yet because there's just so Our to be done and you know, maybe one day there's a there's a partner that helps us get there or maybe you know through maybe we go public as a fundraise like I don't know but I do know the end goal and that's really to make fruits and vegetables easy so that we can eat more of them make them convenient. I like to ask my guests to questions. Okay, every guest. Okay something you'd be surprised scared and I'm scared something. We'd be surprised to know about you. Actually this is this is a weird one. So I was allergic to Cal for a good year of my my life just a year. Yeah, so it's crazy because the line of work doesn't it? But I actually so when during the time that I started Daily Harvest was actually when I was or was allergic to cat and I was like don't tell anyone because it's like weird. I'm telling people to eat more vegetables and meanwhile like my body is in disarray, but I found out later that it was actually caused by an autoimmune disorder, but I went through this phase where every time I would eat kale or any cruciferous. Was my body would break out in these crazy hives and it was it's really just about like balance and I think that you know, we think a lot as a company about balance, right? We're not saying only fruits and vegetables. We're not saying like, you know, don't eat this don't eat that were saying just eat more fruits and vegetables and like you'll be fine. You'll make the right decisions and that's what I that comes from that experience where where my body was just like what are you doing? You're only eating kale. You're only eating brussel sprouts are only eating broccoli because I kind of was reading all of these things about all the terrible things that are going to kill us and inflammation and like it was before people were talking about like a Fades but like pesticides in general and I saw what happens when you tip too far to the other side too. Okay, I'm not going to just eat a diet of cruciferous don't I don't know if not good for you it messes with your thyroid. I already have issues with that. So, okay. My next question is Any bits of advice that either you've learned the hard way or someone gave you that was like aha. I'm going to this one. This is the keeper one of the pieces of advice that is kind of an oldie but a goodie comes from Scott belsky who is a founder and an author and he's just like a really smart guy and he said that you know being a Founder is full of so many ups and downs that you can't it's almost like you can't sweat the small stuff. You can't smell it You Can't Sweat the the highest highs and the lowest lows you just have to Aspire for that upwards. slope and overtime it normalizes and you know for me in this like super charged emotional world that that of like entrepreneurship where there's the highest highs and the lowest lows and like, you know one day you think everything is going your way and then the next day your truck goes missing, you know, that's something that has been really helpful for me to focus on it's like just focus on the long game and I think that sometimes we forget that in the day-to-day but I always found it really helpful to focus on the bigger picture and just kind of like zoom out be like, alright, alright, if I look a year ago, if I look even six months ago have I moved in the right direction. Are we on a slope? Yes, we are. Then we're in great shape. I love it. I'm going to steal that slope. So yes, but mentality Scott Frost up not mine. Thank you so much. Thank you. That was Rachel Drury the founder of Daily Harvest. For more information. You can follow her at Daily Harvest.
How many times have you been hungry - hangry, even! – and stuck somewhere with no snacks? Worse, perhaps there’s food laying around but it’s not even something you want to actually consume, but you have no other options, so there go those neon orange Cheezy Ballz down the hatch. Rachel Drori was stuck between a stale cake and a hard place, dreaming of fruit and veggie-based foods that would be nutritious and convenient for busy folks like herself. After scouring the market and finding the same tired protein bars, she finally decided to create the product she wanted for herself. That dream became Daily Harvest, a direct-to-consumer service that delivers fresh produce perfectly portioned to create your own smoothies, bowls and bites, providing your body with the best support to tackle your boss babe goals. Thanks for listening! We love our listeners! Follow Superwomen on Instagram. Big Ideas   No matter the bells and whistles, the core use for the product must be functionally successful in order to ensure return customers! 