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November 27, 2024
In this episode, Eric shares the compelling journey of 'Mama Meals,' a business started with his partner Holly. Originating from their personal transition t
Johnny Watson: So as everyone's arriving, we'd love as usual if you just share where you're joining from and the name of your service. Eric and I are going to jump into part two of Mama Meals, Eric's amazing journey with his partner Holly, who have created an incredible postpartum meal prep offering for mothers who are organic conscious. Let's start there, Eric. Give us a reminder about how you came to build this business.
Eric Stein: Yeah, absolutely. It came through our journey in childhood, right? About 15 or 16 years ago we started becoming more conscious about what we were eating. We were sick all the time. Doctors, prescriptions. Nobody ever asked us about the food we were eating. We started learning about agricultural practices and what they were doing. We switched it up and all these chronic conditions just started to go away. We were like, wow, this is amazing.
So we really honed in on that, had our first child, did the whole pregnancy thing with a lot of research, and had a really great experience. Then postpartum came around and it was just really hard. There was nowhere we could go to get the food that we really wanted. Our family wasn't cooking stuff. People were sending us food, but it wasn't up to what we really wanted.
Holly was eating things like cold smoothies and raw vegetables, things we thought were healthy at the time, but didn't actually help her postpartum. For baby number two, she read about Chinese medicine. There's a great book called "The First 40 Days" that details the more traditional practices in a woman's life after they have a baby. We learned that it was soup and stew, things cooked in bone broth, super nutrient dense.
So we prepped about 60 meals and froze them in the freezer in our garage, in a stand-up chest freezer. When the baby came, we were just pulling meals out of the freezer. My life was a thousand times easier because I wasn't having to cook. She felt a thousand times better. We were like, wow, this is great.
Then she did it for a few friends as a gift. Somebody was having their third baby and she said, I'm not going to get you diapers. Let me stock your freezer. Her friends were like, this is the greatest thing anybody's ever done for us. Thank you.
We were friends with birth workers in the area, like doulas and midwives and lactation consultants. We were a community involved in that after doing so much research about birth, talking to so many people, and doing a home birth. You meet a lot of people through that process. They all heard about our story with the food and were like, this is a business you guys need to do. Our clients need this and we'll refer you.
So my wife made a menu with some items on there, some soups and bone broth and lactation cookies. She put a little Venmo link at the bottom of a PDF. These doulas put it on their Instagrams and strangers were just Venmoing us money and emailing about what they wanted. It was crazy. That's how it all started out of our house with a stand-up freezer and a couple of three-quart stockpots.
Johnny Watson: It's incredible. I think it's a familiar story for a lot of people who start these businesses. It comes from a place of feeling the signal from around them that people want this, that there is a need. What I think is so incredible about your story is how the midwives were pulling you toward pushing you out of your comfort zone. How do you get to the next level from there? Where are you now, Eric? You started delivering through Ubers, just putting food in an Uber. That was one at a time. Where have you got to since then? How many states are you shipping to?
Eric Stein: Yeah, we started with people picking it up from our house. It's two weeks away right now. Then I started getting in my own car and driving around Orange County. Then came the Ubers. Then we got into a commercial kitchen and cut everything over to FedEx. We'd get everything frozen, put gel packs on it and send it off.
Then we started using dry ice because summer is tough with gel packs for frozen food. For a really premium product, it's got to show up like a rock. People want to feel that. Now we ship two days a week and we do about 100 to 120 boxes a week. We've got a great little system in place.
I have a company that originally reached out to offer us dry ice. Then I worked out something with them where they warehouse all of our boxes. They take each week, and if we have 110 boxes going out, they'll build 70 of this size, 30 of this size, and 10 of this size. They'll print all the postage for us and bring the dry ice that needs to go in each box.
So they'll show up with 110 boxes and 110 boxes worth of dry ice. All our guy has to do is go into the freezer, put the food in the boxes, put the dry ice on top, and tape it up. Then FedEx shows up with two pickups—a ground pickup where it can get there in two days, or express where it takes more than two days and has to get on a plane. We do that twice a week right now.
Johnny Watson: Has that operational system changed since we last connected, or is that something you figured out and you're now dealing with a new set of challenges?
Eric Stein: It's pretty much the same right now. It's gotten more efficient, really. Our next step up is using a co-packer to make the food for you and then using a frozen fulfillment 3PL. The one we're going to use is called Grip Shipping. They're awesome. It was founded by the guy who was the head of logistics for Butcher Box.
Johnny Watson: Is that how you first heard of Grip?
Eric Stein: Yeah. I reached out to Juan, who's the CEO of Grip, on LinkedIn back when Holly and I were still cooking food out of our house. I was like, Hey, we're using your meat. What do you think? He said, here, let's jump on Zoom. He taught me everything there is to know about frozen fulfillment. So he started Grip Shipping. What they do is they have giant freezer warehouses in California, Texas, Michigan, New Jersey, strategically placed across the country.
When an order comes in, the Grip software analyzes the order, analyzes the shipping location, and decides which warehouse to use, which route, which carrier, what day to ship it to be most successful, and how much dry ice to put in the box based on the time of year. Then they pick the warehouse and pack your box for you. You basically get charged per box per shipment.
Johnny Watson: So how do you deal with the inventory logistics then? If you're thinking about having four different regions where your frozen food lives, how do you strategically think about how many meals and resources you need to have around the country at any given time?
Eric Stein: That's a good question. I'm making this up as I go. I like to know I don't have the answers. Our fractional COO is Justin. He comes from a company that did frozen cat food direct to consumer. It was the same thing where we're doing frozen postpartum meals direct to consumer, they did frozen cat food. I asked him what I should do and he's, Oh, this is how you gotta think about it. He's got a brain that's beyond me when it comes to replenishment. He's like, you're going to need somebody to watch replenishment. He's going to tell me what to do.
Johnny Watson: Listening to the first podcast, I heard you talk about a business coach you had early. She had a cookie business and you saw there's a lot of transferable knowledge. She was pushing you to keep a margin of 70 percent. You calculated your ingredients, you and Holly's time, the packaging you were using. I loved how you gave yourself room for things that creep in over time.
One other thing I loved is that you were looking for the most real whole ingredients you could find as part of that pricing strategy, trusting that you're going to attract the customer that cares about those things. You've definitely proven that. But I'd love to ask how you think about solving new problems. It seems like every meal prep owner has to overcome a hurdle, push out of their comfort zone, and learn something new. Then there's a new fresh challenge. What's your process when thinking about replenishment, for example?
Eric Stein: Yeah, that's a good question. When I think of a problem now, like with labels for example, we were trying to move into the co-packer. Our containers didn't have a tamper evidence seal. They said we can't do this if it doesn't have a tamper evidence seal. We were literally about to change containers.
But I told them, look, I don't want to die on this hill, but I want to figure it out. Let's try. We sat at the table for 45 minutes and talked. Finally the owner got up and came back with a nacho cheese dip label that went around the package and created a seal. And suddenly I had these labels that go over the container.
When there's a challenge, as a business owner, you have to expect it. Not everything's going to go your way all the time. The challenge means you're being called to fill a space. Once you fill the space, the next door opens for you. If you look at challenges and think, Oh God this sucks, it's going to suck a lot because there's going to be a lot of those. That's how I approach challenges. It's part of the game. It's something to look forward to. Have faith. You got this far. You're not gonna stop. Does that make sense?
Johnny Watson: It does. I love that. The determination, the will to move forward, and see everything as a puzzle. Was this similar back when you were first exploring how to push into shipping? I heard you established some sort of relationship with a strategic partner who had more volume so you could work with FedEx at a much more practical level. Is this similar where you found somebody you could team up with?
Eric Stein: That was just me reaching out and talking to people. I've noticed that in this business, half my job—or at least a decent part of it—is just talking to people. Yesterday I talked with a guy from Greener Pastures Chicken in Austin, Texas. We're looking to source super high quality chicken. In talking to him and hearing his story, we had a conversation. Then I was in a meeting about bone broth. I'm looking for some bone broth right now and we don't have to keep making it. And someone's like, oh, talk to the people at Denver Bone Broth. It was because I had a conversation with the guy. Now I have this conversation.
I find that in this group of entrepreneurs and people who are feeding other people, everybody seems to want to help each other. If anybody asks me for help, I'm always like, hey, I'll help you out. What do you need from me? It's a pretty cool community from what I've seen in the food space.
Johnny Watson: Everything's connected. Another takeaway I was surprised by is you worked with a larger influencer from Twilight. You just started a conversation about promoting this to mothers in her network who might be going through their first or second birth. That didn't really go anywhere, but it got you more connected to women who had networks of people listening for advice. It seems like reinforcement that it's all about networking and community, working toward the same outcome or goal.
Eric Stein: That influencer thing speaks to relevance. We had someone with a couple million followers post about us and nothing happened. But the girl with 30,000 followers who is really specific to moms trying to be healthier, it was gangbusters for us.
For meal prep in general, if I was starting a meal prep right now, it would be like, okay, who am I talking to? My customer is pregnant or newly postpartum women, very obvious, right? But if you're just doing meal prep for people who want to be healthy, that's everybody. I would hone in on the relevance. Who are you talking to?
Johnny Watson: If you wanted to take this passion for clean, organic, real food and bring it to as many people as you could, and you weren't already working with postpartum mothers and families, what would be your thought process for starting another service?
Eric Stein: Yeah, that's a good question. It's like knowing who you're talking to. Why we were successful with Mama Meals is because we were talking to ourselves. What would we want? If I had the perfect meal prep in front of me for postpartum women, what would it look like? We just built that and luckily the stars aligned and we got introduced to the right people.
I would get real, real clear about who you're talking to. What's your brand? Who are you speaking to with that brand and why? What are you selling them? That's where I would start.
I think if you started an organic-only meal prep or restaurant right now where you can sit down and get organic food, I think you would have a hard time failing. I still can't go to a restaurant in my area and sit down and just get organic food. There was one place and it closed down, but it wasn't for lack of customers. There's a huge market for people who just want real food. Huge. As people spend less on other stuff, they're more conscious about where they spend their money. I read the ingredients and that's how I purchase food. I'm not price shopping.
Johnny Watson: Do you look at it like going after organic-conscious customers, or organic food for women who train at the gym four days a week? How would you think through that challenge?
Eric Stein: Yeah, I would probably be like, all right, who are my dads? I have three kids, I have this business. I have all my list of things in my life. What I would do is sit down and create a brand that talks specifically to those things in my life. Because I can't say I would go after this niche. Holly came up with the niche of postpartum moms. I didn't come up with that. She spoke directly to herself. I'm the guy who built the thing to keep it going.
If I had to start over, I would be like, all right, who am I? How can I solve my problem? How can I make my brand something that I would buy? Then you're going to have people like you, right? You're not alone.
Johnny Watson: So from what I've heard, you would start with yourself, your own problems that you intimately understand, build the brand around this, get really dialed into this specific person, start small and local, get your food into the hands of people, and trust that by understanding the need and identifying who in the ecosystem speaks to people who also experience this pain, you can have conversations and build relationships. You see the problem directly in front of you, try to find a mentor or through sheer will and determination, push through and look further into the future. Think about what goals you want to hit and come up with a plan and execute. Is that how you'd approach it?
Eric Stein: Yeah, I think so. What you touched on is look into the future. I really want to do that. What do you see? Where do you see it? If you can visualize it in your mind and say, this is where I want my business to be, this is what it looks like, and you keep going back to that, you're going to impress that image on everything around you. Now it's slowly going to attract into your life.
I do that very regularly. Daily. I look at what I want Mama Meals to be and I'm like, I have my eyes on it and the doors keep opening. We're still on the journey. We're not even at a co-packer yet. We're still making and shipping all the food ourselves. I'll be at the kitchen tomorrow at 6am. I love being in the kitchen. But yeah, keep your vision. How are you supposed to get what you want if you don't even know what you want? Get clear with what it looks like for you.
Johnny Watson: You touched on it a couple of times, your vision for Mama Meals. You've also shared that this came as a result of Holly feeling this desire as a new mom for something different. I'd love to hear how the two of you have collaborated over the years. We have people reach out all the time saying, I want to start a service, I'm going to cook, my husband's going to take care of operations or vice versa. It seems to happen very naturally. If you're willing to share, I'd love to hear about the journey of how you've built this together.
Eric Stein: Yeah, that's been a journey. There should be a whole podcast just about husband-wife business duos with a family too. That should be a whole community. That was one of the most challenging parts of it. It was also one of the reasons we succeeded. It was also like the most challenging, right?
When we first got started, I was working full time in sales in the SaaS world. We'd started a bunch of different businesses testing things. Nothing had really taken off. Then when this got going, she came to me and said, I want to do this. I was like, that's not very passive. You're talking about cooking soup and stew from scratch. That's enormous work. She's I'm gonna do it. And she just started doing it.
I was like, okay, so it looks like I'm doing this too. I'm helping. She was leading the charge. So she was in the masculine seat of drive forward, and I was in the feminine seat of okay, just tell me what to do and I'll do it. She came from a wedding planner background. She's the person in charge of everything. So she'd be like, you do this, do this, do this. We start this business and now she's doing that to me.
All of a sudden inside of me, I was like, yeah, no. I joined a men's group. Our relationship was struggling. They said, dude, you need to stand up. If she wants you to be the operator and she wants to have the vision and talk to people, you can't let her tell you what to do. You have to drive. You have to step into that masculine thing. Because of that men's group, we had that discussion. I was like, this is how things are going to change.
There were two or three times I was like, I think I'm done. I don't want to do this anymore. I'm working, we have kids, we're fighting, and this thing isn't even making money yet. My full time job is paying the bills. What are we even doing here? It was tough.
I made that switch and really stepped into my more masculine energy around it and gave her space. I'm not going to be reactive. When the old habits came up, I just let it go. I'm a rock and the waves crash and I'm still going to be solid in my seat. Then things settled. And after that, the numbers just go like this.
She gets to now talk to people and have conversations with these women. They tell her when they're pregnant, they want to share their stories with her. She's having the greatest time doing this piece of the business. I'm the operational one, making everything efficient, talking to the people, getting the thing going. But it almost broke us. It almost broke us.
I think a lot of people don't realize that there needs to be a level of consciousness around what you're doing if you're going to bring the business into the house and into your relationship. You can't just leave the office and go home. You're in the office all the time.
Johnny Watson: And before we kicked off, we were talking about regenerative agriculture being a big part of your interest and passion. Is that something you're visioning into the future for Mama Meals as it grows?
Eric Stein: Totally. My guess would be, it was like 15 or 16 years ago when Holly and I started learning about food and we learned about organic. Now I go to Costco and there's pallets and pallets of organic food everywhere. The label is everywhere. My bet is that the same thing is going to happen with regenerative.
Organic is now like a buzzword. You can get organic junk food at this point. It's better, but it's not as strong of a word as it used to be. Regenerative is a system of farming that focuses on soil health, increasing biodiversity, improving the ecosystem around it. For example, they do something called cover cropping, where they grow crops that are not for consumption. It's just to cover the ground and create more diversity in the soil. They don't till the soil as much, breaking up all the root systems and micro things in the soil. They try to leave that intact. They rotate the crops instead of growing the same thing over and over. The soil gets a break from those plants.
All this stuff makes the food stronger and it needs less pesticide. It just makes sense. My bet is that regenerative is the next organic. That's why I'm partnering with regenerative farmers like Force of Nature, a great regenerative meat producer. We just got a box of some of their meat that we're going to test in one of our SKUs. I talked to that guy doing real great chicken farming and we're going to start ordering chicken from them now.
Johnny Watson: For those who may feel intimidated by moving into something that could sound more expensive at the offset, how do you examine that and factor that into your underlying costs and profit?
Eric Stein: Yeah, that's the big question, right? Does your business support that? Fortunately, for Mama Meals, we built the cost based on what the product actually cost. I didn't say, here's my target cost, here's what I think people will pay, here's my margin. I just built the cost out and said, okay, we need to make 70 percent on top of that. There's our price. Then we just did it.
For an operation that's already moving, it would probably just be a slow start. Just do what you can. Try to incorporate some of that messaging because people are going to be like, oh, it's using regenerative ingredients. That might be hard for a lot of people to find, but if you just source one regenerative thing—like regenerative beef—you can now put that in your messaging and that's a big deal.
For somebody like me, when I'm reading labels and deciding if I'm going to spend money on something, if I see the word regenerative on it, I'm like, that's immediately worth more money. I don't have a problem spending more. So it could just be a sit-down time where you look at your ingredients, look at what you're doing, look at your spreadsheets. Hopefully you have a spreadsheet that tells you your margin on every meal you make. Then you look at, okay, I'm getting beef at three bucks a pound right now. What happens to the margin if I get this one that's nine bucks a pound or 12? We were spending 12 a pound initially just to get the highest quality we could. We've gotten the price way down. But I get into the spreadsheet and then what does it tell you? The cost needs to be. Okay, then just change the cost.
Johnny Watson: I think it all comes back to the ideal customer profile. Who are you cooking for? What do they care about? That allows you to pull certain levers. In this case with Mama Meals, you're able to reconcile the vision and values with the business opportunity. You can message it a certain way and attract a new or bigger customer base because you're not just sacrificing your margin for the food you want to serve people.
Eric Stein: You know what I would do too? If you're already moving and you've got an email list, just ask your customers. Hey, we're thinking about changing up some ingredients. The cost would go from this dollar per meal to this dollar per meal. Would you stick with us if we move to these types of ingredients? I bet you people would say yes. You might lose some, but you can keep doing the price war thing if you want.
Johnny Watson: What have you done historically? How much feedback do you ask for from your customers and how has that impacted the product over time?
Eric Stein: Yeah, that's exactly what I was about to say. I've called a bunch of our customers, especially people in California. If you order our biggest box in Florida or New York or anywhere on the East Coast, you pay almost a hundred dollars more for shipping. Those are the people I was really interested in. I call them up and say, hey, why did you order? Why did you pay another hundred dollars for us to ship this to you?
The common thing was like, there's nothing else like this around me. Where else am I going to get this quality of ingredients? So what I realized is, I was just calling those people on the East Coast and those were just us. We found them through social media and our ability to get incredible costs through FedEx and the miracle of dry ice and all that stuff. I can get that food to them.
But yeah, that just informed us that I don't care what the cost of the food is. I don't care what the cost of my raw ingredients are. We're just going to make sure that we charge appropriately. We're not gouging people and we're going to stick to that. It's just been what's working until there's a bunch more competition out there. I guess we'll keep shipping it all over the place.
Johnny Watson: And what you said about soliciting feedback, you were able to learn something that wasn't necessarily a problem you were looking for. It gave you insights into how far you could push in a certain direction to realize the vision you had and access more customers. I think that's really cool. You just never know what you're going to learn.
Eric Stein: Yeah, you never know. You just got to talk to them. It's so important. So important. I spent a lot of time on the phone. Just hey, how you doing? Thank you so much. How did everything go?
Johnny Watson: So you'll just call customers and yeah.
Eric Stein: It's been a while since I've done that. But I used to just get on the phone and be like, hey, it's Eric. I just want to say thank you for ordering. How is everything? I would get some people who would answer, but I'd leave a bunch of voicemails. I also did one recently where we blasted our email list of our top 100 customers in terms of spend. Hey, hop on a call with Eric and you get a hundred dollar gift card. I hopped on a few calls and those are like your real champions who just love you. One girl was like, I will buy anything Holly tells me to buy. So I was like, okay, my wife's an influencer. This is cool.
Johnny Watson: You touched on something there. A lot of meal prep businesses in our community have that relationship with their biggest customers. They get into the community, they feed their food. In your case, you have a nationwide presence. Instagram is a big part of how you've cultivated this sense of closeness. What advice would you give somebody who sees a wall there? They're busy handling operations. What advice would you give to push past that discomfort and start having more conversations with their biggest advocates?
Eric Stein: Yeah, good question. I think the shortcut to building connection is vulnerability. If you spend your time when you're talking to people and using your social, and just get vulnerable, get your struggles out there, get your doubts and your fears, share your successes, share your excitement about something. If you just really open up, then people will too. Holly's really good at that and people just open up to her. I think it's across the board, whether you're a man or a woman.
We hired a company and it was 800 bucks a month. They did five posts for us a week or something like that. They did a pretty good job in terms of messaging and getting content out there. It looked like all of a sudden this thing was going and people were like, your social media is active right now. Yeah. But it was just because we were investing in it. You could do that and then in the middle of that just share who you really are. Then you're going to create a good base of people that follow you.
Johnny Watson: And then the people engaging with you are feeling that authenticity and encouraging you. The more engagement, the more sales, drives more dopamine and creates a positive flywheel of wanting to get out there more.
Eric Stein: Yep, 100 percent. That's why vulnerability is a shortcut for all relationships.
Johnny Watson: That's brilliant. We have Cameron in the chat sharing wisdom in alignment there too. Trust with customers, vulnerability is a superpower that shows transparency. People want to either help you or they're intrigued to see what you will do next.
Eric Stein: Yeah, 100 percent.
Johnny Watson: I don't want to abruptly pull us back to the co-packing situation because this has been an amazing conversation around connection, trust, feedback, and building the business in alignment with what people want and need. What did you learn through this co-packing situation for those intrigued by this journey of becoming a nationwide shipper?
Eric Stein: Yeah, let's see. I had a bunch of people that warned me about it. You can lose quality, you lose control. I was bringing on a co-packer for our East Coast orders because I would really love to offer free shipping over there. We were going to bring on a kitchen over there. It was like 10 months of conversations, R&D, coming and visiting the place, flying back home. Okay, let's pull the trigger. I'm going to cut you a check for half right now. I go out there to oversee the first round of production.
There was some honest mistakes that happened and then there was one like not so honest mistake where they tried to hide something from me. I don't think they're bad people. I was just like, I had to literally just stop and pull the plug on it. In that seat with our business, there has to be 100 percent trust, otherwise I'm not going to sleep at night because of how high our standards are. If it's in the hands of somebody that I don't think is going to act like me, then I can't do it.
So what I've learned is do your homework, trust your gut. If you're getting gut feelings that are off, really acknowledge that, keep your eyes in it, be a part of it. Like any other struggle, it's just have faith. It's going to come out as it should. Enjoy the ride while you can.
Johnny Watson: Yeah. Enjoy the ride. And you're leaving room for another co-packing partnership to come in or yeah.
Eric Stein: Oh yeah. I already had another one. I was talking to somebody else. It's hilarious how it all netted out. I've heard so many times that your biggest disasters are also your biggest opportunities. This whole thing was such a disaster. I don't know how many thousands of dollars, all this flight time and energy that was lost. Tears were coming when it went through. It was tough. But this other facility has offered us like huge space. Basically they're going to run our product out of it only. They're not even having another company in there yet because it's a new facility or not new, but they just bought it. He's, this'll be all for you. There's a freezer that you could drive a forklift in and it's in Vegas instead of way over in Cleveland. So it's way easier for me to get there. The guy's really cool. The whole thing just ended up being a net positive. But in the moment, it was really tough. I had to remind myself, right? This is always as it should be. And yeah, we're still moving forward on it. We're hoping to be live on that in the beginning of the new year.
Johnny Watson: Incredible. So there are people out there who are looking to grow their business by partnering with people who have figured out the brand in a way you can have nationwide presence by building on top of other entrepreneurs, as long as the trust is there. There are multiple ways to make this happen.
Eric Stein: Yeah, there's always a way. There are co-packers for meal prep, right? You could have a co-packer do your meals for you. If you've got a great brand and you've got some traction, you can find somebody to make the meals for you for sure. And I could even help in connecting you with that. But it's important to know what you're doing and get yourself on the right path for yourself. Then yeah, then you get to just get out of your own way.
Johnny Watson: I have two last questions. The first is, is there anything else you want to share with our audience of meal prep owners around what you think they could be doing in 2025 to push and grow their business?
Eric Stein: Yeah. I'm a big stickler for quality. I try to teach my kids, if it grew or walked outside, then it's food. If it didn't grow or walk outside, then there's some questioning to do there. So I'm thinking the businesses that really own that and create tasty meals that follow that are going to be the ones that succeed. As people start to retract and watch their spending more, they're going to be really conscious about where they spend and that's one of those things that I think they'll spend on.
Johnny Watson: Brilliant. Thank you Eric. There is a tradition on a podcast I listen to called Diary of a CEO where the prior podcast guest asks the next podcast guest a question. The themes can be around business, life, spirituality, anything that an entrepreneur is going through. Just to put you on the spot, do you have a question that we could ask our next podcast guest?
Eric Stein: Yeah. Do you believe in yourself? I think that's it.
Johnny Watson: Did you have one for me? Did the previous guest? No, this is you starting that right now. Maybe I could ask you the same question. Do you believe in yourself, Eric?
Eric Stein: Oh yeah. I didn't always, but I definitely do now. Definitely do now.
Johnny Watson: Incredible. Thank you so much again for your time. It's been a really amazing conversation for me. I'm really excited to gift my wife's best friend—she's set to give birth anytime in the next 10 days. So I'm really excited to gift her a box and get some feedback. I'll be sure to pass it on.
Eric Stein: Definitely do it. Do it now. It's best to have the food in the freezer before baby comes. That's the hardest time, the first few days after. That's when you really want some good food around. Unless she has somebody there to cook for her, then that's the best.
Johnny Watson: This is amazing. It was all meant to be that we would talk right now and I could get her a box in time. Thank you so much for your time. Hopefully we can do a part three at some time in the future. I'm sure things will continue to grow and evolve.
Eric Stein: Yeah, I'll bring you up to how about when we get to frozen with the co-packing to frozen fulfillment and I'll share what that whole journey was like. And yeah, if we start dabbling in meal prep too, then I can help there.
Johnny Watson: Brilliant. Thank you so much, Eric. And for those who are still listening in the comments section, I saw one come in there from Rhonda. Please reach out to me if you'd like an introduction to Eric and I can make that happen. Eric, we need to get you into the community at some point.
Eric Stein: I'm always happy to help other food business owners. Food is so important and I'm a big advocate.
Johnny Watson: Incredible. Thank you. And for everyone listening live or in the replay, there's obviously been people here who have given us a lot of love and likes on the video. It goes a long way in helping us get the content through the algorithm to owners. It's a busy week with Thanksgiving, so we'd love for as many people to hear these words of wisdom from Eric as we possibly can. But yeah, I hope everyone has an incredible Thanksgiving. For those who are self-promoting and Eric, best of luck in the future. Look forward to part three.
Eric Stein: Yeah, looking forward to it. Thanks, Johnny.
Johnny Watson: Thanks. Bye.