What does it take to build a brand known for food that’s—in our CEO and co-founder Julie Nguyen’s words—”beautiful, yummy, and comforting?” Julie recently had the opportunity to talk about Methodology on Ramon Vela’s The Story of a Brand podcast, and if you’re curious how the brand got to where it is now, read on or check out Julie’s podcast interview, which is broken into two parts: Part 1 and Part 2.
The Roots of the Brand
In Part 1, the episode entitled “Healthy Food You’ll Look Forward to Eating,” Julie shares that making healthy eating “fun” was the goal for Methodology—after all, it’s that fun bit that makes people want to stick to eating right. “The only way we’ll heal people is if we have them consistently using the product,” she says.
Believe it or not, it’s not fellow healthy-food companies that Julie considers competition; it’s junk-food companies, who market their products in a similar “fun” vein. With that in mind, Julie and the Methodology team think of every single detail of the product design and experience—the visuals, packaging, textures, aromas, colors, and use of rare ingredients—to craft up the Methodology meals, snacks, beverages, and other products the brand is known for today.
It took many years, trials, and tribulations to get to where Methodology is now. For starters, Julie wasn’t always one to know how to eat right, having grown up “unhealthy, overweight,” and on prescription drugs for everything from acne to eczema to anxiety to asthma as early as her 20s. By improving on what she ate, her health turned around (just eliminating dairy helped stop her asthma attacks!) and she learned firsthand the power of “food as medicine”—something she believes in so strongly that Methodology owns the trademark for this tagline.
Julie shares how she used to spend hours every Sunday to shop for groceries, plan menus, cook, portion, and weigh her food—which, considering she was also working 60 to 80 hours a week, definitely took its toll. “There has to be another way.” Other meal-prep services at the time just didn’t deliver on what she wanted—the macros were there alright, but the flavors were “bland.” She had the vision of creating food that hit all the right boxes: “beautiful, yummy, comforting”—and easy to prepare for busy working professionals.
And with that came Methodology. Julie started making food with her co-founder Stephen Liu on the side while she was working in tech roughly seven years ago. Initially the service was just for friends, but with more folks clamoring to try their food, she decided to take the plunge—i.e. quit her day job, liquidate her retirement savings, and launch Methodology as a business she’d work on with Stephen full-time.
That was only the beginning of what would be seven years (and counting!) of the crazy ride that is Methodology—and this was no walk in the park. Julie admits her Vietnamese immigrant parents weren’t too crazy about the idea, wishing she had stuck with her more stable career in tech. She learned she had to “let go” of the notion of her parents having to understand or approve of what she does. “No way I could live my dream life unless I was okay with people not understanding me,” she says. Thankfully, she still had plenty of support—from Stephen, her circle of friends, her mentor and investor Kunal Sarkar, and others.
In the brand’s early days, she and Stephen were “slaves to the business,” working 100-hour weeks and taking no salaries. “It wasn’t sustainable.” Today, though, Julie works remotely from different parts of the world, living in a different country every month—which is something she’s always dreamed of doing, and which she shares she’s highly grateful for.
As she continued on to keep Methodology up and running, problems would pop up left and right—and Julie admits she “wasn’t as mentally strong” in the beginning to be able to cope. But as they say, experience is the best teacher—and through successfully tackling more challenges as the months and years went on, Julie no longer “flips out as much” and now believes every problem is solvable.
How Julie Approaches Food at Methodology
Meanwhile, Julie talks about values, vision, and sources of inspiration in Part 2 of her interview, the episode entitled, “High-quality, Fully Cooked Meals for Busy People.”
Here, Julie emphasizes the role her values play in designing Methodology to be what it is—even if it means making compromises. “We have to do things the right way—even if it costs more, even if it means our target audience [or market] is smaller,” she explains. “Even if it means [Methodology] won’t be a billion dollar business.”
Julie talks about the Methodology user experience she’s envisioned and designed—it’s one that’s meant to make customers feel “proud” to prepare their meals. “There’s an artistry to it,” she says. People, she shares, tend to underestimate the pleasure that comes with whipping up a meal with creativity and artistry behind it—yet understandably, not everyone has the luxury of time to do so. But that doesn’t have to mean relying on the many sad (and unhealthy) convenience options around.
“When you’re too busy to cook a meal, we don’t want to create a soulless experience where you’re just popping something hideous into the microwave and it’s purely just functional,” says Julie. And Methodology was created to fill in that gap—with creative, sumptuous meals that let you tap into your artistic and imaginative side, flavor- and presentation-wise—and as everything’s fully cooked, they’re ready to eat or reheat in just minutes.
The use of glass jars showcase the fresh naturally colorful ingredients inside, from the moment you open your fridge. “I think about that as a key moment in the user experience I designed for,” says Julie. “I want to change how people feel in that moment that happens several times a day to a moment of joy.” Jars also help keep food fresher for longer, and because they’re reusable and sustainable, they’re better for your health (look ma, no plastic leeching into the food!) and the environment, too.
Of course, selecting the right ingredients is another major avenue that Julie puts great importance on. As a health-food brand, Methodology uses only whole unprocessed foods, with no gluten, refined flours, wheat, refined sugar, and dairy. “We really follow basic principles around eating,” she says. “Mostly plants—unprocessed, unrefined plants in the right portion size.”
Given the higher price range of Methodology meals, Julie also has to make sure the customer experience is “seamless”—and that there’s lots of quality control in place. As Methodology’s menus change weekly, achieving that isn’t always easy; but thanks to her tech background, she was able to tap into the resources to build custom software to help the culinary team with keeping track of the recipes and executing them consistently, each and every time.
Asked for her words of wisdom, Julie admits that she’s surprised it’s taken as long as seven years to get where the brand is now—which is longer than she’d thought it would. But with her co-founder Stephen and the rest of the Methodology team by her side—as well as the support of everyone who’s ordered from Methodology over the years—she pushed through, with successful results.
This is only the beginning for Methodology (expect a ton of other fun stuff in the coming weeks and months!), and we’re thankful for everyone who’s joined us along the way.