David 0:00

Have you ever taken dinner to a sick friend? Do you enjoy having dinner with your family? What if that became an employee benefit? We'll find out on this episode of Shift Shapers.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

This is the Shift Shapers Podcast, connecting benefits advisors with thought leaders and entrepreneurs who are shaping the shifts in the industry. And now, here's your host, David Saltzman.

David 0:28

And to help us answer that very question, we are joined today by Mitch Case. Mitch is founder of a company called More Than a Meal. And I guarantee you it's an employee benefit that you've not heard anything like it. And it's really interesting and really unique. And I think in this year of 2023, where my goal is to have our industry move from cost to value, I think this kind of really adds to the value prop. So with that, welcome, Mitch. Thanks, David.

SPEAKER_03 0:55

Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be on here.

David 0:57

It's our pleasure. So talk a little bit about your journey. We're always interested in where our folks come through, because the path is never a straight line.

SPEAKER_03 1:04

Well, I can definitely attest to that. So my background is actually mechanical engineering. So grew up in a space where I was good at math and science, saw that engineering was there was a lot of zeros behind that paycheck. So I kind of went that path and ended up fighting for every C I got following that degree at my university. And ultimately that's what brought me to Kansas City. And quickly realized after working my first 10 months in engineering that I don't really enjoy the lifestyle of an engineer. Sitting behind a computer doing design work was really challenging for me. And ultimately found the opportunity to go into a sales organization where I really got to find what I was most passionate about or good at in a way, where competition, creativity, relationships all started to be a part of what I was doing. And I really found a space where I thrived and ultimately kind of sparked my entrepreneur drive and ultimately led us to starting our business more than a meal.

David 2:00

Let's start at the beginning. What's the challenge that you found that you then decided, oh, I got to solve that?

SPEAKER_03 2:06

Yeah, I think most of us who have had children in the past remember receiving those meals from your community, your church, your neighbors immediately after you've had a newborn baby and how amazingly great that is. For my wife and I's journey with our first kiddo, we experienced a little more traumatic experience having our firstborn son from my wife having pre-eclampsia to being into the ER to potentially having a stroke, just really hit us down and out really hard. You know, we were three weeks early with having our newborn baby. And although those meals were really helpful at the beginning, it was really some of the meals that some of our close friends had brought three, four months down the road when we were still in that recovery process from sleep deprivation to back at work full time, to just trying to figure out if we're making good decisions for our newborn child every step of the way, because with that firstborn, you have no idea what you were doing. There is no manual. And we recognized how impactful that meal was that somebody brought to us three, four months down the road. And ultimately, what we had really been looking for in that moment was something we could do for our community by utilizing the gifts that we had been given. And with as much of an impact and need that we appreciated those meals, we knew that that was a space where we could go make a positive impact. Ironically, we started doing this more of a consumer-based business, providing simple meal kits to those who had recently been hit above and beyond or a traumatic experience. And ultimately, to our much to our surprise, the business took on its own path, which was not a straight line either, and ultimately found its way to more of a business-to-business approach.

David 3:53

So let's talk about the different ways that this can be used. And then we'll get into how an advisor might talk to a prospect or a client about this. But give me a few scenarios about, you know, how this might plug in and might seem like it fits as a part of an employee benefits plan.

SPEAKER_03 4:07

Yeah, I mean, I would love to tell you that I was as smart coming up with all these different ways that we now serve our clients. However, each different avenue that we serve our clients has been because of a client asking us if we could do that. So I just have to credit that this is not all of the things coming from us. It is definitely just the different creative ways that organizations have used these meals to make a bigger impact, a more personalized and authentic impact, not only on their employees, but even clients at times. So some of the more obvious situations when people would utilize this is just being able to send a one-off meal to an employee that has experienced a tough time from losing a close family member to injury recovery or illness. You know, obviously we served a lot during COVID, but we even do a lot for individuals going through chemotherapy and other types of extended recovery processes. Because of these scenarios, employees that have actually enjoyed those meals have actually gone back to that employer and said, hey, we've really appreciated this. And what happened from that was now we have organizations looking at these as a more of a recurring scenario where an organization wants to offer a meal a month delivered to the door of that employee to really encourage family time around the dinner table. And that's really what has taken off from whether it's like a wellness program or just general appreciation, but really focusing on the holistic wellness of the employee, going beyond the employee and now serving their entire family. So from major anniversaries, from work anniversaries to wedding anniversaries to birthdays, all the way to just just because you work here, we want to make sure that we invest not only in you and your family, we want to provide you guys a meal a month. And that's ultimately kind of how our business has taken its own path and taken off.

David 5:57

It seems as though there's a fair amount of customization that you guys provide. So it can be, can it be a one-off meal for somebody? And then maybe somebody's coming home and recuperating from a hospital stay, and you want to send them a week's worth of meals, or is there that amount of flexibility in your program?

SPEAKER_03 6:13

Absolutely. Absolutely. So in my past history and being in uh commercial sales, one of the things that I always wanted to make sure was available when I was engaging with the client was one, it needed to be fairly simple for me to release something, provide something, gift something to an individual, but it really needed to be personalized. And when I talk about personalization, it's not a, hey, let's just buy a hundred of these things and just blast them out. It's more of what is unique to this specific individual. So at the heart of more than a meal and how I built all of these programs is so that an individual can feel that we'll call it customization on this side, but it's it's really the personalization that the organization wants to bring through. So from a video message that can be received along with that meal to personal branding inside or outside to just clear communication, honestly, can be a huge component on making sure that someone feels like this is very authentic, thought out, and not just a on a whim gift card situation type of thing.

David 7:12

So let's talk about arguably the three constituencies one at a time that are touched by this. What kind of feedback do you get from employers? What do you hear when they engage in this program and start using it?

SPEAKER_03 7:23

Yeah, you know, most of the time when we have organizations come in, our purpose really falls right in line with some of their core values. So it's a very easy conversation for them to think this would be a really good fit that goes along with what we are really talking about and trying to implement throughout our organization to create that more positive, engaging culture that they're trying to reach. One of the biggest feedbacks that we do get is just communication in general. It's really important for an organization to one, be able to do this easily with not having to have a lot of additional admin work on coordinating a meal or understanding what that employee might like or dislike or dietary preferences. So one of the things we always hear back is just the simplicity of actually releasing a meal to an employee and then also just the communication back to them, making sure that they recognize that yes, you ordered this, yes, it has been scheduled and now it's actually been delivered. That allows that individual, whether it's a team leader, an owner, an HR director, now knows that this has been put in the hands of that employee and now they can actually follow up with them, just making sure that is there anything else you need from us, we want to take care of you. So the communication side, the simplicity side, and then just following in with the core values of some of these organizations has been some of the biggest feedback that we've received.

David 8:38

That's awesome. Now, from the employee side, I suspect that most employees have never had this happen spontaneously from an employer. And yet employers are always looking for ways to differentiate themselves and to attract and retain employees. What kind of feedback are you getting from them, both in terms of the deed itself and also just in terms of employee morale across the workforce?

SPEAKER_03 8:58

Yeah, I mean, so one of the things we always talk about with this is although we are sending a meal, it's it's much more than the meal. It just kind of comes along for the ride. But to that point, the meal still has to be good. So, from a feedback perspective on the meals, we want to make sure that this is easy and not creating a lot of extra work, extra dishes in the kitchen for that individual for whatever reason that they are going through and receive this. So everything has already been pre-chopped and measured, ready to throw into a crock pot or an instant pot. So a lot of the feedback that we get is obviously like, hey, the food is great, but it was even better in the sense that we didn't really have to think about it. We didn't have to worry about it. And it was just there for us to be around together, spend more time around that dinner table. What's really, really exciting for me is when I see some of those individual employees receive this so then they're so grateful for it that they obviously will go back to their employer and mention that, but then sometimes I get to see that response as well when they respond back to us and then they start utilizing it for their friends and family. Like that is probably the biggest compliment is that someone can receive something like this and it made such a positive impact on them that they want to go out and share it and spread it to some of their most valued relationships. So between the food, between the experience, and between the ease of preparing and cooking and actually having time with your family are some of the ways that I love hearing most when individuals will respond back to some of our requests for surveys and that kind of stuff.

David 10:22

So if I'm a benefit advisor, as most of our audience is, what's the conversation like with an employer? Because this is kind of a left field thing. I, you know, at least I haven't heard about it before. So other than perhaps sending a meal from a local restaurant once in a while or something, what's that conversation like?

SPEAKER_03 10:39

Yeah, you know, most of the time we talk about who our actual competition is. And so you mentioned some of the different local restaurants, and that's more of an acute situation of, hey, we just want to provide this real quick and all that. When we really start talking to benefits brokers and in regards to like how this can be an additional offering to what they are providing, we really talk about that holistic wellness side of things. So often when we think about food in a wellness program, we think about how can we make somebody eat healthier? And I hate to break it to you, but sometimes people just don't always want to eat healthy, especially when they're going through times of challenges, trauma, any sort of those things. So we don't necessarily say that holistic wellness is healthy eating, although we do have those options. It's really about focusing on that stress and the anxiety that they're feeling. And it is a proven fact that community eating, time around the dinner table is one of those ways that you can reduce that stress. And we hope that it can actually change conversations around that dinner table, around a stressful day, that you're maybe you're annoyed by your employer for the day, but it's hard to really complain about it and be annoyed by it if they're the one that's providing this to you for that time for your family. So when we always really talk about the brokerage side and how this can be an offering, it's, you know, what are those organizations looking to accomplish? And what's a way that you can go in and actually provide that? Is it a wellness program? Is it more connectivity? Is it you have a lot of working, remote working employees, and how are you going to engage with them? Like if you're able to bring this in as an offering to help subsidize, completely subsidize, or even just bring it to the table, for them, I believe that is a scenario where you are thinking outside the box in their best interest when it works for what they are trying to accomplish. And we all know the best way to build trust within an organization is to truly help them in something that they are trying to accomplish and not necessarily trying to fit in exactly what you have. And this is the way that a lot of the brokerage companies that we do work with here in the Kansas City area have had a lot of success with this.

David 12:44

Now, you you guys are not, since you mentioned Kansas City a couple of times, you guys are not nationwide yet. What is your service area right now?

SPEAKER_03 12:51

Correct. So we do have a commercial kitchen in Kansas City. So everything is chopped and diced and packaged here. But due to the relationships that we have, we are able to deliver to Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, eastern Nebraska, and the Oklahoma City Tulsa region for the time being.

David 13:07

Aspirations of growing?

SPEAKER_03 13:09

100%. Absolutely. This is where we're going to start. It is definitely not where we're going to end. So we already have some other major metros identified that we would like to get into. And it's just a way of not outgrowing our coverage, I guess, is what we would want to do, but making sure that we're strategic on those next moves so that we can best support clients, especially if they have a headquarters here in the areas that we currently serve and they have remote offices in some of those other areas. That's the way where we want to grow and build so that we can continue to engage with our existing clients and better serve them.

David 13:40

What does the user interface look like?

SPEAKER_03 13:43

Yeah, it's pretty simple, honestly. If you are an employer getting ready to send out a meal, we'll have a portal set up for you to where you can quickly and easily. So all we do is collect contact information from the recipient that we're going to send to, along with that personal note that you want us to include. If your package actually includes video messaging, then you'll be able to select the type of video that we're going to send along with that. And then from there, we kind of keep you in the loop and we hand it off to the recipient. The recipient just quickly, if there's a video message, they get to see that video message from you. But once they have finished watching that video, they'll just scroll down to the bottom of that page and there's a form where they fill out. And it's really important that we allow those individuals to select the type of meal that they want. Again, making this easy as far as a coordination standpoint goes, to where they can choose what they want. So you don't have to worry about those dietary preferences that they may have. We confirmed the delivery address. So you don't have to go track down where they want it delivered. And then they get to select the day that they would like that delivered. Again, removing any of that coordination on the sender side. And as soon as they've selected that, that's when we make sure we're in direct communication with that buyer on the beginning side of things. And then after that meal has been delivered, we'll touch base with them again and you're off and running. It's a very simple, very simple process.

David 14:56

And yet it's unique. It's interesting. And it it says that I care in a different way than patting somebody on the back or giving them an Amazon gift certificate or whatever. It's food is so intimate. I think, I mean, you tell me if you're wrong, but it seems as though it gives you the opportunity or gives your clients an opportunity to touch their employees at a very different level, at a more visceral level. Are you finding that?

SPEAKER_03 15:20

I mean, I couldn't agree more with that statement. You know, we've looked at a lot of different scenarios on why people are gifting and what they are gifting. And I know they don't do this on purpose by any means, but sometimes gift cards are just kind of that easy button for them. There's literally no coordination in that. But what employers and from what this is what I am receiving back is that they can no longer do these easy button scenarios. It needs to be unique and creative and impactful and personalized for that individual. Because oftentimes, you know, a good example of this is when a company sent out some gift cards to a meal service that is very prominent and getting things to your door very, very quickly. What they found was that they just didn't have a huge utilization rate. And that is one of the things that we wanted to make sure on the communication side was look, if you're going to buy $100,000 worth of gift cards for your organization, let's make sure that they're all being used. And I mean, I'm guilty of this, and I'd be willing to bet a lot of others are that there is a stack of gift cards at the door that you fully intend to go and use when you walk out the door, and you just never do. So we wanted to make sure that we could create that personalized approach. And to your point, like the environment has changed for employers to make sure that they are engaging with their employees right now and doing something that is thought out, personalized, and focusing not only on them, but their most valued relationship around their family and providing that time around them. That's where we want to focus.

David 16:46

And that's a perfect place to end our conversation for today. Mitch Case from More Than A Meal. Mitch, thank you so much for sharing a really unique idea with our audience.

SPEAKER_03 16:55

David, thank you so much for having me, and I really appreciate you letting us share our story.