Chef Jamie at Foodsmith puts quality above all

We've made so many mistakes by having a unique approach. No one does everything from beginning to end like we dio, because my standards, they're non negotiable. On the same goes for our values. Starting a small business is tough. Anyone will tell you you hear it all the time. But starting a small food service meal delivery business is probably one of the toughest. There is food. Smith is my life long passion. I went from being, Ah, chef and high end restaurants in New York City in San Francisco, toe owning a restaurant in Santa Cruz. Ultimately, I got into school food. I was the chef of the public school district. In four years, we turned what was basically a heat and serve chicken nuggets and tater tots into made from scratch food with salad bars and all the schools. And that's where I really started to find my passion for making a difference in people's lives. We started out just kind of doing healthy meals. We chose to use lean, healthy meats, healthy fats like avocado and olive oil. We also did what we call Paleo plus, which is effectively a true Mediterranean diet, and then we added ketogenic, and it morphed into the next side, which was vegan. It came from customers saying, This is what we want and so we said, Let's figure it out We have always wanted to make our meals affordable so that we could get them in the hands of people that maybe are on fixed incomes, maybe seniors and students and people who normally wouldn't be able to afford this kind of food. And we've done that by managing every step of the process from procurement, working with local farms. And we do that by eliminating Mittelman meets their purchased locally. We buy from local vendors in Watts villas. Faras are dry goods go. We try to keep everything close to home. Happy boy farms, Coke farms on occasion were part of the community, and we want to keep our community going here. It's definitely high quality food. It makes me feel good when we hear feedback from customers about how good the food is, how fresh it is or when somebody say you wanna try, I say, Hey, come on, first meet the food is very good and say, Really, Yeah, let's go. There was a point where I had about $900 left in our company bank account. It was a scary time with thought. Boy, if we don't get some new orders next week, I might not even make payroll. But I believed in what we were doing so much because the customers that stuck with us gave us compliments. They say. I can't imagine going back to eating and cooking and prepping the way I used to. You've changed my life. It feels like you've given me an extra Sunday with my family. It's a compliment like that that hits you right here, and that's what made us keep going. It's about making a difference in people's lives every day, and you know it's better than any paycheck.