Confessions Beyond the Food
Confessions Beyond the Food is a podcast about working in the Food Industry. People who work in the Food Industry have grit and lots of stories to tell. W3 Sales, a sales & marketing company, will host this podcast with their confessions on how they have a new, fresh approach and invite guests to confess their secrets to their sauce.
Confessions Beyond the Food
Comfort Food Crusade - Myles Powell's Food Network Survivor's Tale
What happens when a civil engineer discovers his true calling isn’t in concrete and steel—but in cast iron and cornbread? Meet Myles, the founder of Myles Comfort Foods, who traded spreadsheets for skillets and built a frozen food brand that’s shaking up supermarket aisles.
In this episode, Myles shares his extraordinary journey from corporate burnout to Food Network competitor to bold food entrepreneur. For him, the dinner table was always sacred—a place where southern comfort classics brought his family together. After just two days in an engineering job, an existential crisis led him back to that place of passion: the kitchen.
This is a candid, behind-the-scenes look at the messy realities of starting a food brand. Myles recounts walking into stores with bottles of homemade barbecue sauce, fumbling through food shows without knowing the lingo, and the financial lows that nearly ended it all. His story of resilience—through near-bankruptcy and burnout—offers essential lessons for anyone dreaming of building something from scratch.
What sets Myles apart? He reimagined frozen mac and cheese—notoriously seen as an “aisle of sacrifice” purchase—into a protein-packed, premium comfort food experience ready in just four minutes. His mission: to create a comfort moment in the chaos.
The real gem of this conversation is a decade’s worth of wisdom distilled into one tough truth: “The masses don’t care about your product.” Myles explains why claiming to make “the best version” isn’t enough—and how brands must prove real value to survive.
If you're hungry for inspiration, honesty, and practical advice about food entrepreneurship, this episode serves it up hot.
You can follow Myles Comfort Foods online to learn more about their products and where to find them in stores.
https://www.mylescomfortfoods.com/
Welcome to Confessions Beyond the Food. I'm your host, nancy Redland. Let's dig in and get inspired. Welcome back to Confessions Beyond the Food. I'm your host, nancy. So today I'm joined by the founder of Miles Comfort Foods, a brand bringing realishing comfort food back to the table. We're going to talk about the memories that inspired Miles, along with the challenges of building a clean label food company and the moments that tested his commitment along the way. So get ready to hear the story behind the brand, the lessons learned and, of course, miles' own confession about life as an entrepreneur. Welcome, miles.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Nancy. It is a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1:It is a pleasure to have you. So I have to fill you guys in. So fun fact when I did my intro call with Miles as a prep call and just kind of getting to know him better, we found out that he was moving to Texas, and not only to Texas, but probably like 30 minutes away from me. So that was really a fun fact.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know how moves are. They're really hectic, and so when we had that first call I was all over the place. But you know we officially settled in, so I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 1:Well, welcome to Texas.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Well, awesome. Well, I was hoping we could start off by just you sharing a little bit about your background.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely. You know, for me, growing up, the dinner table was the place to be in the household, right, I mean the meals we shared, the laughters, the smiles, I mean all of those moments were just so special and it's really what molded me into the person that I eventually became. I ended up graduating with a civil engineering degree, just super excited to be an adult right, make some money, have my own place, all that fantasy stuff. Right, make some money, have my own place, all that fantasy stuff. And my second day, my first full-time job, I mean it all just kind of hit me like a baseball bat and I went I have to do this for 40 years straight, like no break.
Speaker 2:And I said my brain short-circuited, it was like, ah, this isn't going to work, and I naturally gravitated towards the kitchen at that time. It was my place of passion, inspiration, it reminded me of home, and so I started cooking a lot, Started a food blog which got me noticed by the Food Network back in 2013. And then ended up on the Food Network on a competition series and I was called America's Best Cook. I didn't make it past episode one, but it was that moment where I knew food was where I actually belonged.
Speaker 1:Okay, first of all, let's break this down a little bit. So that's a major departure, civil engineering, which you probably I mean you must be uber smart and to go from that like you had finished school right Four years and got in the position and were like wait, so that must have been, I mean. But how do you see how that background has helped you in doing what you're doing today?
Speaker 2:You know it's funny. I thought about this not too long ago, you know, through the four years of college. It was a struggle, like I was not great at that craft, but it taught me perseverance. You know, it was the first time in my life where I was supremely challenged and when I graduated there was such a sense of accomplishment there and I went, oh, I like that. But I also realized that I didn't like engineering. I had like. The challenge of that feeling is what has been so required as a, as a food entrepreneur is embracing the challenge. It's, you know, experiencing the fallbacks. Entrepreneur is embracing the challenge, you know, experiencing the fallbacks you know, and everything in between, wow and then okay.
Speaker 1:So you have to tell us a little bit more about the Food Network.
Speaker 2:So you're a celebrity on our show. So it was. It was a wild experience. I was 22 years old and I, you know, I'd been a home chef for like a year at that point. And here I am on the camera with, you know, alex going to Shelly and all these celebrity chefs talking to me, and you know it's, it's a studio, still giant cameras, and there was a moment where I mean it all felt pretty surreal until I was actually in front of the camera and the host, ted allen, is doing his countdown like five, four, three. I remember as he hit three I had a moment of brief panic like what am I doing?
Speaker 2:here, and then, and it was like instant blackout, I just I need to rain and started and I looked up and I was done. Um, you know, and it was in the wild part was a month later. I was at my kitchen table doing I was in grad school, I was doing homework and I happened to look up at the food network and I saw my face on a commercial. I was like, oh my gosh, this is nuts.
Speaker 1:That's crazy. I wondered if you blacked out a little bit. I think that's what I would do, kind of just go.
Speaker 2:You have to. We had 30 minutes to cook and I was winging it. It was wild.
Speaker 1:What'd you make?
Speaker 2:So I was part of a little team or a pod and we had to make duck and at that point in my life I had never cooked up before, so it was all foreign and it was just I didn't have the natural ability at that point in my life to create things without a recipe, so I was just like literally winging it on the spot. And you can clearly see it in the episode. It was. They used me, as you know, those dramatic moments before commercial break. It was me. I was that moment Like oh my God, things are going wrong.
Speaker 1:Before the commercial Is that what you were doing?
Speaker 2:hands up Like well, I was flailing, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, so going even further back, so can you share a memory of, like your favorite meal at the table with your family but sure.
Speaker 2:So it's almost like a thanksgiving meal with a twist. So my favorite meal was it's a southern staple comfort meal. So you know fried chicken, mac and cheese, uh, sweet potatoes, collard greens and biscuits. Like I, I would eat four of those plates. You know that was my thing, and you know we and we would cook other things, we would cook italian food, and you know other things too, but it was that one that hosts the strongest memories for me so with that, when did you realize you wanted to build your own food brand, I mean?
Speaker 2:it was, you know, funny enough, probably senior year in college, a friend of mine and myself had this idea of we should cook chicken wings in our dorm and sell them to drunk college kids, and unfortunately we didn't have the entrepreneurship bug enough back then. We wanted to enjoy the lifestyle of college, so we didn't have the entrepreneurship bug enough back then. We wanted to enjoy the lifestyle of college, so we didn't do that. But once I graduated, I ended up moving out to Harrisburg, pennsylvania, and I had a lot of free time. I didn't have a social network anymore, I was just working, and so when I was in the kitchen, I just felt this need to express my adventures, and with this food blog that I had, I was getting a lot of positive feedback and then I ended up creating this barbecue sauce from scratch. I sent that out and people were like this is amazing, and I knew entrepreneurship was something I wanted to get involved with at some point, but then, when I realized food was such an important role, I decided to marry the two. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:I decided to marry the two. That's awesome. So how do you see your products like? Helping families slow down and connect over a real meal.
Speaker 2:You know, I think over the past, call it 10 years convenience. I mean it's required, but it's also left us very unsatisfied and like unnourished, especially frozen food. Right, right, that aisle is like the aisle of sacrifice. You, when you go to shop there, you're not really excited, you're just like I need it as an emergency situation. And when it comes to comfort food, especially mac and cheese, it's meant to be enjoyed, right, it's. It's almost like a comfort moment in the chaos, a pause in the chaos. Right, that allows you to enjoy that specific moment. And I just thought, just because it's ready in four minutes doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to really indulge and just live in that moment.
Speaker 1:So is your Mac. Tell me about this Mac and cheese.
Speaker 2:It is okay. So it's all real ingredients and it is literally mac and cheese how you expect if you made it at home. The only difference is that it comes frozen and you can microwave it in four minutes. Funny enough, because of this approach of having a real product and real food, it's really high in protein. It's 24 grams of protein in the serving and it's just because of all the real stuff that's in it. When you take a bite and I do this often it just feels right. I know that's very ambiguous, but it feels warm and just like oh, I needed this kind of thing, you know that sounds heavenly.
Speaker 1:I love mac and cheese. You have me at 24 grams of protein. I mean that's a lot of protein.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it was a surprise. We didn't plan that right. The intention was always make Mac like I would at home and put it in grocery. And then we looked at the nutritional panel. We went oh my God, it's got a lot of protein in it.
Speaker 1:You know they're like eat more protein, eat more protein. I don't know if it's just me or that I'm just noticing it more, but are you noticing more like high protein foods out there?
Speaker 2:It's a wave. It started about a year and a half ago where I don't know how it started, but now protein is the number one need in the marketplace. Um, you'll see it like it's getting to the point where it's almost overly saturated, where you'll see like cereal brands being like we have protein. You're like, oh, it's my cereal, I don't care about protein in my cereal. Um, but it's, and it's not just middle-aged folks, it's college kids are obsessed about it. I mean, it is now universal. Like I need protein.
Speaker 1:I mean it's a good thing. Okay, well, that makes me feel a little better, because I was like I feel like protein is everywhere. You know this 42, like core. You know drinks those are really good, really good, but anyway, so that your mac and cheese sounds way better than a um shake. To be honest with you, um, so can you tell me about, like, how you got you have this great idea? How did you get the product you know to the shelves? Tell us about that journey a long, long journey.
Speaker 2:So when we first started out, we actually had this line of barbecue sauce, and this is back in 2015. I didn't know a thing about cpg food business anything and I would literally walk into a store with my bottle of sauce and be like, can you sell this? And most of the times it was no, because I was so unofficial. But after a lot of hard-headed, bone-headed moves, they will start to gain very, very early traction. I mean, we're selling our sauces online, we're doing farmer's markets and we were selling to some of the mom and pops up in Pennsylvania and over time I got more well-versed in packaging, pricing, what even distribution is.
Speaker 2:Quick, quick, funny story my second year in business, I applied to and got accepted to be a vendor at Fancy Foods Show, which is the biggest food show in North America. And here I am with my little booth and selling sauce and I got Walmart coming up to me and asking me do you have a distributor? I didn't even know what a distributor was and I think over this whole journey I find myself in positions where I am severely I don't want to use the word uneducated, but just ignorant and just not knowing. But that's how I learned right. I learned kind of trial by fire, and so from a business standpoint it was mom and pops.
Speaker 2:Okay, now I've got people buying the product. Now I can go to a regional grocery store. Okay, well, they have requirements I didn't need before. So I got to outstrip my brand for that. Start doing that. And now I can approach an actual retailer, like in Whole Foods, and knowing that they're going to say no the first three times and then the fourth time they're going to say yes. So that's been the same iteration for the life cycle of this company. It's do what you can hear Every other day until someone says yes.
Speaker 1:That is a huge learning curve, so how long did that take?
Speaker 2:So I mean, I've been doing this now for 10 years. Um, I've been working in the, the larger retail space, for the past four. So it I mean it took us five years to get to that point, but that's because when we started out, it was pre-major, there wasn't a lot of accelerator programs and all these resources available. I mean in 2014, it was me and Google, right, I didn't have much of a resource after that. So I definitely took the long path here Not to say everyone has to do that but it also helped me manage expectations and learn the arts of hearing no, and you know and resilience and all that stuff here.
Speaker 1:I mean you're having to wear lots of different hats. I mean you've got to be procurement. You know finding the supplies to make your product and then package it. You're becoming a marketing. You know marketing and marketing your product and then learning. You know the whole distribution cycle, which is really confusing. I I mean it takes a while for people to kind of get the whole world. I mean of it because yeah your retail is one world.
Speaker 1:Then you've got food service and there's just a lot of moving parts in between the two so that I I kudos to you because honestly I think guys are really that that was quick, so you know, you don't know what you don't know until you find out you don't know it.
Speaker 2:And when it comes to distribution, it's such an old industry and there's so many codes and big players and you're this really small fish. It's very easy to get gobbled up really quick, right like when we so we had an earlier iteration of this brand and I was in the position of growing. I just want to get into all the stores, right, I didn't factor in. Is that retailer the right retailer for you? Do I have the money to make all that product? There were so many things I didn't consider until I was in it and then I realized this ain't going too well. Um, so we actually rebrand, shut down and rebranded a few years ago because we had got to a point where we couldn't fulfill orders. We didn't have any more cash. It got really bad, but that's once again. I didn't know that until I was face to face with all these things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean so did you take like business classes in school?
Speaker 2:Yeah it. It's funny, when I was in engineering school I mentioned I was I struggled but I I started taking like a, you know, econ and all these things, and it just it was easy. Like engineering was hard to the ninth degree, when I would take these business classes, things just clicked right. I was like, oh, but it was too late for me to switch and at that time engineering was still like the premier. Like you know, you want to get, you want to live a good life, be an engineer. And so I ended up getting a minor in business, just because I was, I liked it. And then once I graduated, I kind of knew right away that I wanted to get an MBA and I didn't. I didn't know what that would do for me. I knew it would help and I knew I liked it. So when I got that, it helped me really build and grow a brand.
Speaker 1:I'm jelly because I wish I'd had more business classes, because you know, just because you're good at something and you know you have a great ideas, like the whole back back and you know the behind the scenes business part, it's a whole another, it's a whole another bag it is.
Speaker 2:You know it's, it's. It's funny enough is. That's the stuff that I'm good at. But when it comes to more of the I don't want to call it abstract, but like marketing and things like that, that's the things that I struggle with. I'm an analytical, I'm an engineer, so analytical in numbers, but more of the creativity piece, that is definitely something that I continue to try to work on.
Speaker 1:So is that something you're trying to learn yourself? Are you outsourcing? Like, how do you handle that? Because I mean it's hard on both sides of the brain.
Speaker 2:Oh my god, yeah, both. I've outsourced it, I've tried to do it myself. I mean, honestly, the advent of ChatGBT helps, you know, big time. Don't get me wrong, but it's still a struggle because there's never a yes and a no, it's just a how. With marketing and so for a brand, we're still testing things out. We're still trying to figure out and fine tune our strategy and see what's actually going to work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, was there ever a time you were just like I just want to quit, yeah.
Speaker 2:Every all the time. Are you kidding me?
Speaker 1:Really, I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it happens often. It's so it's a drink, right. Like this industry is supremely tough, um high failure rate. You know you are, you're in a roller coaster every day and you know, in the past I've had some very tough moments and very low moments where I was like this is really bad, you know, because it's affecting my personal, my family, all that stuff too. Um, I've I've burnt out before where I just there was nothing left, right, I just got sick. Um, I have been near bankruptcy before, like it has gotten really bad.
Speaker 2:And um, in those moments you're like you tell yourself, okay, if I just give up and get another job in corporate America, I'd feel better. But you're stuck with that. What if I didn't quit? And my mantra recently has been the only way I quit is if you have to carry me off the field, like I can make an injured football player, and that's because I'm very hardheaded. I am very hard-headed, I'm resilient, um, but I think and I'm crazy, I think you have to be in this space, you know. So, trust me, I've I've long thought about I should go back to engineering, but it's like I would hate to do that and then realize I could have kept going.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel, I feel you on all of this. I mean there's not one time that I felt like I wanted to quit. It's like weekly, like what am I doing? And I feel like I love it. How you said, you have to be crazy because I am. You have to be crazy to do this. I mean what, what, what, and I mean what I do, I feel like is I mean it's hard and it's tough and it's uh, yeah, I mean just owning a business and all the things that go go with that and the responsibility. And I mean for you, you face totally different challenges. That that I face, you know, with recalls and all you know with ingredients. I mean there's lots of different factors that can go sideways, that you have no control over.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's the hard part is realizing sometimes it's not your fault, right? Sometimes it's the market just doesn't move the way it. Just there's so many things that have to go right in this space. It's hard for founders like myself to come to the conclusion that, like, yes, we're going to do our best and try and it doesn't work out. It doesn't work out. I speak to other founders that have actually left the space. Right, they couldn't, they just couldn't hang, and I understand, I realized. The way that I talk to them makes me understand how nuts this industry is, because once they leave, I'll say congrats, you escaped, you know, and so it's. But you do it for the promise of what you do it for. If this thing works, I will feel like I'm flying high, but even if it doesn't work, you should still feel the same way.
Speaker 1:I mean look, how far you've come.
Speaker 2:That part.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that part and I feel like, as entrepreneurs, it's so important that we just step back every now and then and just take, like 10 years ago, how far you've come, you know, or even just in the past six months, and the the things that have happened around you and what you've survived. It's just so encouraging to see that and like just how you know resilient you are. So that's amazing.
Speaker 2:Very true, and you learn right the thing of all the things you know. Now it's a lot Like, I think, of the past 10, 11 years. The knowledge that I've gained is multiple books worth when it comes to this industry, which is good to have, yeah.
Speaker 1:So what would you tell the younger you 10 years ago?
Speaker 2:Oh, hang on For sure I would tell myself it's going to sound harsh, but the masses don't care about your product. That the way you win in this space is you find your message that resonates with the right person. You find your brand that means something to someone that's impactful. You find your thing that you do that makes someone's life easier or better. If you don't check those boxes, you're not going to get very far. And I think a lot of us in the food space. We go in saying I make the best version of X, y, z, and we realize that that is very subjective. Best version of XYZ, and we realize that that is very subjective and unless it's radically different and doing something for someone that no one else is doing, it's going to get sucked up in the vortex of a thousand plus other brands on your shelf. I would tell myself listen, you might think what you do is the best version, but find out what about your brain is going to make someone say I want to be a part of that.
Speaker 1:But find out what about your brain is going to make someone say I want to be a part of that. So how are you?
Speaker 2:getting this message across to the consumer. It's an everyday challenge, right? It's a mix of fine-tuning messaging, being very transparent about the brand's journey and figuring out at what part of the consumer journey do I fit right? Am I a post-workout solution because of the high protein? Am I a 8.30 pm meal because dinner went awry? Am I a 1.30 lunch item because you don't want to bring your pasta salad to lunch that day and you're working past lunch in the office? Like it's pinpointing the place, the time and the why, and we're always it's like a knob. We're trying to fine tune what that looks like and we're still doing that to this day.
Speaker 1:Well, and like you said earlier, I mean we go in waves, I mean as consumers, I mean went away. You know we're all counting calories and the next day it's counting something. You know. It's just there's always a fad in eating and that's challenging. But it seems like you kind of have a little bit of everything.
Speaker 2:So that's the thing we landed. It was good timing because when we first launched this product the protein wave hadn't hit yet, so we didn't talk about it Right. But now that we're in it it's like all right, we have to do something now before we shift to something else. You know, years ago plant based was the rave Right, and then that fad kind of went away. You mentioned calorie counting that was big, that's went away. And calorie counting that was big, that's went away. Like all these. And this industry is about timing right. I know brands that I respect, that I know part of their success was timing, because they come out with the same brand. Six, seven years ago no one would have cared, but they happen to be placed early in that sad like right, right place, right time beyond.
Speaker 1:So what's next for?
Speaker 2:you, because I see this industry as being so cash intensive and so difficult. We're trying to find ways to do more event, in-person things. I don't believe having product on shelf is enough. I think you need to have something else as part of your brand ethos that supports that product. A lot of folks come from the restaurant space and now they're like, hey, I've got this product in the restaurant, I want to package that Now. That means you have an audience that you're bringing to the show. We want to find a way. Either it's food service, it's something with. I don't want to find a way either. It's food service it's something with I don't want to say food truck, that's very time and expensive but something that we can hang our hats on. That's going to put our brand in a very unique place in the audience for the audience so I know we're the food service.
Speaker 1:It's a good space to be in so bad.
Speaker 1:We've been trying well, I know a couple people so we'll have to talk. Yeah, so no, that's really awesome. I mean it's just really really fun to meet other entrepreneurs, um, out there, and I mean you're, you're kind of same timeline as me 10 years, you know, I've been building my brand and I just it's so fun to meet people that are a little bit of crazy and um, and that are real and are honest and open about the struggle and just tenacious I mean you are tenacious to to get this done. I mean to get on the food network. I mean that's a big deal. So I mean I think you're way underselling yourself, but I mean it's really incredible to see how far you've come and so, anyways, well, I would love to have you back and talk about other things, but before I leave, I need a confession. I need a confession.
Speaker 2:Okay, my confession is I got a few of them too, I would say for today, my confession is more like my guilty pleasure. So, as a side note, I'm a personal trainer, I love to work out, I love balance in life. But I will tell you right now, I am weak when it comes to food choices. So my confession if you put a cinnamon roll in front of me, there is a 2% chance that I will not consume it. I mean, there's one downstairs right now and I've been thinking about it all day and people are like, oh, but you're a trainer, how could you? And I'm like I love food, I can't help it.
Speaker 1:It's your brand. I mean, you're selling real food and that is nutritious. I think that's amazing, and we all need a little sugar in our lives and so okay, so I have to ask so where's your favorite cinnamon roll? Where does it come from?
Speaker 2:Oh, my Lord, Um. So when I was growing up it was Cinnabon. It's probably still top three, but I would. You know, one of the best ones I've had I had at one time is in disney world, when I was 16 years old. I've never had it again, but I thought it was absolutely magic. But now that I moved to texas I need to find one.
Speaker 1:I don't know if there's a shop that you can recommend or something so my son is, like, obsessed with cinnamon rolls too, and so we found that he doesn't like the cream cheese, and so that there's a place called Cineholic and they have several locations around the Metroplex, so you might want to check them out. I'll send them to you by car, and if you live in DFW, you'll have to check that out.
Speaker 2:So I just put that on my bookmark list.
Speaker 1:Okay, good, good, yeah, you'll have to check that out, so I just put that on my bookmark list, Okay, good, good, yeah, you'll have to check it out. Well, Miles, it's been so fun talking to you and I really appreciate having you, and I think a lot of people can be inspired, whether you know you don't have to be an entrepreneur or you're coming up with your own brand. It could just be like hey, I'm just trying to find my career, you know, and, and, and I'm trying to find myself in that, and I think there's some really good um advice and what miles has said about just being tenacious, keep going on and being true to yourself. So, um, I love that. So I think this is helpful for everyone. So, thank you so much and we'll see you soon.
Speaker 2:Sounds good. Thanks, Nancy.
Speaker 1:Thank you For more inspiration, follow our social media at W3Sales. Please like, comment and subscribe. You know all the things we would love to connect with you.