JAC:Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLife.com on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen; with me, I have Kristin Geil and Cindy Kuzma.

CK:Good morning, Jeana.

KG:Hi Jeana.

JAC:Good morning. And Cindy, this week you did the podcast live recorded from the Moxy Hotel.

CK:I did. So again, you might hear a little bit of background noise. It was a really exciting evening at the Moxy Hotel, but I spoke with Chef Josh Katt of Kitchfix.

JAC:And Chef Josh Katt of kitchfix has been evolving the way that he sets goals over the years. Wouldn't you say that's right?

CK:Absolutely. I mean he is one of the few guests that we have who has come on and said, yeah, I don't really set goals. Um, that's not really my thing or that hasn't been my thing. Yet he's managed to build a pretty successful business despite not having really intentionally set out with a goal to do so. He works really hard. He has these sort of guiding principles and passions that he's followed and the opportunities have found him, but now that he has kind of stepped away from the chef role and into the CEO role, he's definitely thinking that he needs to focus a little bit more on goals. He's using terms like BHAG and 10x and things that we hear entrepreneurs and ceos talk about when they talk about goals. So I think he has recognized that the way he has done things in the past worked to get him to a certain point and now that he's responsible for a big company and lots of people, he's. He's adjusting his approach to goals and exploring how these new options might work for him.

KG:And one thing we know about Kitchfix from working with them and sampling everything on their menu for so many years is that they really care about their customer and being transparent about what food they're serving you, what ingredients they're using, where they're sourcing things from. So we know that they care about the forward facing aspect of the company. But Josh spoke a little bit to how he also makes sure his back of house staff and employees are taken care of as well.

CK:Yeah, I thought that was a really interesting and compelling--I mean, one of the reasons honestly, he started the company in the first place was he found restaurant life to be a lot harder than he had anticipated. There's late nights, there's low pay, there's no benefits. It's a lifestyle that can be really hard on people and in addition to building a business that serves healthy food to people who have had cancer or people who are sick, anyone who wants an anti-inflammatory Paleo Whole30 compliant diet, he's also really focused on making life better in all aspects for those workers. So you know, he wants to hire people who maybe don't have a good chance to get a job somewhere else. He wants to give them regular hours and pay and benefits and just create opportunity in the restaurant and catering and food service world. That makes life a little bit better and a little bit different. It's almost like the antithesis of the gig economy right now, which is really kind of refreshing because you have a lot of workers who are not being treated well, but so it's really great to see a company starting from the beginning with that passion and that responsibility to to workers as well as customers

JAC:And we know and love Josh Katt and I've had his food over the years and have seen the company grow so we can't wait to hear this interview with you, Cindy. And stick around listener for the end of the episode where you'll hear from real-life goal getters and what they're achieving out there in the real world today.

CK:And I am Cindy Kuzma and I'm here with Josh Katt who is Chef Josh and CEO of Kitchfix. Josh, thank you so much for being with us today on #WeGotGoals.

JK:Thank you for having me. Love being here. This is great.

CK:So for those of our audience here at the Moxy and also our listeners at home who don't know Kitchfix, I was a little bit about what it is.

JK:Sure. Kitchfix, I started it as a meal delivery service. So we serve fully prepared, Paleo, Whole30 meals. You don't have to prep or anything, you just throw them in your microwave or oven. We deliver those all over Chicago. We have about 55 items on our menu every week. We also sell some granola, all Paleo. We sell Paleo waffles, Paleo granola bars, and those are available in Whole Foods and Sprouts around the country. And then we do catering as well.  So we got a bunch of things going on. Really everything is founded on the healthy food philosophy and sourcing philosophy.

CK:You do have a lot going on these days at Kitchfix and I know you've had quite a career path from, from chef to CEO. Did you think back in 2006 when you moved here to Chicago that this is where you'd be sitting today with all of this happening?

JK:Yeah, I know. I came to Chicago really to focus on cooking. I really wanted to learn from some of the best chefs in Chicago. We have an amazing talent pool here of chefs, so after culinary school I'm from originally from Michigan, came down to Chicago to work in a fine dining restaurant where the chef had experience working at the French Laundry and just decided that I wanted to like commit my life to learning all about fine cuisine and all the techniques involved in that and actually pretty quickly in that experience here in Chicago, I realized that wasn't the life for me and I started looking around in different parts of the food world for something that I had a little bit more work life balance.

JK:I didn't love the idea of spending my whole life working 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. every day and falling asleep on the train and all that sort of thing that the guys around me were doing because it was such a hard life. So  started exploring other things and ended up in tons of different food businesses throughout Chicago. It was pretty interesting.

CK:And I know the genesis of Kitchfix came out of some, an experience you had as a personal chef, right?

JK:Yeah. Yeah. So I decided to explore catering and sort of like retail outlets that served prepared foods. I ended up partnering with a nonprofit, working with them called Common Threads and teaching kids how to prepare healthy food from different countries throughout the world. It was like an afterschool program. So I would go and entertain these 12 year old kids, get them to eat pad Thai or peanut soup, all these really kind of cool dishes. And really it was like the food was great that we were making and it was a blast. And during that time someone needed a personal chef, someone that was involved in the nonprofit actually. And so I was like, yeah, I got some spare time I'd love to, I'd love to do that and she said, OK, I'm recovering from cancer and you know, can you make the antiinflammatory diet for me, can you learn about it?

JK:And so I started exploring that and really took to the idea that food is very powerful. It can be functional, it's not all about just, you know, consumption. It can, it can heal your body and really realized that my background at farm to table cuisine really lent itself well to that style of cooking and so, started making her food and you know, my, my heart and soul was in it and she loved it and loved all the food I was doing and ended up telling all of her friends. And soon as I was going house to house to house to house and one day I was like, you know, I should get my own kitchen and start doing deliveries. And that's, that's really like the genesis of, of Kitchfix was, you know, that whole process.

CK:Fascinating. So how do you go about that? I mean, obviously you knew a lot about food and you were already teaching these children about some healthy, delicious things by the anti inflammatory diet is like a whole other kind of ballgame. How did you educate yourself?

JK:Reading a lot of books, anticancer, Dr. Weil is another author. He's actually one of the founders of True Food Kitchen. So at the time there was only one of those restaurants, now there's probably 15 and so yeah, I mean really back then there wasn't a lot--there wasn't really, I don't think Protein Bar was around. There was just nothing. And so today it's pretty commonplace. We probably all drink something with turmeric in it, you know, at least once or twice a week and that just wasn't there then. And so you know I had a big opportunity and got to kind of ride the wave of health and nutrition early on.

CK:Yeah, yeah. You definitely seemed to ahead of the curve there. So this kind of leads into it, you know, we've talked about this long way you've come and this amazing company you've built, but Josh, if you had to answer our big question--which you do because you're on #WeGotGoals ...

JK:Wait, what is this called?

CK:Our big question, our first big question on #WeGotGoals is what is a big goal you've achieved, why was it important to you and how did you get there? So how would you answer that?

JK:I was thinking about this question prior to coming on here and I realized that I just am not a big goal guy. I don't really operate like that and I and I don't necessarily think it's a good thing, but personally and kind of how I've gotten to this point is just I'm all about passion and belief and really about getting excited about doing things that are good and good for people. And so personally I think now as I move out of chef and sort of, you know, this art more artistic side and getting more into the CEO role, which I'm in now, it's, goals are a little bit more important. So I'm learning how to apply that focus that I think a goal gives you to my life and the business that I'm running, so I actually couldn't, can't really think of a big goal that I've really like strived for and checked off my list, but it's something that I'm certainly looking to embrace in the future.

CK:Interesting. I'll be interested to hear how you're going about that, but let's talk about that. That passion and that belief. So obviously if you built this great company without necessarily setting out to do it, where did you feel that passion and that belief and how did you kind of know that hey, this is something bigger than just this one person or just these few people that I'm cooking for, starting out cooking for people in their homes and seeing that people were willing to pay me. I think at the time I just needed to charge $40 for a meal, which is outrageous, right? So seeing that people would pay for that. I was able to sort of leverage those clients of mine and eventually I was like, OK, if I got a kitchen, I could charge them less, they could eat my food more consistently and that was sort of like, it was almost like early on I needed to do it just to survive. I needed to make money and so, you know, it's like, how am I going to make more money? How am I gonna make my paycheck? I don't want to go work in a restaurant. I love cooking, I love having flexibility, so what do I need to do to make that happen?

JK:And I always just kinda growing up, always thought outside of the box and never really wanted to be a um, never really wanted the corporate life I guess. So it made sense to me, just kind of do my own thing and that's ended up getting my own kitchen and so forth. And then it was all of a sudden I had my own kitchen and it was like, Oh man, I need to pay rent now. It's crap. How do I find more customers? And so again, early on it was like this, everything, like I needed to do these things and, but it was all founded on a passion for making really good food and, and not only just, I mean this, this is like where the chef part comes out and the artist I suppose. So it's not about just good food, it's about good service, it's about positive energy in everything that you're doing and you can make good food but just throw it on somebody's table and walk away or forget to follow up on something. And that's part of, that's part of the whole experience, right? So I've always been passionate about start to finish of the whole eating process. I guess the feeding window. I could go on and on about it. So it's just being passionate about every single step and yeah.

CK:Yeah. That's interesting. So it sounds like, I mean, again, part of what you're saying is each step in your company's evolution was sort of driven by financial incentive, but, but in a way, OK, well how can you make this work financially in a way that also upholds those values and beliefs? And passions that you had.

JK:That's right.  Yeah. That's been, that's been something that has kept us set apart from others too, is that we had a really high standard for the sourcing of our ingredients, the limited use of things that are inflammatory or sort of, you know, just things that can be shortcuts in some kitchens. And I think as I've evolved over the last few years and you know, it's tough to really say like all of these foods are bad and Kitchfix doesn't use them because they're awful because that's not always the case. And we didn't use oats for a long time and oats are great. A lot of things that we do are Paleo and so you don't really put oats in those things, but I just think, you know, everything in moderation is, is really what it's all about. But still, I think there's so much in our lives, there's a lot of opportunities for excess and there's a lot of opportunities to eat things that are bad. And so the thing I love about Kitchfix is we provide like a really healthy, you don't have to think about it solution for your life that is like primo healthy really does something for you so you don't have to, you know, you can go eat pizza on the weekend and you can enjoy yourself and know that you're kind of going back to like a really healthy, clean lifestyle, you know, Sunday through Tuesday or Wednesday, or Thursday.

CK:So that's interesting that you mentioned that about the oats, because I was curious how you keep tabs on the nutrition research and the science of how you're sort of nutritional philosophy at Kitchfix evolves or if it does,

JK:We don't really, for our meal delivery service and for the products we're selling to Whole Foods and sprouts, like we've kind of taken a stance of Paleo and in a sense, you know, we do some grains on our prepared foods menu, so we'll do, we'll do your, like local and organic brown rice and quinoa, we'll do. That's really as far as we go in terms of the grain realm, but we could certainly--like, cheese is OK I think for some people, I think there's things that are fine for people, but I think sort of what we go back to at Kitchfix is like do we really need to include it or can we just make good food without it and why not fill your body with clean, delicious vegetables and high quality proteins and good oils and herbs and spices. That's fine. We don't need to be everything to everyone. You can get all that stuff, you can get cheese and bread and good other grains elsewhere. Just this is what we are. So that's kind of how we stay grounded. I think the one thing I would change is having corn like in our, like fresh corn. That's the one thing I'm like, man, if I, if I'm ever going to change one thing about our meal delivery is some good summer corn.

CK:Yeah, there's something special.

JK:But we're like corn-free.

CK:So talk to me, Josh, a little bit about Whole30 because I think  that's, it seems like  that's been a pretty important part of the development of Kitchfix. So how did that relationship come about? And I guess maybe we can start by explaining to people who don't know what Whole30 is a little bit about it, but how did that relationship come about and what role has that played?

JK:Sure. So Whole30, if you're not familiar, it's really like an amped up Paleo diet. It's no grains, no gluten, no dairy, no soy, no corn, no added sweeteners whatsoever. And then they really take it a step further and really challenge you to eliminate things that you kind of use as a crutch. So if you were to find a donut, for example, that had Whole30 compliant ingredients, they would advise you do not eat that because it's similar. It's very similar. And you can make, you can make a donut taste really sweet and delicious without sugar. You can use apple juice concentrate or things like that. So really Melissa, the founder, is big on stop--it's really like about food freedom and getting away from things that you're bingeing on. So that's Whole30. And I met Melissa at an event we were doing. We did Whole30 appetizers for her, she was speaking and we went out to dinner and a couple of others and really just I had heard about it. I had done research. People had asked us about it and hadn't really considered going out full force with Whole30 in terms of changing our menu, but so after talking with her and hearing her passion and seeing the influence that she had, it just made sense for us to really start to provide that because I think it's a resource for people who don't cook, don't have time, but want to change their life, their dependency on certain foods that it was a cool solution that we can provide for people.

CK:Did that make a big difference in your business too, in terms of calling attention to it?

JK:Yeah. No, it's been great. They're a fantastic partner. They really care and they're really, I think with power, which I think Melissa and the brand has, comes a lot of responsibility and I believe that they handle that pretty well, so it's been cool to be a part of that. Yeah, it's been good for us, but I think yeah, I mean it's been really cool to see people respond and be able to come to us for that solution in their life, which wasn't totally available before from our menu.

CK:Yeah, so I am curious, do you have like stories of people who had transformations among your clientele at that kind of inspire you to keep moving?

JK:Sure, yeah. We have stories, yeah, we get testimonials quite a bit from people who are coming to us for Whole30 diets. I mean people come to us for all sorts of solutions in their life for people who are going through an illness that need to eat really healthy to people who want to lose weight. We had one customer who was given a gift card by about 20 or 30 people and they ended up giving her like thousands of dollars.

JK:She was going through chemo, just so she could have healthy good food. We had another family who provided food for their, I think it was their dad and because we could provide him food regularly, he was able to not go into assisted living right away, you know, he was able to kind of stay out and I think one of the coolest things about running your own business is as you grow you get to like, because now I'm like a little removed from like day to day, right? But I get to see these cool things that my team is doing for people, right? And so like they're providing like this thing that I created five years ago is now doing those things for people, that is people are using it for good and I'm not, you know, really partaking in the actual cooking, you know, as much as I used to. So I don't know, it's pretty, pretty cool feeling.

CK:Yeah. That's, that's incredible. Oh my gosh. What incredible stories and also what a great idea for like someone to who knows someone who's going through something like that for them. So yeah, let's talk about that a little bit more because as you mentioned, you're not cooking as much day to day and you talked about kind of the challenges in transitioning and learning more of the business side and the goal side. So what are some of the ways that you're doing that?

JK:Naturally when we, when I first started the company, I started to separate myself from the kitchen. I can't, I don't know why It just felt natural in some ways. I think cooking is so, it's very, it's a riot, but it's also a lot of hard, hard work and I knew that in order for me to grow the business I needed to use my brain in a different way and so I knew that I needed, I could communicate well my passion to others and then I could go out and try to grow the business. And so that's kind of what I started doing pretty early on, but I'm still involved regularly with the whole food process, you know, meeting with our chefs, talking about menu items and what, uh, what is the, what are the latest trends, what can we do to improve certain parts of the operation. Honestly, like our meal delivery service is basically run by our amazing staff.

JK:They can do every part; they're brilliant people. They come up with amazing food and I and I really can kind of step back and work on other parts of the business so we have catering that we're doing and kind of building this unique offering of really healthy food that we serve to sports teams, we serve to backstage for artists. And that's a whole different world. It's not necessarily Kitchfix per se all the time, but it's, it's still very passion driven and all about health and wellness and really good service. So like I kind of am starting all these little businesses within Kitchfix, which is pretty fun, yeah.

CK:So how do you, how does that scale, like how do you make sure that commitment to service at every step along the way is a part of all of these businesses when you can't obviously be hands on in every single aspect.

JK:I mean that's part of my growth is really establishing some systems and structure for the team to say to them, hey, these are the things that I really want to see on a regular basis and this is part of your job. So doing things like that, communicating the vision and communicating the passion that we're talking about is important. Hiring the right people is important. We do food service a lot differently than the average restaurant. You know, kind of my experience in the restaurant world early on was that really like sold-out life or working the line and grinding it out, no time for a family, it's all about the food. I didn't really like that. I felt like this. There's an opportunity for something different and there's like people getting paid, you know, I think when I moved to Chicago I got paid like 80 bucks a day for like 16 hours.

JK:It's like, that's acceptable because you're learning from a great chef and you know, maybe someday you'll make it, but like so many people like burnout or become drug addicts or alcoholics. It's like rough life. So at Kitchfix, I always said I don't want to work at night really. Right. I want to have most of my nights free, which sometimes is the case. I want to try to do things differently. I want to pay my workers well, I want to give them sick leave. I want to, I want to just take care of them  because they're the ones that are doing the work and as an owner and CEO they have--yes, my job is hard and it's burdensome and when an employee steals, they steal directly from me. If an employee gets hurt, I pay for it. So I'm ultimately responsible, but at the end of the day like I want to take care of them and treat them really well and so that's something that I think is pretty cool about Kitchfix food services that were all about that. We treat our kitchen staff very well and take care of them and they have I think really good lives and I can't wait to keep improving that for people with, for my team. Yeah.

CK:That's really cool. So that your motivation is not only the people that you're serving, but the people who are working for you and making their lives better. I know you too, you hire people too through programs that kind of give people a second chance who might not otherwise be able to get a job. And I was wondering kind of where that came from and now it's a little bit, it's clearer to me where some of that passion comes from. But can you talk a little bit more about that?

JK:Yeah, sure. When I moved to Chicago I kind of saw the disparity throughout the city and you know, traveling from the west side to the east side, or south side up here and seeing homeless people on the street and I just never really had that exposure in a small beach town in Michigan. It kind of like, shook me pretty hard when I first moved here and I just knew that I didn't mean I didn't know I was going to start something, but I knew that I always wanted to kind of give back. That was sort of why I got involved in the nonprofit and knew that I could offer food always seemed like an amazing opportunity to get people involved and teach them a skill that maybe they could grow into something really great someday. So at Kitchfix we reserve a few of our spots in the kitchen-- well actually really early on when we first started, we partnered with a church, that was our first kitchen and I made an agreement with them that we would hire people from like second chance programs to help me with, in the kitchen.

JK:And so like my first two hires were people, these two women from the CARA program who had no food experience and they were helping me in the kitchen and I was training them and it. And then, uh, my business took off and I was like, wow, I need someone really to help me. Like some real chefs in here and so the vision sort of changed at first and then a year and a half later, we had seven people working and these two ladies were still there with me. I took everyone in this room. We had gotten this opportunity to help out with a sports team and I was like, hey guys, we have this sweet opportunity. I'm so excited to share with you to be that you can be a part of it and you know, you just have to take a background check.

JKAnd like everyone in that room was like, I know I can't. I wouldn't pass. And so like it was that kind of at that point that I realized a lot of my team is really, even though I might not have found them from CARA or Growing Home or we just started working with refugee, someone that like basically help works with refugees and now they're placing them in jobs. A lot of stuff that we were hiring was already having issues finding work. Right? So like I had an already a source of people that I could really take care of and mold and not take advantage of. And so I realized that I was already doing that even even though I wasn't like purposely hiring from CaRA for all of my employees. So overall I think that's, and now we have a like our system is for, for prep and things like that and our kitchen like Thursdays and Fridays arem we get in like all of our sweet potatoes and cauliflower, like all of these, like this special is that we're using hundreds of pounds of and you have to peel all those things and it's like very basic work.

JK:And so we have those positions reserved for inch, you know, like entry level positions for people that do need the practice of showing up for work on time, standing up all day. Those are things that not everyone know. Honestly. It's hard for anyone that doesn't do that. Right? I mean like if you go to stand up all day and like peel a potato, it would not be fun. You'd be like, I'm losing my mind. But it does take practice. So we give those opportunities, we've had some really cool stories as of late and we're excited to kind of keep growing that part of our business.

CK:And you have something like 60 total employees?

JK:Yeah, 60, over. Seems like less but our, um, like VP of finance keeps telling me it's more, so I guess we have more.

CK:Yeah, so again, you, you've done all this growing. You've, you've taken care of both the people that you're serving food to and the people who are serving the food and the people who are preparing the food and you've done this all without setting intentional goals, many of them. You've said now that you're thinking more along these lines of goals. So that brings us to the next big question on #WeGotGoals. Do you have a goal for the future and how might you plan to get there?

JK:Sure, great question. I think, you know, I kinda have certainly have some strategy that we've developed for how we plan to approach the next five years. But I think so, like one of those goals is we want to be in 3,000 stores with all of our products that we have out. So we have Paleo granola bars, we have paleo frozen waffles and paleo granola that we sell and whole foods weren't about with each of those, about 350, 400 stores now. So seeing 10x growth at least in the next four years with each of those products. And then I think another one that's kind of like my big hairy audacious goal is to like take over all of the food service at like a stadium. I know that's not very, it's not very Kitchfixy in terms of what you know about our brand, but we've done some work in that space more so in the realm that we are making healthy really delicious food, but there's like a monopoly on stadiums for food service. It's run by like two or three companies and I think there's some opportunity to do it differently. And so my 10-year goal is to like run a stadium.

CK:Do you have a specific one in mind?