Why I started Methodology
Julie Nguyen
CEO & Co-founder of Methodology
I suffered for so long.
I had so many health issues in my teens and 20’s: weight, acne, eczema, asthma, anxiety.
It wasn’t until I started working with a naturopath doctor that I learned that if I changed my diet, I could heal my health issues and get off my prescription drugs. For example, after I cut out dairy, my asthma and acne went away. Yet in my entire life up until that point, no normal doctor had ever asked me, “What do you eat?”
Once I learned how to eat properly and experienced what it was like to feel good every day, there was no turning back.
In my 20s, I worked 60-80 hour weeks in banking and then tech.
But because of my food sensitivities, I couldn’t order my everyday meals from just anywhere, so I had to prep all of my meals every Sunday.
This felt like a chore or a job on top of my already demanding job, so I tried a bunch of meal prep services. I even shipped meals from New York!
But all of the meals I tried were designed for bodybuilders and athletes.
I didn’t need to eat THAT clean. I still wanted my food to be interesting and tasty.
I decided to hire a personal chef to cook the kind of food that I wanted to eat. I asked my close friends if anyone wanted me to take care of their food as well, and about a dozen said “yes.”
More and more people kept asking to get added on.
I remember talking to my boyfriend at the time and saying, “It's really impressive how many people keep from me. At first I thought they were just buying because they’re my friends, but now they’ve each spent thousands of dollars, so I must be solving a real problem for them.”
We tried a couple of different chefs during that time.
But one chef ended up lying. She wasn’t using the ingredients my co-founder, Stephen, and I wanted her to. So we brought everything in house. We hired a new chef, rented a kitchen for him to cook in, and started buying all of the ingredients ourselves, so we could monitor every ingredient our chef was using. I think this speaks for itself—our promise is true. Always the best ingredients. I should know. We watch our chefs and inspect our purchase orders like hawks.
I was being groomed to be COO of a tech company at the time.
But I felt called to work on this food delivery service.
And it kept growing and growing and growing, so I quit my job to do it full-time. My boss at the tech company ended up being my first investor, biggest supporter, and mentor still to this day.
Methodology was born.
In 2015, we officially launched.
I took my entire life savings and, along with my co-founder, Stephen, bought an existing catering kitchen to get started.
It had 2 units. Now we have 8 units.
By the time we launched our catering kitchen, we had 50 customers.
As of today, we’ve served over 125,000 customers.
I remember pitching Methodology to what was mostly male investors. So many didn’t understand the pain point we were solving and said to me, “I work out so I can eat whatever I want.”
But I wanted something for people who couldn’t just eat whatever they wanted and for people who weren’t trying to be “bodybuilders” or “fitness professionals.” I wanted something for time-starved people who wanted to eat the highest quality ingredients in their yummiest form possible. But something that would never ever feel like deprivation or like a diet.
We’ve come so far. Our obsession with ingredient quality has led us to establishing a deep partnership with our own farm, that grows almost whatever we want in greenhouses, where produce is hand-harvested. It’s the same high-quality, rare produce you’d get at a fine dining restaurant. And we’re now available in all 48 states in America.
If you’re reading this, I want you to know that Methodology is for you if you’re ordering takeout all the time; you only have the weekends to meal plan or prep, and even that gets hard; and you have a highly successful, yet demanding job on the weekdays. Don’t worry, we got you!
Methodology isn’t just some meal that gets delivered to your door.
It's FOR YOU, nourishing, satisfying, and beautifully infused with fresh Michelin-quality ingredients.
My story isn’t anything special. It could even be similar to your own. But Methodology is the special meal delivery service I’d been looking for for years. You don’t need to look anymore. You found it. It’s right here, all you have to do now is order and enjoy.
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