The Healthy Diabetic

#370: No Time to Cook - This Is the Clean Eating Solution Every Busy Diabetic Has Been Waiting For

• Coach Ken / Kat Brown

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No time to cook - this is the clean eating solution every busy diabetic has been waiting for. 

In today's episode Ken sits down with Kat Brown, the founder and CEO of luxe + lemons, a Columbus-based prepared meal company making healthy eating easier for busy women and families. Since founding the company in 2018, Kat has grown luxe + lemons from a small local startup into a multimillion-dollar business serving thousands of fresh, chef-crafted meals each week.

Driven by the belief that people should not have to choose between taking care of themselves and keeping up with the demands of everyday life, Kat has built luxe + lemons around real food, meaningful convenience, and an exceptional customer experience. She is passionate about entrepreneurship, brand building, leadership, and creating a company that positively impacts both its customers and its team.

As an added bonus, use this exclusive Healthy Diabetic Podcast discount code TAKE20 at checkout and save $20 of your first order. 

Columbus Ohio residents as Lux & Lemon's shipping is centrally located to Columbus for the short term.

🔑 Key Takeaways

  • Why food quality matters more than macros for people managing diabetes
  • How meal prep services can remove one of the biggest daily stressors for busy diabetics
  • Why clean sauces are the foundation of Lux & Lemons — and the hardest thing to find in a grocery store
  • The real cost comparison of meal prepping yourself versus ordering from a quality service
  • Why being excited about what's on your plate is the key to sticking to a healthy lifestyle
  • How Lux & Lemons customizes options for low carb, gluten-free, and dairy-free needs
  • What makes Lux & Lemons different from HelloFresh, Factor, and other meal delivery services

You cannot pour from an empty cup — and you cannot manage diabetes well on food that doesn't fuel you. If eating well has felt impossible because life is too busy, that's not a willpower problem. That's a systems problem. And there's a solution for it.

Additional Resources

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SPEAKER_04

Welcome back. This is episode number 370 of the Healthy Diabetic Podcast. I'm your host, Coach Ken Kenniss. If you don't know much about my story, I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of 25 in 2007, and I'm the founder of Simplifying Life with Diabetes, a diabetes health coaching company that bridges the gap between your medical team and the daily complexities that you face every single day with diabetes. I truly believe that every single one of us living or caring for someone with type 1 diabetes only has one job, and that's to figure out what's going to work for you. If you're looking for new perspectives or new ideas on how to live with diabetes, you've come to the right place. Before we get started, please remember that nothing that you hear on this podcast should be considered medical advice or otherwise. Please always consult your medical team before making any changes to your diabetes management. Okay, I'm back in the studio. I have a very important guest. We're going to be talking about something very, very important that if you're a busy person and you got a busy life, you're going to love this episode, I promise. I got Kat Brown here. She is the founder and CEO of Lux and Lemons, a meal and preparation service company that basically is trying to build a really, really cool environment for busy individuals, women, families. So, Kat, I'm so excited for you to be here. This is amazing. I finally got you on. We've been talking about this for our at least I've been thinking about it for a long time. And then we finally, I finally got to ask you to come on it, and you're here. You're too.

SPEAKER_00

I'm here. Happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_04

Absolutely. I think the first thing that we should do here, uh, just to give people some baseline understanding of you. Give give us kind of your the cliff notes of what made you decide to build this company? What what really drove you to create Lux and Lemons, and then we'll go into like some more about the actual company.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. It was 2018.

SPEAKER_04

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

I was a busy working professional. I worked in corporate real estate development and I did not have time to cook. But if we rewind a bit from there, I grew up in a Greek family. My family migrated from Greece to the US. I was interested in cooking as soon as I could reach the countertop. I would ask my Yaya and older aunt, my great aunts, teach me how to make that. What is that? So cooking was definitely our love language. Food is obviously such a huge part of Greek culture for anybody who's been to Greece.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Every Sunday we'd sit around our entire family and have dinner as a whole family. So cooking was a big part of life. I did not have time for it anymore, and I thought I'm not going to give it up. So I was looking for meal prep companies at the time, and they were all very masculine, geared towards athletes.

SPEAKER_04

Yep.

SPEAKER_01

Which is fine, but you get burnt out from roasted chicken, steamed rice, and steamed asparagus for every meal.

SPEAKER_03

Yes. Yes.

SPEAKER_01

I tried a couple around the area and it just wasn't what I wanted to cook for myself.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So then I tried Hello Fresh, and I realized that was more work than just doing it myself because I now have dirtied every pot and pan in my kitchen and cleaning for two hours. So I could not shake this idea. And I should also mention my entire family. I come from a long line of entrepreneurs. So I was really the only corporate employee that was in my marrow. Yeah. And I couldn't shake this idea. My friends were all entrepreneurs and they were like, you just need to do this. So I just jumped off the ledge and I did it. And I started out with friends and family and was cooking, you know, 50 meals a week, something like that, on week nights and weekends, still working my job. And then that really just compounded so fast. Before I knew it, I was cooking 200 meals a week, 250 meals a week by myself. I realized I needed employees. I realized I needed a commercial kitchen. I needed all of the legalities, you know, T's crossed, I's dotted. So I just figured it out. I built a website in seven days. This is before AI. And I found a commercial kitchen and I just started going and I never looked back. So I worked about 80 hours a week for solid six months. And then I just took the leap. I left my job. And I here we are. Here we are. Almost eight years later, 40 employees.

SPEAKER_04

My hero. My hero. My hero. Because I'm still at my full-time job. My hero.

SPEAKER_01

And I should mention that the meals that I was looking for were meals that we all know and love that are familiar, you know, chicken parmesan, lasagna, enchiladas. I didn't want something that I didn't look forward to eating. And I truly think that the key in sticking to a healthy lifestyle is being excited about what's on your plate. And I wanted to show people you can be excited about what's on your plate. And it doesn't have to be the traditional counterpart you're used to, then geladas at the Mexican restaurant or the pad thai at the Asian restaurant. You can make a healthier version and it still tastes just as good.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. I think the the one of the really interesting things that I love about Lux and Lux and Lemons and about you is one I know you on a personal level now, being at the gym. But the other thing is like when you look at something like HelloFresh, when you look at something like Factor, when you look at some of these other meal delivery services like you mentioned, one of the big things for me has always been the quality of the foods that we're consuming. Like as a health professional, as a nutrition per nutritionist, like someone who believes in that stuff, just like you, that was always the thing that was just the red flag for me. When I would when I would want to have one of my busy professional individuals, male or female, they needed some assistance getting good quality foods because they didn't have time to make it. And these these other companies are using ingredients that I would consider red flags for me. Right. The first time I opened up your website, the first time I looked at the menu, I was like, holy shit, this is incredible. This is exactly what we've been looking for because everything is organic, everything is like doesn't have tons of ingredients, doesn't have 40 different things in it.

SPEAKER_02

No.

SPEAKER_04

And I thought that that was that that for Lux and Lemons, I think that is a really special thing that you've been able to create. So kudos there.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you. And a meal doesn't need all of those ingredients.

SPEAKER_02

Yes.

SPEAKER_01

It really doesn't. And it's it's not hard to achieve either. You can still have that flavor. And for us, the starting point for me was I'm gonna make clean sauces because that is the hardest thing to find in the grocery store is a clean sauce.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So that was kind of my foundation of the company was a clean pad tie, a clean general. So it's a clean ranch dressing, barbecue sauce, Alfredo. Yes. You know, we make our Alfredo with almond milk. You can't tell.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So yeah, you don't need all of that. But companies that want to scale fast and are dollar focused, they're gonna they're gonna look at the bottom line, they're gonna want to profit. And it's easy to add in fillers and preservatives and achieve that. But that's not why we do what we do. So you'll never see that.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. That that is one of the the big things that I just I love about bucks and lemons. Because it it's it just goes back to the thought process of good quality, healthy foods. The other thing that I want to mention and this is for all of you listening, the other thing that I want to mention is the importance of a meal prep preparation, meal delivery service for that busy person, for that busy individual, for that busy. I know I've got tons, a bunch of my clients on different ones. I'm trying to get everyone over to Lux and Lemons. But I've got tons of people on it because just our lives are so busy and it makes so much sense. And even if it is just, hey, I'm just gonna do get enough for lunches because I don't want to go to the the cafeteria at work, or because I don't want to really pack my lunch, or because I don't want to prepare everything, right? That might be an option. Or maybe it's just three meals a night when you know your family is you gotta take the kids to soccer practice. You gotta take them, take this kid here, this kid there. Like you're not gonna be home. Like it makes so much sense to be able to go down this route and us having these options available.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, absolutely. And I think we all fall victim of optimism. Like, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna figure it out, I'm gonna make it. You'll even go as far as to buy the ingredients and let them just sit and die in the fridge. Yes. So yeah, sometimes you just have to be honest with yourself. I think a lot of people have a hard time accepting help or even like going as far as finding help for themselves. Yes. Because you want to say, No, I can handle it. I should be able to meal prep. It's a lot of work. We live busy lives, especially if you have kids, and especially if you have kids in sports. Yeah. We make a lot of cold meals for that too, like our chicken salad, our honey mustard chicken salad. Um, we have like a Caesar chicken salad, and those are like my favorite when I'm carting kids around to sports. Just in the car, you can eat it cold with a fork, get your protein, get some veggies. Yeah. So you can't, you can't tell yourself you can do it all because you're just setting yourself up for failure. And it's okay to look for services to help. And, you know, honestly, anymore with the price of groceries, it's truly not that difficult.

SPEAKER_03

I was gonna bring that up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

We did an analysis recently, and it's funny because if you were to go to the store, like let's say you wanted to order from a a meal prep company and you wanted to make like, we'll use four of our meals, for example, sweet Thai noodle salad, Alfredo Lasagna roll-ups, beef enchiladas, and southern barbecue meatballs. If you went to the store to buy all those ingredients, I mean, it's honestly more expensive. And you're either spending about the same, but you're eating four of the same meal every, you know, four days in a row, or you can have four different meals. And that's the key in not getting burnt out and sticking to a healthy lifestyle and being excited about it.

SPEAKER_02

Yep.

SPEAKER_01

So and I like to get creative too. I'll even take meals, I'll cut them in half sometimes. You know, I think we're all on different budgets, and I'll take a meal, I'll take our chicken parmesan and I'll cut it in half, and I'll make a side salad and I'll make two meals out of it. So there's all there's all kinds of ways to be flexible with it.

SPEAKER_04

How are the I just thought when you brought that up, I was just I'm thinking about the people that I have in Lux and Lemons, one of them being my mom. And she absolutely loves Lux and Lemons, by the way. Uh she was really, she was really bummed that she had to stop doing it when she went to New York for three months. But the I think the interesting thing to what you're saying is the portions, right? The the portions are big enough where someone could make it two or three meals.

SPEAKER_01

You could, yeah, absolutely. If you wanted to grab something simple at the store, like a salad kit or just some like frozen veg frozen green beans or something, like our Alfredo lasagna roll-ups. I always make that two meals. There's two roll-ups in there. You could totally have it as a meal. And especially if you're in the gym a lot, then you know, it's totally doable. But I'll take it, I'll cut it in half, I'll take one of the roll-ups, I'll make some, you know, take green beans out of the freezer. Costco, green beans frozen are the best. Warm them up, maybe a side salad and yeah, or dessert, maybe have like a little Greek protein yogurt cup.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And it's yeah, you don't have to it doesn't have to be complicated. It really does it. I think people overthink it.

SPEAKER_04

I always think about that of the people do overth overthink nutrition. And I know for me for so long, this is why I love meal like the idea of meal delivery service. For me, for so long, I just like to sit there and try to prep meals on Sunday for every single lunch or dinner for the whole entire week. That's exhausting.

SPEAKER_01

That's your day to recharge. What are you doing cooking all day long?

SPEAKER_04

But then but we've done it for so long.

SPEAKER_01

I know.

SPEAKER_04

For the the people that want a good, healthy lifestyle, they we've done it for so long. And so and there's a I feel like in in my almost 20 years now of being a fitness coach and a nutrition coach, there's a very select few amount of people that have the mental capacity to keep that going long term. That just becomes like part of their lifestyle.

SPEAKER_01

It does.

SPEAKER_04

And for me, like that is that's why I feel like this is such a great tool to put in our arsenal because it the whole process of living a good lifestyle is sustainability. It that that that is the number one thing. When we talk about nutrition, we talk about fitness, we talk about anything. If it's not sustainable, then it should be thrown out the door and you figure out a different way.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, absolutely. You need it's just like when you go to therapy and you learn all the tools to get through life, right? You need tools around your health and wellness. It's not just like on a cognitive level. Yeah. You need the gym workout that you're gonna stick with, you know, you need the gym workout when you're having a really bad week and you just need to go hit a boxing uh box at all, boxing back. And same for nutrition. You need that tool that you know this is my go-to for when I'm gonna be busy next week. This is my go-to for when I'm on vacation or I'm traveling for work. This is my go-to when I, you know, just need to have an easier, lighter week and grab stuff from the grocery store. And it's important that you have different options. So you're not putting all your eggs in one basket, and now you're telling yourself, well, I'm gonna go to the store, I'm gonna meal prep on Sundays. And then it's like, well, I haven't done that. I told myself I was gonna do it three weeks in a row and I haven't done it. You haven't done it because it takes it. And I eat popcorn and pepperoni for dinner.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

You it's it's important to do it. Go to fast food. Or go to fast food. I know, I know, which is it's it's easy to do, especially with kids, you know, when you're in a pinch.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, I I I've had I've talked about this a couple of times on the show with with Graham, my co-host, and we talked a lot about convenience and the things that people that like humanity, like humans, like want in life right now.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_04

And one of those is like having things convenient.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_04

And that's another reason why I think this is such an amazing thing because it it gets away from all that Sunday stuff. It gets away from all of the I have to think about all the ingredients, I gotta pick out what I want, now I gotta go buy it, now I gotta go make it. So I think that that is the other really cool thing about this.

SPEAKER_01

For sure. I mean, we are living in the information age, right? We're not going back to the industrial age, we are only looking forward and we're only getting, we're drinking information through a fire hose. You know, everybody is overwhelmed, everybody is busy, everybody doesn't have time, and that those are all counterparts of the information age. So I am with you. It's there is no, I I don't foresee, I love, I'd love to like homestead, honestly. Like one of my dreams that I'll never, it's I can't. It doesn't work for me. But you know, in another life, I would homestead and like, you know, make my sourdough from scratch every morning. But that's not the reality of you can still do some of it.

SPEAKER_04

You can still make sourdough.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, you know, on your Sunday because you don't have the meal prep. And you have time to do something.

SPEAKER_04

We're getting Lux and Lemons. Lux and Lemons is coming today. We don't have to do that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, exactly. So yeah, the reality is that we live in a time that's busier than ever. Convenience is key across the board, right? Like, not even just with nutrition, even with like Amazon, like putting things in auto auto replenish where you can have your toothpaste come every six weeks. It's setting yourself up to not have to manually do all these things is how you keep your mind right, truly. That and physical fitness. Uh, because life isn't slowing down anytime soon. And now with the injection of AI, I mean, we're we're have you guys used the are you guys using it?

SPEAKER_04

Oh, we use it every I'm I'm just a nerd about this right now. Like, I just like I'm just a nerd about the AI piece. It's making things go so fast, it is, but then it's so scary at the same time. It is, and we just don't know what it's gonna be like in five to ten years, and maybe even shorter than that.

SPEAKER_01

Like, we don't, but it's it's here and it's happening, and just like when the internet came, it's like you better jump on or drown under.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And what the great thing with nutrition, meal planning, and AI is the sky is the limit. Oh my god, I can't. This is awesome! You can do anything on your own now. I chat GPT, for example, like so. Here's how I structure my week to keep my mind sane.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

I my husband and I we order all of our lunches, Lux and Lemons. Sometimes we'll order some things for the kids if there's stuff they like on there, especially like breakfast. It's very hard to get our kids to eat breakfast. And I'm like, I know she'll eat that breakfast burrito, you know, things like that. So we'll, that's our starting point. And now we have to fill in all the gaps. So I'll typically cook twice a week. I will cook dinner on Monday and we'll have that dinner Monday, Tuesday. And then I'll cook dinner Wednesday, we'll have that dinner Wednesday, Thursday, and then the weekend, you know, weekends and weekends. We start to live life, right? We did the 80% of discipline, and now it's time to live the 20% of life.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So that's kind of how we set ourselves up for success. But I will use Chat GPT and I'll say, I'll ask the kids what sounds good this week. They they love making, they call it sushi tacos. And so we take salmon, the little seaweed wraps, some rice. We usually do brown rice, avocado, cucumber, and we have like make little tacos. So I'll say, okay, we're gonna do sushi tacos and we're gonna do, you know, like spaghetti squash, bolognese, something like that. And I'll plug everything in. And I'm like, I know this kid only eats these snacks, and this kid only eats these snacks, and she'll only eat this for breakfast. I tell it to Chat GPT, it pumps me out my grocery list. It tells me here's what you need. Here it's organized by section of the grocery store if I want to physically go in, or I can order it for pickup on my phone. So it, you know, it's it is there, there's a lot that's gonna come with it, but if you grab it by the handlebars and use it for yourself, it can make meal planning way more palatable for sure.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. AI is crazy.

SPEAKER_01

It is.

SPEAKER_04

It's crazy. It's just like it's so interesting to me and also hearing how other companies are using it and how people are using it to their advantage, how people are using it in their personal life, whatever. It's funny that I I uh me, me and my wife don't necessarily see necessarily see eye to eye on AI, but that's okay. She doesn't have to use it every day like I do.

SPEAKER_01

My husband works in well, you know, Dustin from the gym. He works in tech, so we're embracing it.

SPEAKER_04

It's embracing it.

SPEAKER_01

It may come and eat up his job if he doesn't.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, that's true. That's very true.

SPEAKER_01

So yeah, it's we'll see. We'll see what the next five years look like. So crazy. Who knows? But I always think to myself, is this what our parents said when the internet came along?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, maybe. You know, I get I'm betting you it is. I mean, I don't feel like the internet moved this fast, though.

SPEAKER_01

It didn't. No, you're right. It definitely didn't. I think the smartphone might be a better when the smartphone came along.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. And it took so long for them to get on that bandwagon.

SPEAKER_01

I know. I know. I know. My parents are finally honest.

SPEAKER_04

My in-laws, like it took them so long to not have a flip phone.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Actually, my dad still has a flip phone when I say my mom loves her iPhone, she loves her Facebook app, but my dad is still a flip phone and he won't text either. He's like, you can call me if you want to talk.

SPEAKER_04

That's hilarious. Oh my god, it's hilarious. Okay, so I want to go in another direction. I think it's important to talk about, and it's diversity. Like we've talked a little bit, you've talked a little bit about it. Talk to me about the diversity and how you came up with the ideas of changing up meals. Because one of the things that one of the other things that I have always been like, uh, about HelloFresh and fact is like the same, it's the same stuff every single week. Totally. Wax and lemons isn't like that.

SPEAKER_01

No, we have 300 recipes to date, and we're always adding new. So yeah, every time I hire on a leadership position in the kitchen, they're like, You have how many recipes do I have to learn? And I was like, Yeah, you're gonna never be bored, but neither are our customers. So variety is everything. We are very obsessed with our customer. One of our big core pieces of our marketing strategy is customer feedback. We want to be in constant communication. What do you like? What do you, what do you not like? What are you not? What needs are we not meeting of yours? What needs are we meeting? And a big one consistently throughout the years is menu variety is like the most important thing for me. Obviously, like I need it to be healthy, but I need variety in the menu. And you're right. A lot of the bigger box guys do, you know, they'll have 40 different meals on there, but they never change. They are the same meals for three, four, five months at a time. So our menu changes every week, which you know, it's either for for our culinary team, it's either for you or it's not for you. I've I've had a lot of restaurant workers come through Lux and Limbs and they're like, I want to go back to where I had to cook the same meal every day. This is too much. But our menu changes every week the entire Menu changes. Nothing that's on this week's menu will be on next week's menu. So you cannot get bored. And we're rotating through 300 recipes. And you know, we have a seasonal section. So I can't believe that we're already here. But pumpkin season is coming up. So all of our pumpkin fall dishes, I'm already mapping those out in upcoming menus. And then we'll have our summer dishes, our winter, like more heartier, like shepherd's pie, things like that. And then our spring, like salads wraps. But our core menu items, we have about 15 entrees on every menu. And we try to do a nice balance. So we'll do a couple Italian dishes, a couple Mexican dishes, Asian, American, and then I call it our miscellaneous category. So that's like Indian, Cajun, Greek, Mediterranean, those kinds of dishes. And it's super important because that to, and in my opinion, that is the biggest key to success, truly, is not getting bored and staying excited. And I think that's where people burn out, especially when they're trying to meal prep for themselves, because you now have to think of all the ideas. And that's one nice thing about HelloFresh is you know, they're thinking about the ideas for you, but then you have to cook it. So variety is super, super important. But also, I look at our meals as almost like a food system. So it's not just you're coming and you're getting your, you know, protein carb veggie. There's a lot of puzzle pieces that you can fit in for flexibility. For example, especially if you're diabetic, you know, you want to have uh, you don't want to eat carbs too late in the day if you're a diabetic, right? You want to eat them earlier in the day. And ideally, you want to eat them with some protein and fiber so your digestion is a little slower and your glucose doesn't spike. So you could have for breakfast, let's say, you could have a start your day with some good protein, fiber, and veggies. You could have some egg bites, some broccoli cheddar egg bites with sweet potatoes. And then for lunch, maybe you went in and worked out. And so you're like, you know what? I'm gonna have some pasta or some rice or something like that. So then you could have, you know, more of a carb, carb or heavier carb dish, like Alfredo with penne, or a pad thai, or you know, general seaux with rice. And then for dinner, we always have a low-carb alternative. So you can now fit pieces into the system. So for dinner now, you can have chicken parmesan with zoodles, zucchini noodles, or you can have sweet Asian meatballs with cauliflower rice and veggies. And then the final piece of the puzzle, everybody loves a sweet. You have to have a sweet, right? And it's important, even, you know, poor diabetics, it's important to find a healthy outlet for that sweet tooth if you have one. And so for us, it's important that we always have healthy fats and fiber in our desserts. So that way it's a balanced digestive result that you're getting from eating it. Like for our example, our tagong bars are hands down, are most popular. It's almond flour crust with a peanut butter layer and a chocolate topping. But the almond flour crust has a ton of healthy fat, and the maple syrup layer and our protein powder that we put in it has fiber. So you're not going and eating an I mean, there's nothing wrong with going and eating an ice cream, but you're not going and eating ice cream or a Snickers bar or whatever. You're having this like, oh, this is like a Reese, like a healthy Reese cup, and I don't feel terrible after I eat it.

SPEAKER_04

Divice diversity.

SPEAKER_01

Yes. So you have to keep variety. And like I know I keep eating a dead horse, but truly it is the key, variety. And then with our menu, almost every meal has that lower carb option. So you can kind of pick and choose how you want to structure your week and your day out so you're never bored.

SPEAKER_04

I think the other interesting piece to that is when you're talking about the variety piece. I'm I'd be curious to know if you've gotten feedback about like, hey, it's changing too quickly.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, yeah. We have so many people who have their like tried and true favorite dish. And they're like, wait, wait, this isn't gonna run again. And I'm like, I'm so sorry, it won't be back for two months. Oh my God. So people are our diehard customers know that when that wild mushroom truffle gnocchi comes on the menu, I'm ordering five and they're sitting in the freezer for the next five weeks, you know, or however long until it runs again. And that that is one tricky piece is is maybe there is too much variety sometimes. And you have to, if you know, if you do order from a meal prep, whether it's us or somebody else, you have to find your favorites, and especially if that menu is weekly rotating, find it and then know, like, okay, I might not see this for four weeks or five weeks, so I'm gonna order a couple and freeze them.

SPEAKER_04

What was the deciding factor to go to one week rotations?

SPEAKER_01

In the beginning, I did monthly menus.

SPEAKER_04

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

So it was like the April menu, you know, or we're in, well, we're basically in August now. So the August menu, and that menu would not change for four weeks. And what I noticed was the first week we'd have stellar, stellar sales. The second week, still good. Third week starts to drop, fourth week, nothing. And it was very hard for reliable projections to be able to operationally to stay organized. So I'm like, okay, well, let's taper it back to every two weeks. And that worked, but it really the sweet spot was every week through through testing, you know, testing and and seeing what would what would work. And then even to this day, we'll sometimes run dishes two weeks in a row because I'm always still kind of seeing, like, how how long can we run a dish? Yeah, yeah. Especially if it's one of those dishes that's more complicated to make. It's nice to run it two weeks in a row. Like empanadas, for example, they might make they might have all this extra batter, you know, this dough, and they could use it the next week. So just try to stay operationally organized. Ironically, led us away from monthly venus and led us to weekly venus.

SPEAKER_04

What about specials? Do you like to do specials like, hey, this is gonna be a special for the next couple weeks, or we did that last summer.

SPEAKER_01

We did limited time. We I've never done it before in in almost eight years. And last summer we did it. I don't know if you remember that viral beef taco bowl that was all over social media. It was like taco meat and then sweet potato, avocado, and cottage cheese. And I was like, I don't want that on the menu forever, but it is so trending right now, and I know I'm not gonna cook it for myself selfishly. Let's throw it on and just say this is like a two-week only thing.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And people really loved that, but people did, and we did it with a couple other things. We did like a chili crunch chicken thigh dish with like a pineapple salsa. And people were not very happy when we stopped running them. I can only imagine. You know, they were like, wait a minute, I really like that. Why is it gone? And I was like, okay, noted. So we'll have specials. But I mean, the you you can't run with 300 recipes, we can't run them all forever. Some things just have to fall off. Some new things can come on. So, you know, you can't make everybody happy, unfortunately. And sometimes you just have to find that happy middle, that middle ground.

SPEAKER_04

What's your favorite dish right now?

SPEAKER_01

Okay. My right now, my favorite dish is the beef enchiladas.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, I don't know about you guys, but I'm getting really hungry. I'm getting really hungry right now.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, God. I love the beef enchiladas. Instead of using rice in the filling, we use cauliflower rice. You cannot tell when it's structured in a dish like that. Corn tortillas have lots of fiber, low carb. And then we top it with our house-made Roja sauce and cheddar cheese. And I put Greek yogurt on top at home to add some extra protein. That's my favorite. It's it's one of the first menu items I ever drafted up. So maybe there's some bias there.

SPEAKER_04

But how often does it come on the on the menu since it's every week?

SPEAKER_01

Every six to eight weeks. I know. I know. Is it on right now? It was on last week's menu that just closed last night.

SPEAKER_04

Oh man. A week late, people. We're a week late.

SPEAKER_01

I did.

SPEAKER_04

We're a week late, people side. I know. We're a week late. Yeah, that one. We got something to look forward to, though.

SPEAKER_01

You do, yeah. It's yeah. That one, one of the, you know, all my favorites are honestly like the the originating meals. So that one, the the southern pulled pork with corn pudding and greens, love that dish. It's the, you know, if you've had corn pudding at City Barbecue or a place like that, it's the similar recipe, but we use Greek yogurt instead of sour cream for more protein, less fat, and kind of makes that more easier to digest. And then I'd say for my third, if I had to do top three, during COVID was a really cool time for us. It was, you know, I was like, I had left my job in April of 2019. And I knew that in real estate, you get an annual bonus. So I knew that bonus was only gonna last me five months, and I had to figure it out after that. So I had just gotten around to starting to pay myself and get into a place where I was like, okay, like I'm on a full-time salary, and then boom, COVID happened. And I was like, it's always like the calm before the storm. I'm like, what happens to us now? And we grew faster than I could have ever imagined during that time.

SPEAKER_04

What makes sense during that time when everyone's needing doesn't want to go to the restaurant, can't go to restaurants.

SPEAKER_01

Groceries from the store.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, it's like let me order Lux and Lemons. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. If you remember, I mean, you couldn't get like beef was hard to get at the store, meat, toilet paper. We all know that one.

SPEAKER_04

Oh my god. But what was just talked about that the other day. I don't understand. Just take a shower, people. Take a shower.

SPEAKER_01

Come on, just take a shower. What was super cool about that time though was there was a lot of like top chefs in Columbus that were furloughed. Not, I mean, that piece isn't cool, but they were looking for jobs and we were busier than ever. So I was hiring anybody that would come in the door. And I had a handful of chefs come through Lux and Lemons at that time and make really cool recipes. To date, at that point, all the recipes had been mine, and which is great, but it's cool to have other minds, you know. So one of our one of my favorites, my my third favorite is the wild mushroom truffle gnocchi dish. And that truffle cream sauce came from a chef through COVID, and he was actually the chef at Lincoln Social in the Short North at the time. And it is so stinking good. I mean, I highly recommend. And that's one of those dishes that I would have that on like a heavy lifting day, like a good workout day, and have that for lunch that day, and then dinner I'd have something lighter. But that's a good one. Man, if your mom hasn't ordered that one, she needs to order it.

SPEAKER_04

I need to ask her what she hasn't had because yeah, she it it was it's been an interesting ride watching her do that and like having conversations every time she comes comes in to where'd you order this week? Like, yeah, what's your favorite dish this week? And she and the reason I also brought up like the diversity and like and like changing it every week is because she said something to me one time. It's like, I wish they wouldn't change things so fast. You just like you get you just I want the same dish.

SPEAKER_03

You get to yeah, you get hooked and then it's gone. I'm like, hey, that that's just what happens. I don't know what to tell you.

SPEAKER_01

And then you yeah, it hopefully it happens one time, and then you know, the next time tell her just stock up, you know? Yeah, stock up, you don't have to order for a couple weeks and you can eat that one. I know. I know, and it's funny, our overnight oats are one of those dishes that we're known for. Overnight oats kind of were trending in the early 2020s, and you know, people make them and they're okay. There's something about our overnight oats, even I, I mean, I made the recipe. I will make it at home. I cannot make it taste the same. And I'm same exact recipe, same exact recipe, and I am convinced that the volume that they're making at one time and the industrial stand mixer is the key. There's something about that stand mixer and that much being made. It just they're so creamy and they're so good. So, you know, you can try to you could try to make things at home that rotate and you missed it, and you're like, dang it, I wanna, I wanna order that again. You you could try. There are a couple that would be hard to recreate, like the oats. But do you know any that she's like I really love and I wish it would be like a few. No, not off the top of my head.

SPEAKER_04

Not off the top of my head. You'll have to tell me. I'll have to ask her.

SPEAKER_01

Maybe I'll slip her a recipe or two.

SPEAKER_04

There you go. There you go.

SPEAKER_01

Unless she's not gonna cook it, and then I'll just tell her that stock.

SPEAKER_04

She probably is not gonna cook it. That's the reason she's doing lots of lemons because she doesn't want to cook.

SPEAKER_01

I know.

SPEAKER_04

So yeah, she probably won't cook it. Yeah, this is it's funny that you talk about recipes at home because one of the things that we love at at North Star, it's one of our favorite restaurants.

SPEAKER_01

Me too.

SPEAKER_04

Is the cob salad. Like that cob salad. It's it's freaking amazing. And every time I have it, Kelly's like, we can make this at home. Like, okay, let's do it. Yeah. But we never do it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. We never do it. I know. We never try to do it. I know. I love North Star too. I was actually fangirling because one of my cooks, he works part-time at North Star, part-time with us. And our sweet potatoes have all, you know, North Star has the best sweet potatoes.

SPEAKER_02

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01

The best. And our sweet potatoes have always been good. But the second he came along and took over sweet potatoes, I was like, you're hired, you're hired for life. Just keep on making those sweet potatoes, okay?

SPEAKER_02

Yep.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I know. And is that the one of the dates? Chop dates? Yes. Like at the sweet and salty. I know. The tough thing with with restaurants, like I was saying, it's the sauces, the dressings. It's like the foundation of the flavor. So until you can get that dressing nailed down, you you can't perfectly mimic it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

I think that has been the problem. Like we just we we were not every time I asked Kelly, she's like, I mean, she's you know, I don't really don't know how to make this dr this sauce, this dressing.

SPEAKER_01

I know.

SPEAKER_04

We can make all the other stuff easy, but I know.

SPEAKER_01

But you know what? You'd be surprised what ChatGPT could do. That's true. You'd be surprised. That's true. You know, I so some of my favorite restaurants, I want to order from them all the time, but I'm not going to because I want to remain healthy and feeling good. And so something I was on a mission to recreate is the City Barbecue Peach Cobbler.

SPEAKER_04

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So good, but dang, is it caloric?

SPEAKER_04

Oh, caloric and highly processed.

SPEAKER_01

Highly processed. So we have a gluten-free version that is full of fiber that I think is as close as you can get to that type of a peach cobbler, like scoopable, like with an ice cream scoop type of peach cobbler. So that's been really fun too throughout the years is going and taking all my favorite meals that I'm like, man, I can only eat this every once in a while. I want to eat it every day and creating the healthy version of it, which is truly every, pretty much every recipe we have. It's a meal I've had at some point in my life that I'm like, man, I love this, but you can't eat a thousand calories for every meal. You just can't. So how do I do this in a healthier way? And I've, you know, like a mad scientist. I remember one of my friends, it was the first or second week that I was, I don't know, beta testing Lux and Lemons. And she, she's a fashion designer, so she's also a creative brain. And she came into my apartment at the time and to pick up her meals. And she goes, This is like a mad scientist lab, but the food version. And I was like, Thank you. That's exactly what I'm trying to do here.

SPEAKER_04

I mean, that's that's good when you're like you someone says exactly what you're trying to do. Like, that's perfect.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, but I just I, you know, going back to the beginning, I just dreamed of this world where all of the meals that, you know, if they say get us off track or we fall off the wagon, or however you want to put it, we could live in a world where we could eat all of those meals and they'd be nourishing and they fuel our body and we feel great after and we don't feel lethargic and we can eat them every day. And so, yeah, we're we're forever pioneering that that idea.

SPEAKER_04

Well, you're doing a damn good job of it.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you.

SPEAKER_04

We're doing a damn good job of it.

SPEAKER_01

Thank you.

SPEAKER_04

Some final up questions before we're we we got we're she brought some food, guys. We're gonna taste some food today. Where do you feel like, or where do you want Lux and Lemons to be in five years?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, very clear, crystal clear vision on this. We're we just moved into a new production facility in January this year. So we're in the Jenny's ice cream old production facility down in Short North. We went from about 3,500 square feet to 10,000 square feet. So we went in there very intentionally with the vision in mind. Wow. So for this year, we're finally planning on shipping. So we're we're hoping she's gonna stay in the skies. So we are we are building out our shipping box. Very important that we get that right. So the food stays 40 degrees all the way to your door from ours. And next year we will ship within the state lines of Ohio. And towards the end of next year, we will start expanding outside of the state lines of Ohio, shipping little by little until we get to nationwide.

SPEAKER_04

That is some freaking amazing news right there. Oh, that's some amazing news. Oh, beta labor of love.

SPEAKER_01

So that that our five-year goal is to be nationwide and household name.

SPEAKER_04

I love it.

SPEAKER_01

Yes.

SPEAKER_04

And and what barriers do you see right now?

SPEAKER_01

Right. So barriers are there are guys out there that are bigger than us. You know, they have more spending power, they can bid against our name and paid ads and things like that. So there is that element. The other element is scaling and making sure we're scaling at a pace that we can handle. Because once you open the floodgates, you know, everybody can order. So making sure that we're doing it strategically where we can handle the volume that's coming in, which we have an amazing talented team that's working on that, like projection piece of it. And the one thing that's not a barrier that I hope never becomes one is there's nobody like us. There's really nobody like us doing this. This industry is very masculine. There's very few female women-owned businesses in this area. So I think as long as that remains true, we'll be okay because we'll stay unique in the industry. And not to say there's anything wrong with the masculine brand, but I just think that like mom makes the best food, grandma makes the best food. You gotta have that feminine touch on it.

SPEAKER_04

I I almost look at it even going a step further than that than that, which is why I love Lux and Lemons so much. We I mentioned it earlier, and it's the quality.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_04

So many of those masculine companies, like we talked about earlier, the quality is not the number one priority.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Lux and lemons, that's that's one of the number one priorities. Absolutely. And I think that that is gonna carry you guys forward because our world is becoming more aware and understanding of how powerful and and impactful good quality food is. 100%.

SPEAKER_01

And you know, it's very funny. Quick story, not to tangent, but my grandfather owned a pie company called Quality Bakery a long time ago in the 60s. If anybody knows Mountaintop Pies, those were him in the freezer section at Kroger. So Quality Bakery. And when we moved into this new facility, the Jenny's Ice Cream Production facility, the street is quality place and the company is quality holdings. So we are surrounded by quality. We will never, we will never lose sight of it. Quality is everything. It is everything. It is why we have the retention rate we do. Because, you know, with HelloFresh or Factor and those guys, they're heavy, heavy promotion in the beginning. They serve you, they un they under deliver and then a lot of their customers leave. So we are trying to do the exact opposite. We are trying to over-deliver. So you love what's in front of you and you keep coming back for more.

SPEAKER_04

Which sounds like a very simple business plan. Like, why would you want to push your customers away?

SPEAKER_01

Well, you have a lot of white-collared guys. So this is one thing that also could potentially be a barrier, but everybody, the company has me, so I'll never let it happen. But with scaling and bringing on investors and, you know, venture capital or capitalist firms, you have a lot of white-collar guys that are coming in and saying, You need to do this, we need to trim here, your packaging's too expensive. You know, we need to trim down food cost. And a lot of those people say, Yes, yes, yes. I will not. Because I know that's why we have had the success we've had. And we will never do that. But you do, it's you get a lot of pressure. I mean, even us talking to investors, we're You're going to have to bring on a couple investors to really scale nationwide. And you know, I've I've turned down some really big opportunities and some really big checks because I'm like, you're not bought into what we're doing. And I'm not going to change what we're doing because you have a different vision. Even if that means we get to the end goal faster, we're not we're not going to be the same company when we get there.

SPEAKER_04

Yep. Yep. That makes total sense.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. The money talks. Money talks, unfortunately, with some people.

SPEAKER_01

Money talks with some people, but like I said, we are so insanely obsessed with our customer. I will never disappoint our customer. Yeah. Which I think is a good segue into showing you some of our meals.

SPEAKER_04

Yes. Yes, 100%. We're going to eat some food. Yeah. We're going to eat some food. We're going to take a break and then we'll be right back. Okay. We got our dishes. I'm so pumped about this. I'm going to have Kat tell us about the two dishes that we're about to eat today. And then I'm just going to dive in and just take it down in the face.

SPEAKER_01

I love it. All right. So we have this is our chicken alfredo with broccoli. And this has zoodles. We also have a penne option, gluten-free penne. And then over here we have our this is our fried rice with chicken. We do half cauliflower rice, half jasmine rice. We put it with a nice flavorful sauce, lots of veggies, saute it. Over here at the Alfredo, we do an almond milk sauce. So you have you don't have the heavy cream.

SPEAKER_04

I love that. I love that. Yeah. I love that. All right. I'm digging in, guys. We're just going to dig into this. Uh, our producer, Ethan, can have some of the things.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I'm going to say, Ethan, you need to get a bite. Ethan's got to get some of this, man. Oh my god. Oh, guys. I'm only digging one bite. Lux and lemons, guys. It's where it's at. I'm telling you. You got a busy schedule? Holy God. What we got? I might eat this whole bowl. You never know.

SPEAKER_01

You shouldn't. You shouldn't.

SPEAKER_02

Hmm.

SPEAKER_01

Yep. So you can check us out. We're luxeandlemons.com. And as long as you order, new menus launch Friday. And as long as you order by Thursday at midnight, everything is delivered to your doorstep Sunday evening. Unless you want to do pickup, we offer that as well. You can pick up on Sunday or Monday.

SPEAKER_04

Do most people do delivery or do you kind of have both go on delivery and 75% do delivery because it makes sense?

SPEAKER_01

Convenience makes sense. But you know, a lot of people do like the pickup option, especially if you're out of town on Sunday. You could just pick up on Monday. So yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Super interesting. Super interesting.

SPEAKER_01

And no subscription or commitment, you know. You don't have to subscribe.

SPEAKER_04

Weekly, just get it. Order. You can subscribe if you want.

SPEAKER_01

You don't have to. Just weekly keep it.

SPEAKER_04

Is there a benefit to doing a subscription versus buying it every week?

SPEAKER_01

You do save a percent. Yeah. By doing. And for the subscriptions we offer, we have our balance meal plan, which is just the best sellers every week, five of them. We have nourish, which is our low carb, and then we have foundations, which is our gluten-free, dairy-free. They each have five meals. Set it and forget it. You can pause, cancel, skip on your own.

SPEAKER_04

We've talked about this before because my mom was a prime example of this.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Where you you guys had a specific package, like you can get five, or you can get this, or you get this. Are you guys customizable now in terms of like, hey, this week I want 12 meals, this week I want three meals, this week I want five meals. How does the packaging work?

SPEAKER_01

It's not official news, but I I do have literally I have a phone call after this. We are launching that option. We just brought on a new software under our website. So you will have the set it and forget it plans where we pick the meals for you. And then we're also launching a build your own box. So you can now go in and pick your meals, still get your discount, and have them delivered to your house.

SPEAKER_04

Lux and Lemons, guys. It's where it's at. I don't know what else to say. I don't know what else to say. It's just it's Lux and Lemons, it's where it's at. I mean, this is Kat, this is amazing. Thank you for having me. We're gonna take another bite. I'm so excited that I finally got you on the show. If someone, it's just like if is it the easiest way, just go to the website, sign up, make your first order. Is that the easiest thing to do right now?

SPEAKER_01

Easiest thing to do right now, and exclusive for your listeners. If you use the code take20, that will give you $20 off your first order.

SPEAKER_04

I love it. You guys better get on that. I know I'm gonna get back on that. I'm telling you what, as soon as I get home today, I'm gonna tell Kelly, we are ordering some Lux and Lemon's food. You haven't even tried Delfredo yet. I mean, this is amazing. Kat, thank you again for doing this. This was amazing. Everybody, thank you so much for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe to the new newsletter. There's a new newsletter that just dropped today. I'm so excited about that. There's gonna be tons of stuff that are coming, it's gonna be coming out every single week in that newsletter. Yeah, it's uh it thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you guys next time.

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Coach Ken Kniss

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