
Founders' Forum
Great business stories and great people come together on Marc Bernstein’s Founders’ Forum! Marc Bernstein sits down with business founders across the country to discuss their lives, successes, lessons, and their vision for the future. It’s all about the success they’ve earned and the lessons they’ve learned along the way. These are American success stories and they’re not done yet!
Your Host, Marc Bernstein
Marc Bernstein is an entrepreneur, author, and consultant. He helps high performing entrepreneurs and business owners create a vision for the future, accomplish their business and personal goals, financial and otherwise, and on helping them to see through on their intentions. Marc recently co-founded March, a forward-looking company with a unique approach to wealth management. He captured his philosophy in his #1 Amazon Bestseller, The Fiscal Therapy Solution 1.0. Marc is also the founder of the Forward Focus Forum, a suite of resources tailored specifically to educate and connect high performing entrepreneurs, and helping them realize their vision of true financial independence. Find out more about Marc and connect with him at marcjbernstein.com.
Are you a visionary founder with a compelling success story that deserves to be shared with our audience? We're on the lookout for accomplished business leaders like you to be featured on the Founders' Forum Radio Show and Podcast. If you've surmounted challenges, reached significant milestones, or have an exciting vision for the future, we'd be honored to have you as a guest on our show. Your experiences and insights can inspire and enlighten others in the business world. If you're eager to share your journey and the invaluable lessons you've learned along the way, we invite you to apply here. Connect with us, and let's discuss the possibility of featuring you in an upcoming episode. Join us in celebrating your success and contributing to the legacy of the Founders' Forum!
Founders' Forum
The Mindful Eating Advantage: How Amy Zitelman Built Soom Foods
Can what you eat impact the way you lead and grow a business? In this episode, we sit down with Amy Zitelman, co-founder of Soom Foods, to explore how mindful eating and strategic entrepreneurship go hand in hand. Amy shares her journey of bringing tahini—a nutrient-dense superfood—to the U.S. market and how it has become a kitchen staple for top chefs and health-conscious consumers alike.
Beyond food, Amy dives into the challenges and triumphs of running a family business, balancing work-life dynamics, and scaling Soom Foods with inventory mastery, third-party logistics, and the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS).
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- How mindful eating can reduce inflammation and improve overall well-being
- The entrepreneurial journey behind Soom Foods and the rise of tahini in the U.S.
- Tips for managing a family-run business while maintaining healthy boundaries
- How EOS fosters accountability and sustainable growth for small businesses
- The key strategies behind Soom Foods’ expansion and inventory management
Amy also reflects on the power of a strong support system, sharing how she balances motherhood, leadership, and personal wellness. Whether you're a food lover, entrepreneur, or business leader, this episode is packed with actionable insights and inspiration.
Tune in now to discover how intentional choices—both in food and business—can lead to long-term success!
About Amy Zitelman:
Amy started Soom Foods with her two older sisters in 2013, with a mission to make tahini a more popular ingredient in the US Market. Soom has been featured in Bon Appetit, Food and Wine, The New York Times and other media as they are the preferred tahini of top chefs like Michael Solomonov of Zahav Restaurant. Amy is the author of The Tahini Table cookbook and lives in Penn Valley with her husband and three sons.
Connect:
Website soomfoods.com
LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/amy-zitelman-07973b2b
linkedin.com/company/soom-foods
Instagram instagram.com/soomfoods
Facebook facebook.com/SoomFoods
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The following programming is sponsored by Marc J Bernstein. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of this station, its management or Beasley Media Group. Entrepreneur, author and financial consultant, Marc Bernstein helps high-performing entrepreneurial business owners create a vision for the future and follow through on their goals and intentions. Ang Onorato is a business growth strategist who blends psychology and business together to create conscious leaders and business owners who impact the world. Founders Forum is a radio show podcast sharing the real stories behind entrepreneurship as founders discover more about themselves, while providing valuable lessons and some fun and entertainment for you. Now here's.
Marc Bernstein:Marc and Ang. Good morning America. How are you today? Good morning Arlo. Arlo's going on a field trip with me this afternoon to Chester Springs, did you pack his lunch?
Marc Bernstein:No, he doesn't eat lunch, he eats breakfast and he eats dinner. It's my Bernadoodle, my puppy. He's almost not a puppy anymore, anyway. So this morning we have a very exciting and interesting show and it's about food. And we're actually prerecording another show today that's also about food.
Marc Bernstein:So, on food, we've never really talked about food on this and it's very current on my mind because I'm in the middle of a juice fast this week which does wonders if you haven't tried it. It gets rid of inflammation, it provides you with all this energy that you might be missing, et cetera. But anyway, not advertising that. But I thought we'd start out with a couple of quotes about food. I always like to think you are what you eat. You've heard that Not everyone necessarily believes that.
Marc Bernstein:Some people think we're destined to eat certain kinds of foods. That's what cows are for and that's what what you know animals are for, et cetera, whatever. And you know there's two schools of thought. But I have a couple of quotes that I just want to see what you got, what you all think about this. First of all, think before you eat people. Food should be the life of you, not the death of you Interesting. And another one is tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are. And um. The last one is um.
Marc Bernstein:You know there are people you've heard this. There's a book out, I think it's Dr Hyman. It says um, eat to live instead of live to eat. I have friends and I'm sure we all do who definitely live to eat and I was sort of brought up in a culture that was sort of live to eat. You know, as many of us were, and I know you can relate to that, Ang, probably Amy as well, but I prefer to think about, you know, eating to live. Anyway, what do you think, Ang? What are your thoughts?
Ang Onorato:Well, this is definitely an interesting topic for me because, as you know, I'm dealing with some inflammation problems of my own in a major way right now, needing a new hip and fun things like that, and I just think that there's a lot to be said for that first quote in particular. I think our food supply is obviously very different than it was growing up, because I could eat the same foods now that I grew up eating and I have a very different reaction to them. So I am excited for our guest today because I can't wait to hear about healthy food and where it comes from and why we have it in new forms.
Marc Bernstein:It has nothing to do with age, the fact that you have it, I'm just curious.
Ang Onorato:No, nor the fact that I play ice hockey or do other things. But no, it's an inherited inflammation problem for sure.
Marc Bernstein:I meant the fact that you reacted to foods differently now than you did then.
Ang Onorato:Oh well, that could be very well too, but yeah, I never used to have inflammatory problems, so who knows?
Marc Bernstein:Anyway, our resident food expert today is Amy, who I'll introduce in a moment. What are your thoughts on this subject?
Amy Zitelman:I have two thoughts. One is as a practice of eating, but the other is as an entrepreneur in the food space. You know it's easy to eating, but the other is as an entrepreneur in the food space. You know it's easy to and we can make assumptions about why people choose to eat what they eat. And that is at the root of like what I'm trying to figure out every day, which is how can I convince somebody to try my product?
Marc Bernstein:Right and your product. We'll get to that in a second, but it happens to be, I believe, one of the healthiest things out there that you can eat. But we'll see. Happens to be I believe, one of the healthiest things out there that you can eat, but we'll see. We'll let you talk about that. So our guest today is Amy Zitelman, and she started Soom Foods, soom S-O-O-M, with which I'm very familiar, and the product she brought in that's on the desk. It's like I'm not eating today, but I would love to eat some because I've had it and it's a great product, because I've had it and it's a great product. And, as you'll see, she started the business with her two older sisters, which I think is interesting and we might touch on that a little bit in 2013, with a mission to make tahini a more popular ingredient in the US market.
Marc Bernstein:Many of you may be familiar with it. Many of you may not know much about tahini. I happen. It's one of my actually favorite go-to foods. Zoom has been featured in Bon Appetit, food and Wine, the New York Times and other media, as are the preferred tahini of many top chefs like Michael Solomonoff of Zahav Restaurant, which is not only one of the top restaurants in Philadelphia, but one of the top restaurants in the country. And Amy is the author of the Tahini Table cookbook and lives in Penn Valley, almost around the corner from our radio station, with her husband and three sons.
Amy Zitelman:Welcome, amy, hi thank you, thanks for having me.
Marc Bernstein:So let's talk about that for a second. I want to hear your story, but talk about, expand on what you're saying in regard to how you think about food and how you think about making this an ingredient in people's lives, and why.
Amy Zitelman:Yeah, I mean when people are conscious about what they're choosing, which people are every day, whether it's because of financial reasons or health reasons or dietary goal reasons. People, there are so many inputs. I think you guys will appreciate it from the psychological perspective of what makes people choose to do anything, but also what they're choosing to purchase, to buy, to cook with that day and selling an ingredient like tahini, where, a a lot of people don't know what it is or are not that familiar with it, or, b may not know the full depths of its applications every day as an opportunity to either introduce tahini or teach something new about tahini to potential and current consumers. So I think about it all the time.
Marc Bernstein:Since we're on the subject, do you want to say anything about the nutritional benefits of tahini?
Amy Zitelman:Yeah, absolutely so. For those of you that are unfamiliar, tahini is an ingredient made from 100% roasted and ground sesame seeds. It's thicker than olive oil and thinner than peanut butter, but can be used for both in savory and sweet recipes, so that's our baseline. Sesame seeds, though, are a great source of protein, calcium, iron. It's rich in omega fatty acids. It's rich in phosphorus and magnesium. I mean, it's very nutritionally dense.
Marc Bernstein:And you get your tahini seeds, if I recall, from Ethiopia.
Amy Zitelman:Primarily from Ethiopia, but also being sourced from other parts of mostly Northeast Africa? Yes, but sesame, like other commodities, grow different in different regions. The sesame seed in Ethiopia, a white Humira variety in particular, has been really celebrated for the past decade, 15, 20 years, as the best type of seed for tahini, and that's when my sisters and I kind of got inserted into this world of tahini and sesame seeds over 13 years ago now, 2011.
Marc Bernstein:And your dark chocolate, tahini is still healthy. Dark chocolate's a good thing for health and, as we heard, sesame seeds are a great thing. Yeah, exactly, and it's delicious.
Amy Zitelman:It's just three ingredients tahini, powdered pure cane sugar and cocoa powder. Our dark one also has some sea salt in it. So if you like Nutella or have a sweet tooth, the chocolate spread. It is really delicious.
Marc Bernstein:Very nice, so tell us how you got in this crazy. I do need to say that Amy is a fellow graduate of the University of Delaware. It's a fightin' blue hen. We got to talk about that a little bit. So this started somewhere around or right after college, I believe.
Amy Zitelman:Exactly. I was a senior at University of Delaware and I think you'll appreciate this. My oldest sister called me one day and was like what do you know about tahini? And I'm like you know, we know it from Israel. It's in hummus. You put a sauce on falafel and she said Jackie is dating Omri. Our middle sister, jackie was dating her now husband Omri, and Omri was in the tahina, or as we call it here in the States, tahini industry in Israel. He was buying tahini from manufacturers and selling it to his own network of restaurants and hummus makers and caterers and hotels and Jackie liked to help him.
Amy Zitelman:Entrepreneurship kind of runs in our blood. Both of our parents are entrepreneurs. Three out of four of our grandparents are entrepreneurs. Like it's definitely there. And my oldest sister, shelby. She went to University of Pennsylvania. She studied entrepreneurial management and understood the foundation of what it meant to start a business and because of the inspiration from Omri and then evaluating the market here in the States and realizing a few things. One, most people had no idea what tahini was. You could only find it on the bottom shelf of the international aisle with dust on the lids. And if they did know what it was, they only used it for hummus and they couldn't name the brand name. So, entrepreneurial speaking, that sounded like a great opportunity. In reality, it's very, very challenging to tackle.
Marc Bernstein:We'll talk about that. If you do find it on the shelves in supermarkets today, which I know you do, where would you find it now, as opposed to the bottom shelf in the international aisle?
Amy Zitelman:Great question. Now it's on the bottom shelf of the nut butter section.
Marc Bernstein:But, it's moving up in the world.
Amy Zitelman:Because people are getting more into the nut butters and alternatives. Exactly, we worked really hard to get it into the nut butter category because of its application like a nut butter. But what's been interesting for us, we just launched into our first conventional chain Publix down in Florida. You know the southeast, we know it well, right, Marc?
Marc Bernstein:We do.
Amy Zitelman:We love Publix.
Marc Bernstein:And they put us in the kosher section. That was the only game in town where I was in Florida.
Ang Onorato:Pretty much everywhere in Florida, I think.
Amy Zitelman:And people love it and they're providing great food and they're expanding to younger brands. Now we're actually very pleased with Publix and when they took our tahini in, they slotted it where tahini was already sold, which is the kosher section, which is part of a larger international aisle. So for the first time in 10 years, for the past six months, we've been strategizing about the kosher set as opposed to the nut butter set.
Marc Bernstein:So it's been interesting, excellent, so how are you doing in terms of sales? And I know it's growing right.
Amy Zitelman:Yeah.
Marc Bernstein:Tell us a little bit about that.
Amy Zitelman:We're growing a lot, I mean in the first five years of the business now. So what happened was we did our market research. I then lived in Israel for a year, loved to experience the culture. We went to Ethiopia for the first time and then, in January of 2013, I moved to the Philly area actually in with my aunt and uncle and started working on our first import, and we received that first import at the end of April or early May of 2013.
Amy Zitelman:And so, since our sales have really been for about 10 years now and it was a, it was fun for the first five years we doubled, you know, 100% year over year. We had an omni-channel sales approach originally, where we were selling on our website a little bit, selling into local grocery stores, independent markets and co-ops, and then selling to restaurants, and what we learned very quickly with the likes of Mike Solomonov and other restaurants that we sold to across the country, was that the restaurant industry provided a ton of value for us as it related to the business strategy, the foundation of several aspects of making tahini more popular, so we really leaned into restaurants. Since then, the company continues to grow, where we sold over one and a quarter million pounds of tahini last year in 2023.
Announcer:Sounds like a lot yeah.
Amy Zitelman:And we finished the year also in 3,500 grocery stores. So all of our channels are really starting to grow now.
Marc Bernstein:So you're still doing the omni-channel approach. You're still at that.
Amy Zitelman:We are, yeah, I mean we really retracted and leaned into restaurants for quite a while, covid kind of, and also having the product available on Amazon helped us kind of accelerate back into more channels, especially retail.
Marc Bernstein:So you mentioned challenges before and you've hinted at it in these comments. Anything else you want to add in the way of challenges that you've faced over the last 10 years?
Amy Zitelman:Oh man, I mean it's numerous. So for those of you familiar with tahini, you might know that it's a very messy ingredient. We've had our fair share of big spills, which is pretty frustrating. We've had our fair share.
Marc Bernstein:It's like an oil spill, it is like an oil spill.
Amy Zitelman:Actually, what our warehouse team, what we figured out, it's like a puke spill, Like you have to throw down, you know like dust on it and then kind of mop it up.
Ang Onorato:And now we have a whole great kit the flashbacks of elementary school and the school bus accidents. Yeah.
Marc Bernstein:I have to say that's one I didn't think of.
Amy Zitelman:And I should never have said that in you know the context of tahini. But yes, it's a very messy product. We've had our fair share of spills.
Marc Bernstein:Messy products can be fun to eat, though.
Amy Zitelman:They can be. It's also a heavy product, so shipping it has been challenging. We've learned a lot as it relates to the supply chain, both small parcel and truck loads, or less than truck loads, I mean. The challenges have been numerous.
Marc Bernstein:How about your employee culture and I know Anne's just going to want to ask you about that.
Ang Onorato:Yeah, so, before we go to break here, I think that question kind of dovetails in your case in two ways. So one it's. I think it's interesting to learn about the culture working with your two sisters. You know family businesses in general, but two sisters, I have two sisters in a somewhat of a business environment. So I'm really curious to to learn how that is both a challenge and opportunity. But then also, how does that influence the culture that you're creating? Right, because obviously, as you prepare for even more exponential, massive growth and hiring a lot more people, I'm sure culture is a big piece of what you want to incorporate into that.
Amy Zitelman:Yeah, culture is a big piece and when it was just me and my sisters, we were really intentional about setting boundaries and kind of as much as we could, being young and inexperienced, shaping some type of culture. But we knew that we wanted to respect each other's work-life balance. We knew that we needed work-life balance like as a family unit. Sometimes when we're getting together for dinner we shouldn't be talking about the business or sorry, mom and dad, you know, we just don't want to answer your questions tonight. And it was also respecting always respecting where each other was at in our life stages as it relates to the roles and responsibilities that we had within the business. So there at no point was intense animosity at any time between any of the sisters, which was really important. But you'll probably relate to this also, our middle sister lives in Israel, so that creates an interesting boundary as it relates to decision making, especially what is decided on at manufacturing. All of our manufacturing is done in Israel.
Amy Zitelman:Jackie and Omri also are very involved in the supply chain to Ethiopia, so she really touches and helps us on the supply chain side. But operationally, shelby, my oldest sister, and I were here on the ground so that contributed a lot to the decision making. But as it related to our own work-life balance, we've always, from day one, extended that to the team that we were hiring. You know we are very flexible with our warehouse employees when they have child care issues or when employees want to work from somewhere else for a time being. We have a colleague in the UK right now for six weeks. So we just wanted to mirror, you know, our expectations for work-life balance or how we envision being entrepreneurial, fitting into our lives instead of running our lives, kind of a parallel to food. So we extend that to the team as well.
Marc Bernstein:So we're going to take a break, but Omri is still involved in the business.
Amy Zitelman:I wanted to ask you that Never really was kind of tangentially. Okay, gotcha, but yes he's still in the industry, very much so. He's very integrated into the commodity exchange out of Ethiopia and tahini manufacturing. Now.
Marc Bernstein:Very interesting. Well, with that, let's take a short break and let's pick up on the company culture when we come back.
Announcer:The Satell Institute is the leading CEO member organization dedicated to corporate social responsibility, and let's pick up on the company culture when we come back. Thank you. Opportunity to share ideas and experience with their peers, like-minded CEOs who believe in the importance of giving back to the community and to understand the benefits companies get from embracing corporate social responsibility. The Satell Institute charges no dues or fees. In order to join, member companies simply make a long-term commitment to the non-profit of their choice. To find out more about membership and why so many leading companies are now part of the Satell Institute, visit the organization's website at satellinstitute. org. Satell S-A-T-E-L-L. Institute. org. As Ed Satell says, think we, not just me.
Marc Bernstein:We are back on Founders Forum with our guest today, amy Zitelman and Ang, you were talking about company culture. I think you wanted to dig into that a little further.
Ang Onorato:Yeah, so I'm fascinated by the family culture thing and, as I mentioned, I've got two sisters and we're in somewhat of a family kind of real estate sort of venture and I know it's interesting how things can pop up. So it sounds like you're managing that beautifully, which is wonderful. So I'm curious though, as you think about the business expanding both footprint revenue. I think you mentioned off air that you've got about 12 employees. So do you have a vision for it's kind of a two-part question how many people do you think you're going to grow this to, let's say, over the next year? And being that I come from the talent acquisition space for many years, I know how challenging it is to attract good employees, good staff. So do you have a thought around how you're attracting people, how many you think you might need to grow and that'll tie into some other, you know, entrepreneurial growth questions too?
Amy Zitelman:Yeah, A great question as it relates to the team. Right now our biggest growth is in inventory because we're, you know, starting to sell to more grocery stores and more consumer channels. We are moving more units of tahini than in the past. So operationallyally, that's where we're growing the most, and have been since covid, since we started accelerating into these consumer channels. For instance, before covid I had, we had one warehouse employee, one warehouse manager, rick. He and I worked really closely with one supply chain director, and now we have a supply chain director, a new warehouse manager and four full-time warehouse employees.
Amy Zitelman:So the ops side of the business is definitely taking up the most recruitment. We're currently balancing that between what we want to keep in-house and what we might want to start doing with a 3PL or outsourced support as it relates to the ops, because we may not have, but we also may have maxed out our capacity for hiring, you know, in that field. Otherwise, though, we hope to be able to accomplish our growth with our core team. Right now We've got two people in marketing. We want to hire one more salesperson towards the end of this year and maybe from there sales will continue to grow, but otherwise we're really hoping to see the next stage of growth we're at about. We will continue to grow, but otherwise we're really hoping to see the next stage of growth we're at about, we're hoping to end this year. We're on track to end this year around eight and a half million, nine million, and we want to grow that. I know we're going to go into the three-year picture to 25 million and so we need the people that will, you know, facilitate that type of growth. And whether we want to bring on the team to hold that much inventory ourselves or whether we want to outsource that in some capacity, are the decisions we're making right now.
Marc Bernstein:So thanks for that lead in. So if we're sitting here three years from now this is one of my favorite questions, and we're looking at April of 2027 and you were looking back on the last three years what would have to happen? So you already talked about sales for the business. Where would you like that to be? What would else happen in your company vision and your personal vision if you'd?
Amy Zitelman:like, yeah Well, also closing the loop on your question, but it fits in tremendously, which is the culture that we're building and how we hire and retain people. I mean, we're really proud. Our warehouse, our assistant warehouse manager, rick I was talking about him from COVID. He's been with us now for six years. You know, and people share with me, that's very hard to accomplish and that's because we really hire and we run the business through our values. You might be familiar with EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system Traction. We adopted that two years ago. Entrepreneurial operating system Traction we adopted that two years ago but it was kind of rustling around in my brain for the past four right before COVID, since like 2019, I read Traction and then I really started implementing it two years ago now and when we started hiring for the values and having that very clear accountability chart what that person would be accountable for, responsible for, people really fall into place or they fall out of place. It's so much easier this way.
Ang Onorato:It couldn't articulate that better yeah, especially in EOS models.
Amy Zitelman:And so EOS is how we are shaping the way to three years, and that's how we establish this revenue goal. Other piece goals Of course, it's the right people, the right seats. I think 80% is our goal, but we're a small team. We're going for 100% over here.
Marc Bernstein:Do you do EOS yourself or do you have a facilitator?
Amy Zitelman:We have a facilitator. Yeah, he facilitated us through the first two years and this year now we're just doing like the quarterly you know, or even just two quarterlies together. It's kind of a light. We're EOS light because we're such a small team. Right now, on our leadership team it's just four of us myself, chief growth officer, who sits as the integrator, somebody from ops and somebody from finance. My goal would be to maybe find somebody for marketing to really help facilitate that growth and where I'm sitting right now.
Ang Onorato:Yeah, I just want to highlight that real quick, the fact that, because I think we're all such fans of EOS and I do a lot of business consulting with small firms as well, and for our listeners that aren't familiar with it I just want to highlight the point that a lot of times when you're a smaller company, people, companies feel like we don't, we don't have the resources to hire that right now, and I feel like you're a great example of when you do that and you invest in that, the ultimate payoff is that you do have such exponential and structured growth from an operational standpoint. So I think it's really brilliant that you've done that at this stage in the company's evolution.
Amy Zitelman:Well, I appreciate that I learned a lesson early on or not early on that it's so much better when hard things happen now as opposed to in two years. Uh, that was the biggest learning. Talk about challenges was a recall that we had in 2018. And going through it was so, so hard. You asked about the support of sisters. There were days when I didn't want to pick up the phone and make one more call and Shelby would encourage me we can do it. Just stick to our values, just be honest, answer their questions. And there were days when Shelby would say how are we going to get through this? You know our products have been delisted from Amazon and it's getting very challenging to get them back up, and I would say, well, just take it one day at a time. So, but when you have that clear direction and when you make the mistakes when you're younger, it gets so much easier than when you're bigger, because a bigger business, bigger problem it doesn't get any easier.
Ang Onorato:I think it's important because that's one of those things that, to me, mirrors life. If you don't know to ask for help, or you don't have the vulnerability as a business to ask for the right help, then those problems do snowball.
Amy Zitelman:Yeah, everything gets worse.
Marc Bernstein:So I want to ask you about challenges, about your next three years, and I also want to ask you about your family. So I'll feed you one. You have three boys, you have a busy husband, it sounds like, and you have a busy business that you run. How does that all work out? What kind of challenge is that for you?
Amy Zitelman:It's been a challenge. Each stage of having another kid brought more challenges, but we have great child care. I guess that's the biggest thing that helps us. Just started with an au pair this year also, and our mom was an entrepreneur and she worked a lot in the first part of her motherhood. I would say she retired when I was 12. And I remember asking her about that, like how did you do it all? And she said I got help, you know, either with childcare or great nursery schools or whatever it was. And she said I knew that other people could participate in this stage of your life. Very, you know, tremendously when you were little and it was when you were 12 and Shelby, your oldest sister, was 16 that I realized like, oh, I need to mom more now, right, I think it was bigger kids who I feel like two different people, you know, but with tremendous community and support and same with building the right team, building the right structure in your personal life helps a lot also.
Marc Bernstein:I will say my wife was a family therapist, so she's working with families and she got to that point when my son was 12 and she said got to slow this down and maybe even stop, because this is when the kids really you know, and she relied on her mother and babysitters and support. But she said I really need to be hands-on. So I completely get that and I was very busy in business and did what I could, but she had to really take the ball and run with it at that point with the kids. So certainly understand that. Let's talk about a couple of fun things. What book are you currently reading?
Amy Zitelman:So I'm currently reading the Catcher in the Rye oh yeah, and you had read it before. I had not since high school, or maybe another time in college, but I needed a book I have to read every night, a non-business book. Sometimes I read a paragraph, sometimes I read 10 pages, but that's the way I shut down my brain. So I'll grab any book and reread it at any time.
Marc Bernstein:I'm working on that one myself. I used to read inspirational, growth-oriented personal development business books Not good.
Ang Onorato:So I'm working on trying to get fiction back in my life.
Marc Bernstein:So I understand that, and tell me about your legacy what do you think about this? Because you're doing some pretty important things in a lot of ways. Thank you.
Amy Zitelman:I think about my legacy as a mother, of course, and my contribution to my community. Our parents have definitely laid a foundation of philanthropy. You know expectations, so I just see all of this as a tremendous opportunity to make a small impact in this. My own micro or even larger economy, my own family economy. You know my community economy. It's just, it's amazing. I'm turning 35 on Friday and and it's an interesting stage where you realize, as an adult, you can contribute a lot to things and you can take that opportunity or not.
Marc Bernstein:That's great. Are you trying to integrate philanthropy into Zoom at all?
Amy Zitelman:Oh, great question. We are philanthropy into Zoom at all. Oh, great question, we are, I mean, very as much as we can. We donate a lot of products to organizations that align with where we focus our philanthropy, which is on nutrition, education, food access and then also career development, primarily in food and beverage or so. So we try to.
Marc Bernstein:That's wonderful. With that, I think we're just about at the end of our time. So, amy, so great to have you here today. It was a fun show, it was delightful. You did a great job. I know you haven't done a lot of this, but you're obviously accomplished at speaking and talking about your business eloquently. Thanks for being here and thanks to all of you for listening on Founders Forum today. Thank you, Ang, for being here.
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