July 29, 2024 • 13 mins
Ben McKean, CEO & Founder of Hungryroot | CEOs You Should Know
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everyone, Welcome to CEOs you should know powered by iHeartMedia.
I'm tre Vias Charmont and I'm so excited. I'm a
foodie and I'm so excited about today's wonderful CEO. I'm
joined by Ben McCain, founder and CEO of Hungry Root.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Thank you so much for having me here.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Awesome, And I want to get things started by finding
out a little bit more about the background of Hungry Root.
So for listeners who may not be familiar, could you
give us an overview of Hungry Root and what inspired
you to start this business absolutely.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Hungary is a consumer technology company that helps people to
eat healthy. We're like your personal assistant for healthy living.
We get to know your goals, your lifestyle, your budget,
and we recommend and deliver healthy groceries, easy recipes and
supplements for you and your family. And I was inspired
to start the company in twenty fifteen because food is
(00:56):
deeply personal and deeply emotional, and at the large, food
companies don't sell directly to the consumers who are actually
putting that food into their body. They sell to a
grocery store, who then resells their product to the consumer.
So I was inspired about building a direct relationship with
our customers where we could personalize and recommend foods to
them and help them feel better on a daily basis.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Awesome, Now, what makes you all different than any other
competing brand.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Well, so we're primarily recommending and selling grocery items, but
the vast majority of what we sell is actually recommended
by our algorithm for the customer, and they trust our
recommendations to choose their foods for the week. And what
that means is they save a tremendous amount of time.
They're not trying to figure out a meal plan what
(01:44):
they should eat for their week. It's one less thing
to worry about. They're able to solve health objectives and
why they wigs they otherwise can't. They discover new foods
and so really, what underpins our entire value proposition is
the fact that we're recommending foods and recipes for our
customers each week, and they're trusting us to do so.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
I love that I'm in the process of setting up
my profile. I think I was sharing that with you,
and I'm a foodie and I'm excited, but I love
the way it gives me different options I love the
opportunity to number one, save time as a single mom
and get some ideas on unique recipes, unique items to
invest in every week. And also one of my biggest
(02:27):
challenges is I always have a lot of waste in
my refrigerator. I mean all the time, something stinking questions
should I say that something's been in there for like
a month or so? But that also helps in that
area as well.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
You're not alone. You're not alone. So and a crazy
statistic is that thirty percent of what Americans buy at
the grocery store they throw it out there, throw out
at their home. And that's a huge cost issue. You know,
when you go to the grocery store and you spend
one hundred dollars, you don't think, oh, well, I actually
just bought seventy dollars the food. I'm actually going to
(03:01):
eat only seventy dollars worth of that food. So it's
a huge economic issue. It's also a huge climate change issue.
Food waste is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse
gas emissions, and at one hundred, we significantly cut back
on food waste. Our food waste in our facilities is
eighty percent less than a traditional grocery store, and the
(03:22):
food waste at the consumer's home is more than fifty
percent less. So it's a big benefit of the service
is reduced food waste.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Okay, so I'm going to take it back a little bit. Yeah, Now,
you've been an entrepreneur most of your life. In fact,
we're going back to when you were a teenager. At
eighteen years old, you started off with a company that
I guess you sent out flyers that said cheap Summer Help.
Can you tell us about that and how that got started?
Speaker 2 (03:47):
And yeah, I'll even rewind a little further than that.
I remember growing up, so my grandfather was an entrepreneur.
He had a chain of ice cream parlors in the
Boston area called Baileys of Boston in the seventies, and
my mom worked there rolling chocolates, and so I always
heard stories growing up about you know, the store and
(04:11):
my mom's experiences rolling chocolate and you know, serving customers.
And I remember distinctly having this dream when I was
a kid about having a candy store in the downtown
that I grew up in. So I feel like it
was always just kind of, yeah, a part of me,
And then I didn't want to get a real job
during the summers that you know, I have two older
(04:31):
brothers and they both had gotten these sort of internships
during the summers of you know, leading into college and
during college. That was not very attractive to me. So
I put flyers in people's mailboxes. It said, you know,
cheap Summer Help listed all the things that we were
willing to do, which was mulching, painting, moving, cleaning, and
(04:52):
my parents' phone number and the phone just kept ringing.
We kept getting more and more calls. So I ended
up having to get a separate phone number, and I
had to start hiring people, and over a four year period,
we built a business to have about fifty five college
students working. Your drive around the Middlesex County, Massachusetts. You
couldn't miss our signs. They would just say cheapsummerhelp dot com.
(05:13):
This was two thousand and four, and amazingly people would
go to cheapsummer heelp dot com Wow, and then they'd
call up and I just fell in love with entrepreneurship
through that experience.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Wow. Excellent. Well, going back to Hungry Root, what personally
motivates you to continue leading Hungry Root toward towards its
goals and sustainability and healthy living.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
We have a Facebook group of our most engaged customers
and we have about thirty two thousand people in that
group that are actively posting stories about how Hungred has
impacted their lives. And I've read that the comments in
that group pretty much every single day, and if I've
ever short on motivation, it's where I go. It's incredibly inspiring.
(05:58):
The stories range from people who have just recently lost
a loved one and are cooking on their own for
the first time and they're looking for some guidance, to
people who have recently been diagnosed with a health challenge
and they're looking for some guidance, to people just posting
recipes that they've you know, hungered, recipes that they love,
and sharing new products they've discovered that they love. And
(06:22):
we joke it's the most positive place on the internet.
It's really just pretty heartwarming, and I read those comments
very often.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Nice. Nice. Now, as far as being a consumer, what
are your go tos or favorites you recommend on Hungry Root.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Well, our almond CHICKPI cookie dough is a fan favorite.
It's one of the first products we developed back in
twenty fifteen and its three main ingredients are chickpeas, almond butter,
and chocolate chips. Which might not sound like it's going
to be this delicious cookie dough, but it is and
you can eat it raw or you can bake it
and as into these soft, delicious cookies. That's really a
(07:04):
fan favorite of our customers in a mind.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Wow, okay, excellent, And I know that you're married, you
have beautiful children. How do you juggle being a CEO,
a husband and father any words of wisdom or advice.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Well, I'm very fortunate to have an incredible wife who
supports me and supports our family. And our two kids,
who are now five and three, are through the craziest
of the early phase and they're just a ball of fun.
So they really, you know, ground me. We're a remote
work environment, so I'm able to pop down stairs in
(07:39):
the middle of the day and see them for five
or ten minutes, which makes a big difference. And you know,
again just kind of grounds me. Brings me back to
the other sides of life besides work.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Awesome. Now, where you see Hungry Root in the next
five to ten years.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Well, so today on Hungry we have about a thousand
individual grocery items and ten thousand and recipes that we
sell every single week. So from a recipe breath perspective,
we're far greater variety than anyone who you're sort of
buying recipes from online, typically meal delivery or meal kit services,
(08:14):
you might have thirty options a week. We have ten
thousand recipes a week, so from a recipe perspective, we
have tremendous breath. A thousand grocery items. To put that
in perspective, Trader Joe's has about three thousand, so we
want to build up from a thousand to three thousand
or the next couple of years. As we do so,
we'll continue to expand the number of recipes we have.
(08:34):
The reason this is so important is, at the end
of the day, our entire value proposition is built on
our recommendations. The better that we get at predicting what
foods you're going to want for your week, the better
the value is that we deliver to you. And it's
sort of this, you know, some of our customers say
it's like Christmas morning every single week, and we encourage
(08:59):
you to go in and look at your you know,
look at your delivery and recommendations and edit it. Actually,
about twenty percent of our customers don't. They literally just
trust us. The box shows up each week and they
that's their food for their week. And when it works,
it's really special because all of a sudden, the foods
that you're putting into your body each day are foods
(09:20):
that you've trusted Hunger to choose for you, and if
they make you feel better on a daily basis, then
there's this deep brand affinity with with what we're doing.
So that's our mission, that's what we're investing behind. Continuing
to scale up the number of foods that we offer
is critical to that because it allows the algorithm to
be more personal for you. It allows you know, our
(09:43):
best customer is the one who is the pickiest, the
person who is trying to you know, lose weight, eat
more protein, hates yeah, exactly, hates salmon, loves you know.
That's when we get to understand the nuances and grocery
shopping for that customer. Just we're able to do it
(10:04):
in a more convenient way than they can on their own.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
I love it. It saves us time, money, We're excited
about our card and what we're getting.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Yeah, you know, one thing we recently realized is we
focused a ton on the time savings and the health benefits.
And what we asked our customer is, what's one word
to describe how you felt before hunger that you no
longer feel. And the word that came back was overwhelmed.
That was a vast majority of our customers that I
(10:34):
used to feel overwhelmed, and we are living in an
overwhelming time. We are, so to be able to have
a service that kind of takes something off of your
plate and saves you a couple hours a week and
bring some joy to your life is pretty meaningful.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Yeah. And in the grocery store, you get distracted and
you find to buying things you didn't need, and those
are the things that'll go to waste and stink in
a month.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Purchasing is a real thing.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yeah, they've become very good at getting us to buy
that thing that actually we don't really want.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Yeah, the packaging was appealing, Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So what
advice do you have for I have a daughter of
who's starting her own business, is graduated from college. Thank you.
What advice do you have for young entrepreneurs?
Speaker 2 (11:22):
It sounds like she may have even already taken this step.
But the advice I have is to just take the
step and do it. I think that I've been incredibly
fortunate in my career, and I think a big part
of that is because I started my first company at eighteen,
And I think that when you're eighteen, you don't have
that much to lose, and you can start small, right
(11:43):
putting flyers in someone's mailboxes. Start small, and then you
just get it being an entrepreneurs Like any other job,
you get better at it the longer you do it.
And so I do think just if you're interested in entrepreneurship,
just take the first step and actually start a company.
Doesn't have to be a big idea. It can be
it can be a side thing, but but you know,
(12:05):
take the action and get it and get started.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Awesome. And I know you're you're approaching your ten year anniversary. Yes,
any special things that we can expect.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Well, we are. So we as a remote first environment,
we prioritize in time get togethers and being very thoughtful
about how we spend our time when we are together.
So each year we get the entire company together. Uh,
and we're going to do that. I think the plan
is Atlanta next year. I believe that's what we're thinking
(12:35):
to celebrate our ten year anniversary and hopefully have it
be around some of the fulfillment center work that we're
doing in that area.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Excellent, excellent. And lastly, Ben, we want to thank you
for sharing all of your wisdom and information about Hungry Root.
And where can listeners go to learn more about Hungry
Root and connect with you and your team.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Well, hunger dot com is the best place, and you
can check out our offering there. You can sign up
for the service. We're offering you thirty percent off your
first delivery, so we hope, I hope people will will
try us out and enjoy the service.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Well, it was an honor having you. Continued blessings and
success to you, and thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Thank you so much,
Hello everyone, Welcome to CEOs you should know powered by iHeartMedia.
I'm tre Vias Charmont and I'm so excited. I'm a
foodie and I'm so excited about today's wonderful CEO. I'm
joined by Ben McCain, founder and CEO of Hungry Root.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome, Thank you so much for having me here.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Awesome, And I want to get things started by finding
out a little bit more about the background of Hungry Root.
So for listeners who may not be familiar, could you
give us an overview of Hungry Root and what inspired
you to start this business absolutely.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Hungary is a consumer technology company that helps people to
eat healthy. We're like your personal assistant for healthy living.
We get to know your goals, your lifestyle, your budget,
and we recommend and deliver healthy groceries, easy recipes and
supplements for you and your family. And I was inspired
to start the company in twenty fifteen because food is
(00:56):
deeply personal and deeply emotional, and at the large, food
companies don't sell directly to the consumers who are actually
putting that food into their body. They sell to a
grocery store, who then resells their product to the consumer.
So I was inspired about building a direct relationship with
our customers where we could personalize and recommend foods to
them and help them feel better on a daily basis.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Awesome, Now, what makes you all different than any other
competing brand.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Well, so we're primarily recommending and selling grocery items, but
the vast majority of what we sell is actually recommended
by our algorithm for the customer, and they trust our
recommendations to choose their foods for the week. And what
that means is they save a tremendous amount of time.
They're not trying to figure out a meal plan what
(01:44):
they should eat for their week. It's one less thing
to worry about. They're able to solve health objectives and
why they wigs they otherwise can't. They discover new foods
and so really, what underpins our entire value proposition is
the fact that we're recommending foods and recipes for our
customers each week, and they're trusting us to do so.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
I love that I'm in the process of setting up
my profile. I think I was sharing that with you,
and I'm a foodie and I'm excited, but I love
the way it gives me different options I love the
opportunity to number one, save time as a single mom
and get some ideas on unique recipes, unique items to
invest in every week. And also one of my biggest
(02:27):
challenges is I always have a lot of waste in
my refrigerator. I mean all the time, something stinking questions
should I say that something's been in there for like
a month or so? But that also helps in that
area as well.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
You're not alone. You're not alone. So and a crazy
statistic is that thirty percent of what Americans buy at
the grocery store they throw it out there, throw out
at their home. And that's a huge cost issue. You know,
when you go to the grocery store and you spend
one hundred dollars, you don't think, oh, well, I actually
just bought seventy dollars the food. I'm actually going to
(03:01):
eat only seventy dollars worth of that food. So it's
a huge economic issue. It's also a huge climate change issue.
Food waste is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse
gas emissions, and at one hundred, we significantly cut back
on food waste. Our food waste in our facilities is
eighty percent less than a traditional grocery store, and the
(03:22):
food waste at the consumer's home is more than fifty
percent less. So it's a big benefit of the service
is reduced food waste.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Okay, so I'm going to take it back a little bit. Yeah, Now,
you've been an entrepreneur most of your life. In fact,
we're going back to when you were a teenager. At
eighteen years old, you started off with a company that
I guess you sent out flyers that said cheap Summer Help.
Can you tell us about that and how that got started?
Speaker 2 (03:47):
And yeah, I'll even rewind a little further than that.
I remember growing up, so my grandfather was an entrepreneur.
He had a chain of ice cream parlors in the
Boston area called Baileys of Boston in the seventies, and
my mom worked there rolling chocolates, and so I always
heard stories growing up about you know, the store and
(04:11):
my mom's experiences rolling chocolate and you know, serving customers.
And I remember distinctly having this dream when I was
a kid about having a candy store in the downtown
that I grew up in. So I feel like it
was always just kind of, yeah, a part of me,
And then I didn't want to get a real job
during the summers that you know, I have two older
(04:31):
brothers and they both had gotten these sort of internships
during the summers of you know, leading into college and
during college. That was not very attractive to me. So
I put flyers in people's mailboxes. It said, you know,
cheap Summer Help listed all the things that we were
willing to do, which was mulching, painting, moving, cleaning, and
(04:52):
my parents' phone number and the phone just kept ringing.
We kept getting more and more calls. So I ended
up having to get a separate phone number, and I
had to start hiring people, and over a four year period,
we built a business to have about fifty five college
students working. Your drive around the Middlesex County, Massachusetts. You
couldn't miss our signs. They would just say cheapsummerhelp dot com.
(05:13):
This was two thousand and four, and amazingly people would
go to cheapsummer heelp dot com Wow, and then they'd
call up and I just fell in love with entrepreneurship
through that experience.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Wow. Excellent. Well, going back to Hungry Root, what personally
motivates you to continue leading Hungry Root toward towards its
goals and sustainability and healthy living.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
We have a Facebook group of our most engaged customers
and we have about thirty two thousand people in that
group that are actively posting stories about how Hungred has
impacted their lives. And I've read that the comments in
that group pretty much every single day, and if I've
ever short on motivation, it's where I go. It's incredibly inspiring.
(05:58):
The stories range from people who have just recently lost
a loved one and are cooking on their own for
the first time and they're looking for some guidance, to
people who have recently been diagnosed with a health challenge
and they're looking for some guidance, to people just posting
recipes that they've you know, hungered, recipes that they love,
and sharing new products they've discovered that they love. And
(06:22):
we joke it's the most positive place on the internet.
It's really just pretty heartwarming, and I read those comments
very often.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Nice. Nice. Now, as far as being a consumer, what
are your go tos or favorites you recommend on Hungry Root.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Well, our almond CHICKPI cookie dough is a fan favorite.
It's one of the first products we developed back in
twenty fifteen and its three main ingredients are chickpeas, almond butter,
and chocolate chips. Which might not sound like it's going
to be this delicious cookie dough, but it is and
you can eat it raw or you can bake it
and as into these soft, delicious cookies. That's really a
(07:04):
fan favorite of our customers in a mind.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Wow, okay, excellent, And I know that you're married, you
have beautiful children. How do you juggle being a CEO,
a husband and father any words of wisdom or advice.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Well, I'm very fortunate to have an incredible wife who
supports me and supports our family. And our two kids,
who are now five and three, are through the craziest
of the early phase and they're just a ball of fun.
So they really, you know, ground me. We're a remote
work environment, so I'm able to pop down stairs in
(07:39):
the middle of the day and see them for five
or ten minutes, which makes a big difference. And you know,
again just kind of grounds me. Brings me back to
the other sides of life besides work.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Awesome. Now, where you see Hungry Root in the next
five to ten years.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Well, so today on Hungry we have about a thousand
individual grocery items and ten thousand and recipes that we
sell every single week. So from a recipe breath perspective,
we're far greater variety than anyone who you're sort of
buying recipes from online, typically meal delivery or meal kit services,
(08:14):
you might have thirty options a week. We have ten
thousand recipes a week, so from a recipe perspective, we
have tremendous breath. A thousand grocery items. To put that
in perspective, Trader Joe's has about three thousand, so we
want to build up from a thousand to three thousand
or the next couple of years. As we do so,
we'll continue to expand the number of recipes we have.
(08:34):
The reason this is so important is, at the end
of the day, our entire value proposition is built on
our recommendations. The better that we get at predicting what
foods you're going to want for your week, the better
the value is that we deliver to you. And it's
sort of this, you know, some of our customers say
it's like Christmas morning every single week, and we encourage
(08:59):
you to go in and look at your you know,
look at your delivery and recommendations and edit it. Actually,
about twenty percent of our customers don't. They literally just
trust us. The box shows up each week and they
that's their food for their week. And when it works,
it's really special because all of a sudden, the foods
that you're putting into your body each day are foods
(09:20):
that you've trusted Hunger to choose for you, and if
they make you feel better on a daily basis, then
there's this deep brand affinity with with what we're doing.
So that's our mission, that's what we're investing behind. Continuing
to scale up the number of foods that we offer
is critical to that because it allows the algorithm to
be more personal for you. It allows you know, our
(09:43):
best customer is the one who is the pickiest, the
person who is trying to you know, lose weight, eat
more protein, hates yeah, exactly, hates salmon, loves you know.
That's when we get to understand the nuances and grocery
shopping for that customer. Just we're able to do it
(10:04):
in a more convenient way than they can on their own.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
I love it. It saves us time, money, We're excited
about our card and what we're getting.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Yeah, you know, one thing we recently realized is we
focused a ton on the time savings and the health benefits.
And what we asked our customer is, what's one word
to describe how you felt before hunger that you no
longer feel. And the word that came back was overwhelmed.
That was a vast majority of our customers that I
(10:34):
used to feel overwhelmed, and we are living in an
overwhelming time. We are, so to be able to have
a service that kind of takes something off of your
plate and saves you a couple hours a week and
bring some joy to your life is pretty meaningful.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Yeah. And in the grocery store, you get distracted and
you find to buying things you didn't need, and those
are the things that'll go to waste and stink in
a month.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Purchasing is a real thing.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yeah, they've become very good at getting us to buy
that thing that actually we don't really want.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Yeah, the packaging was appealing, Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So what
advice do you have for I have a daughter of
who's starting her own business, is graduated from college. Thank you.
What advice do you have for young entrepreneurs?
Speaker 2 (11:22):
It sounds like she may have even already taken this step.
But the advice I have is to just take the
step and do it. I think that I've been incredibly
fortunate in my career, and I think a big part
of that is because I started my first company at eighteen,
And I think that when you're eighteen, you don't have
that much to lose, and you can start small, right
(11:43):
putting flyers in someone's mailboxes. Start small, and then you
just get it being an entrepreneurs Like any other job,
you get better at it the longer you do it.
And so I do think just if you're interested in entrepreneurship,
just take the first step and actually start a company.
Doesn't have to be a big idea. It can be
it can be a side thing, but but you know,
(12:05):
take the action and get it and get started.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Awesome. And I know you're you're approaching your ten year anniversary. Yes,
any special things that we can expect.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Well, we are. So we as a remote first environment,
we prioritize in time get togethers and being very thoughtful
about how we spend our time when we are together.
So each year we get the entire company together. Uh,
and we're going to do that. I think the plan
is Atlanta next year. I believe that's what we're thinking
(12:35):
to celebrate our ten year anniversary and hopefully have it
be around some of the fulfillment center work that we're
doing in that area.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Excellent, excellent. And lastly, Ben, we want to thank you
for sharing all of your wisdom and information about Hungry Root.
And where can listeners go to learn more about Hungry
Root and connect with you and your team.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Well, hunger dot com is the best place, and you
can check out our offering there. You can sign up
for the service. We're offering you thirty percent off your
first delivery, so we hope, I hope people will will
try us out and enjoy the service.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Well, it was an honor having you. Continued blessings and
success to you, and thank you for joining us.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Thank you so much,
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