Our Story
Why I started Methodology
Julie Nguyen
CEO & Co-founder of Methodology
Our gorgeous glass jars with pink lids have become synonymous with our brand, but you probably don’t know the REAL reason why we use glass jars. And it ties to why I started Methodology.
Before I started Methodology, I used to spend every Sunday meal prepping because constantly having healthy meals stocked in your fridge at home really is the best way to eat healthy consistently.
For years, I sacrificed my Sundays for the sake of my health.
Despite feeling physically healthy, I also felt disappointed every time I opened my fridge. All the pleasure from eating was gone. Eating healthy honestly felt like a job.
This is why I also used to yo-yo so much with my healthy eating.
Because I am a hardcore foodie. I am the woman who has waited for 3 hours alone in the rain in Tokyo to eat the best ramen. I eat at Michelin restaurants by myself. Eating delicious food is literally my main hobby and passion in life.
So I wondered whether it would be possible to merge the two things I love most and that always seemed at odds with each other – eating healthy food and eating delicious food.
Why is most healthy food so unsatisfying? What would happen if we took chefs from the best restaurants and challenged them to make food equally as beautiful and satisfying but within specific calorie, macronutrient, and ingredient constraints?
And why can’t food be packaged beautifully like a beauty product or if a fine dining restaurant were delivering your food? Why does everything have to look like a TV dinner?
That was when I asked one of my best friends, Stephen, to grab lunch with me. Stephen had worked at fine dining restaurants around the world for the past seven years and knew more about food than anyone I knew. I talked to him about how painful it was for me to meal prep and how bad all the other meal prep services were. And why it felt impossible to stick with healthy eating as long as this was the case.
We immediately started working to tackle these problems.
When Stephen and I first launched Methodology, we wanted to solve all the pain points around healthy eating, including how the food looks every time you open your fridge. It was really important to us that when you open your fridge, instead of feeling sad or disappointed, you feel peaceful or joyful because the food looks so beautifully packaged, vibrant, and inviting.
We wanted to move you from thinking, “I have to eat this” to “Wow, I get to eat this” and “I can’t wait to eat this.” Because that’s how you’ll stick with healthy eating, achieve your health goals, and most importantly maintain them!
Methodology is not about trying to change how all humans are naturally wired. You do not have to improve your willpower or discipline. You do not have to force yourself to eat food you don’t like. You do not have to tough it out on weekdays with sad salads while counting down the hours until the weekend. You do not have to start cooking if you don’t want to.
Instead of trying to change you, we change your context, your environment, through changing what’s in your fridge every week.
If what’s in your fridge excites you AND is good for you AND is easier to reach for than opening up a takeout app, then you are going to win your health battle for good. This is our “Methodology.”
And THIS is the real reason why we decided to package our food in glass jars. It goes so much deeper than wanting to be pretty.
So a few years into launching Methodology, we moved most of our meals into the glass jars you see today.
And a few years after that, we launched our custom bentos that took us two years to develop.
We use the glass jars for anything that’s highly liquid like our soups and stews. We tend to use bentos for lunches, so that you can eat directly out of them easily at work. Both packaging are leakproof and can be reused!