Creating a Clean Eating Revolution Online

building the happy habits necessary to do both. Our next two guests are all about that, so let's bring in JJ and Erica Peterson, their founders of Clean Simple Eats on the phone from Salt Lake City, j J and Erica, So, nice to have you here. What you folks are doing really plays into a bigger, broader conversation that we're increasingly having here at Bloomberg and among our different news verticals about kind of the food area and how it is among the latest and greatest to be disrupted and a

lot of innovation is happening. So, first of all, welcome to Bloomberg. Nice to have you here. Thank you so much, Carol. We're excited to be with you. Thank you, appreciate the time. Yeah, it's great, great to have you here. So first of all, I like to when I've got someone on just tell us little bit about the last year, because I feel like anybody who owns a business runs a business. You know, we've all kind of learned some new things. So tell

me the last year, how it's been for you guys. Yeah, I think that we can relate with a lot of those who have struggled over the last year and we've had to make some pivots in the business, um, but there's also been a lot of of life lessons learned from the last year and a lot of positive outcomes too, And that's something that we we like to look at.

We like to look on the positive side of things as often as we can, right, So, I think some of the great things that came out of the last year were we were able to spend more time at home cooking in our kitchen, and that goes, you know, across the board, across the nation, for all of us team across the world. Right We we had to learn, I hope, so how to suspend more time inside the kitchen, and we really took a look at help in a different light. I have if you don't have your help,

like what do you have? And I think once that was put in the question with the pandemic and things were uncertain for for quite a while and still are to some extent. Your your health became number one, which is what we preach every day. Well, tell us a little bit about what you guys are doing, because I find it interesting that you do on your website that you can eat pancakes, you can eat burgers, you know,

but at the same time being healthy. So I think of my dad, my grandparents, you know, everything in moderation. So Erica maybe coming on and give us our listeners and our watchers on YouTube. Um, just what you guys are doing and what your mission is and how you came about. Yeah, Carol, So to be totally honest, I am a foodie. I love food. I love junk food. I always have. I love to eat that comes from

my mom and um. But when I was a young mother, I struggled to feed my family hopefully, and I was busy, and I just found a hole in the industry because it just seems like you either eat junk food and whatever you want, or you're eating you know, chicken, broccoli, rice, just the boring, bland food that I wasn't into. And so I stumbled upon macros, which means you just fine foods that fit into a protein carbon fat split, and as long as those are all balanced out, you can

still get results while eating food that you love. And so I've created recipes with lean proteins and carved and fats that are all balanced and so you can eat the foods that you love in moderation and see fantastic results at the same time. But it's not only just food plans, but you guys are actually creating food for people. Yeah,

so that was another hole in the industry, Sauce. So once we created these seasonal mill plans, UM, we were calling out certain products like a protein powder for example, or or different supplements or even a nut butter for example, and we just thought, you know what, we can do this better. We can source better, we can control from the beginning to the end. We can we can deliver to the world a better product. And so we created

our own um Way protein powder. We have a vegan plant based protein powder, and we have nut butter lines that um kind of take you outside of the traditional almond butters or peanut butters. And we have unique blends like we have a cinnamon bun in salted caramel and

aloha which tastes like Hawaii and a jar. So we really wanted to disrupt the industry where we wanted to make clean eating fun again, where like Erica mentioned it, when you think clean eating, you think tilapia and brown rice and broccoli for every mental cardboard or cardboard and now that there's anything wrong with that, But I mean

Erica credit. She is a She is a foodie, and so am I. She's turned me into one, and she's she's just like a kind of a genius in the kitchen and she's created these amazing recipes that everybody loves and um continues to flock to well on for a second, Guess I gotta do a little bit of news, But I want to come back because I want to talk a little bit and dig a little bit deeper into

what clean eating means. Because people are increasingly looking and turning around a package and finding out what's in something. So I want to talk a little bit about that and kind of diggle attle bit more into how you develop kind of a lifestyle or healthier lifestyle for everyone. I want to get right back to our guest with us JJ and Erica Peterson, their founders of Clean Simple eats. We were talking about clean eating. What does that mean in the world of food. When you say organic, there

are rules around it. When you say natural, there are no rules. So what does clean eating mean? And the protein powders and the various you know, food products that you guys put on your product, what goes into them? So, clean eating to us means whole foods, minimal ingredients, no additive no no artificial sweeteners, no preservatives, and and and all things in moderation. I think you mentioned that, Carol. But we're not the craziest people on the planet when it comes to our food. But we we we do

believe in clean eating because we think it's important. Well, and what's interesting is you are providing kind of a way of life for people. You're providing the products. You also really tap into social media in order to get it done. And that is something that we've seen certainly take off big time, whether it's et commerce over the past year, whether it's fitness, whether it's tele medicine. Tell us about you know, your social media methodology and all

of this. Yeah, So our community is huge there everything to us because our business is wild widely word of mouth, and so we run challenges, which creates a very great community aspect. So we have a challenge every quarter and everyone gets the mill plan and we all eat the same recipes for a full seven weeks and that has been a great way to build community, build our brand, and really build our Instagram followers. And it makes a difference, right,

because community is an important thing. I feel like in this world that you know, you see it at you know, with workout companies where there's Peloton, there's a workout community. You know, weight watchers are formerly weight watchers. WW Like, they create communities. It makes a difference, right, huge difference. They create that accountability and that partnership. You know. I think anyone that has a buddy system will just be

more successful in their goals. And especially with the pandemic where lots of us were stuck at home, we kind of were reaching out to that digital community and that was really helpful for us to have that. So we're bloomberg. Oh go ahead, please j J. Sorry. There's something powerful and being um part of something that's bigger than yourself,

you know. I feel like everybody needs to be part of a community and a family and just fill those those bonds and those ties and the CSC community or family that we call them, where the squad we call them, they really show up every single time and they've been so supportive over the years and we could not have done what we've done without our community. So that's everything to us. So one thing I wanted to ask you, and we are Bloomberg and when there's a company like this,

we are interested in the metrics and the growth. Remind us how long you guys have been doing it, what kind of growth you've seen when it comes to revenues and the business model. Yeah, so we officially incorporated in so we're just in year five and year over your growth since inceptions since we incorporated has been two hundred and fifty six year over year growth and so we've we've seen phenomenal growth um even during the pandemic, we've continued to see that same growth pattern and we've even

seen an uptick during the pandemic. So it's been phenomenal. And where do you go from here with it? Is there other products that you plan to add in terms of the product line, other services? How do you see it going in the future. Yeah, we have a big bucket list of items of products that will fit organically into our mail plans and into our product line. Also new flavors, so we have seventeen different protein flavors. We've started just with our chocolate and our vanilla, and that

branched out to seventeen different flavors that are new. Community really love. You know, it's interesting. You really are trying to make it kind of one stop shopping, as you we said, you know, creating a healthy lifestyle, and and part of doing that is have it. I know it in my world, whether it's a workout, whether it's how I eat. Like, once you do it for a certain amount of time, it just becomes something that's a part of your life and that you want to do. And

you know, your app kind of allows it. And it also your app allows people to kind of customize what they need and what they need to do, correct because you can put in your gender, your h your height. I mean that's all part of the process. Yeah, So the app, you put in all your information that will customize a plan for you. And then from there you can either follow a customized guide that I have put together, or you can create your own by plugging and playing

your own meals here and there. And it will customize the grocery list for you and create a menu plan straight from the app. Yeah, that's amazing because there's over seven d fifty different recipes. But eric commentioned this earlier. Every single recipe minus a few, but most of them them are at thirty macro balance split. So I mean, you could have waffles for dinner and it's the same as if you had a salad. So you don't have to question whether or not these balanced mills are appropriate

for you. They all are, and so it kind of takes the question out of it. It takes like the heartache and the headache out of mill planning. It's just it's really really simplified. So what's the hardest part of what you guys are doing right now? Oh? Boy, um, I would say I would say balance, but also supply chain is very disfical right now, I think for all businesses really, but trying to run faster than we can

based on our limitations on supply chain. Yeah, and that is certainly something we've heard from small, mid size and certainly some of the larger sized easily large as businesses. What do you think about too, when it comes to pricing and so that you can make it as accessible

to as many people as possible. You know what, It's funny as as we've seen exponential growth year over year, we've decreased our prices every year as well, and so the the at the end of the day, Carol, we we want to impact as many lives for good as possible. That's kind of the mission of Clean, Simple Eats. And so when we first started this, the milk pans were

seventy five dollars. Now they're thirty five. You can get a discount code and they're down to twenty five, and so we've really really tried to decrease the costs of or the barrier to entry. We want everybody to be able to experience this, because once you do, it's sticky, Like this is a sticky, sticky lifestyle. You you begin to feel how good it is to feel good in your own skin and to be healthy and to be active,

and you just live this vibrant life. Eating healthy affects every other aspect of your life in a positive way. And so it just if there's this trickle effect, it's with your relationships, and it's with your colleagues at work, and it's with with your kids and the way that your parent it trickles into every other area of your life. We just cannot focus enough on the nutrition aspect, so

we want we wanted as many hands as possible. Well listen, great to check in with you guys, and I'd love to do so later this year and find out how things are going, especially as the kind of the world reopened. Uh and love to hear a little bit more about some of the new products that are that are coming down the line. JJ and Erica Peterson, thank you so much, founders of Clean Simple Eats. Joining us on the phone from Salt Lake City,