Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in food and beverage but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Louise Fritjofsson, Co-Founder of Martie, located in Los Angeles, CA, USA.
What's your business, and who are your customers?
Martie allows you to save big when saving food. Martie is the online grocery store where you find well known brands such as Kind, Annies, Heinz, RxBar and more up to 70% off. A staggering 30-40% of foods are tossed away due to overproduction, Martie thinks these perfectly fine products need a second chance. Together, we help make both pockets and the planet a happier place.
Tell us about yourself
Martie is my 4th company and truly is a result of experiences, challenges, and my drive to build companies that make people healthier over a time span of 15 years. In 2019, me and my co-founder Kari launched a series of food brands and ran into the issue of overproducing. This led us down a path to obsessing about the problem that 34m Americans are food insecure. We saw clearly how one challenge can be another solution.
What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
What keeps me staying hungry after so many years of building companies is not the financial outcomes: the exits or the dividends. Realizing that you make a difference in human lives is by far the one metric that drives me, and luckily this can come into effect in a few different ways. Seeing users of our platform being able to feed their families more efficiently and healthier is one of the best things that can happen to me. Seeing employees grow with the company and their role and taking leaps in their personal development is another accomplishment I take to heart, and that keeps me fueled to continue. These things tell me what we are doing is important and worth the effort.
What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?
You have operationally hard things to do - like saying no to opportunities, people, and partners. Staying focused is key to success, and that means saying no a lot. The single emotionally hardest thing emotionally that comes with being a business owner is that you, at times, need to be ruthless in how you build your team, which means optimizing for results and execution.
What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
Read up. Read up. Read up.
This means:
- Talk to everyone you can that knows anything about the industry you are getting into
- Find mentors that can support your early days, mentors you trust and can lean on
- Establish a strong idea of what the main challenges are and how you will handle them better/differently than your competitors
Where can people find you and your business?
Website: https://martie.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/martiefoods/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Louise_KingLui
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisee/
If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.
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