Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Therese Ludwig, co-founder of Sweet Moments Company, located in Phoenix, AZ, USA.
What's your business, and who are your customers?
Sweet Moments Company offers the best virtual cooking experiences with ingredients delivered for engaging team building, client appreciation, and date nights for couples!
Tell us about yourself
My husband, Brent, and I started Sweet Moments Company in late 2019 and started offering virtual experiences in the summer of 2020. We wanted to share our passion for culinary arts through hands-on and virtual learning experiences. I have been a chef for over 15 years and a chef instructor for over ten years, so this was a very natural fit for me personally as we began our journey into owning a small business. We started Sweet Moments Company in our neighborhood. We offered virtual cooking classes to the community and hand-delivered all of the ingredients to each participant's door.
We worked out of a shared commercial kitchen in Tempe for the first year. Our concept became wildly popular, and many corporations began contacting us about doing private company events for their teams, prospects, and clients. We had to change our business model rapidly to accommodate these many requests. We began shipping throughout AZ in December 2020. By January 2021, we had requests to ship out of Arizona. We now ship throughout the US, and we can ship to Canada and the UK. It has been a whirlwind since we started shipping in 2020. We began by shipping between 75-100 kits in a month to now sending 1200-1400 kits a month and still growing.
As of August 2021, we moved into our commercial building in Phoenix. We have office space, a certified commercial kitchen, and a shipping warehouse all under one roof. We have met and connected with so many people throughout the country, and it has been the most rewarding experience. We entered this business to connect families, friends, co-workers, etc., over a fun and relaxing shared experience. We are thrilled it has been so well received, and we truly feel blessed to wake up and do what we love daily.
What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
We offer unique virtual culinary experiences with all ingredients pre-portioned (even down to the salt!) and shipped to your door! All of the classes are live chef-led experiences via Zoom. We are one of the very few companies that offer this type of business model. Most companies in our field only offer a select amount of ingredients in the kits, and you provide some of your own household staples. We are unique in that we include EVERYTHING. All you have to do is hop on and have a wonderful time creating the dish while having a fun and interactive experience with the Chef. Our purpose is to connect people. We have accomplished that with this business model, and it has been very well received by couples having a date night to companies having team-building events! That would be our biggest accomplishment for us.
What's one of the hardest things that comes with being a business owner?
One of the most challenging things we have faced is the rapid change and growth necessary to keep up with our client's expectations. An example would be the part of our business model where we deliver all the ingredients before class. There are numerous challenges when shipping perishable food products across the United States while ensuring they arrive in time for a scheduled event. Within months of SMCO shipping across the US, our clients expected us to maintain higher quality and delivery success rates than companies that had been shipping like this for years. We were ultimately able to accomplish this, but it took significant engineering and learning to make it happen quickly enough to avoid losing some of our biggest accounts.
What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
- Change is inevitable. Be ready to evolve accordingly.
- Failure is success in progress. Things will go wrong, but they are just learning opportunities to improve for future success.
- Be sure to take time to take care of yourself.
Where can people find you and your business?
Website: https://smcoaz.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SMCoAZ
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smcoaz/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sweet-moments-company/
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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