Amanda Facciolo of
Munch Better admits she has a dream job. “We basically travel around and go to health food stores and eat a bunch of snacks.”
The "we" includes Erin Letson, her entrepreneurial partner in crime who helped to create their Canadian healthy delivery snack box model. The two women met on a softball team when they were 15. They stayed in touch watching America’s Top Model together.
Their fantastic camaraderie culminated in Munch Better and Amanda raves, “We have a great work dynamic. We are old friends. I can’t imagine doing it without her.”
She spoke with us about what you should be snacking on and why the cookie monster has some serious competition.
How did you and Erin decide on snacking as your business model?
We both love snacking – a lot. Especially
healthy snacks. I'm a holistic nutritionist and Erin writes a digestive health blog called
Fix My Gut. We want to educate people on a pretty basic level without scaring them.
You’re just finishing up the first year of business. Were there any major challenges as you were getting started?
Our name was a pretty big hurdle! We
came up with a name at first but we found there was another company that had a similar one. It took us two or three months to come up with Munch Better. Luckily, it’s much better than what we had before.
Was anything easy about starting this new business?
I thought getting vendors on board would be a challenge. Before we confirmed anything, we wanted to see if we could get vendors and we put together the top ten companies we wanted to work with, all Canadian. We got all ten vendors. It was surprisingly easy! We figured we were onto something.
How do you choose the monthly snack boxes?
Each month we try to find a nice balance between sweet and savoury. Our boxes are filled with snacks that you would have to go to two or three different health food stores to find. My knowledge in nutrition helps us to select high quality products. Choosing snacks can be pretty confusing because there is a lot of misinformation out there. One company may be good, but then a mega-company buys it and the whole ingredient list changes.
If people are gathering their own snacks, what is your advice as a snacking professional?
Always read the label! I know that people say it all the time, but it’s so important to. Always stay away from glucose-fructose, which is the Canadian name for high fructose corn syrup. Try natural sweeteners like brown rice syrup, honey, agave or coconut sugar.
What are some of your favourite Munch better snacks?
We focus on Canadian-made snacks and some are so good that we can’t stop eating them! We love Kewaza energy balls with flavours like peanut butter
cookie dough. They’re amazing and made with high-quality ingredients. We also love New Moon Kitchen’s spelt vegan cookies. The chocolate mint (Mo Mint) have real mint leaves in them – they’re unbelievable. We even found a multivitamin that’s in a chocolate bar! We’re all about supporting genius ideas.
You both want to go further than the food itself. Tell us about the education feature in the boxes!
In each of our boxes, we have a product we call the “Why don’t you?” product. It's an easy way for people to introduce healthy habits at home. One box had
Three Farmers camelina oil, and in another we provided a sample of
Just a Pinch garlic sea salt. We then give our clients a recipe to help them incorporate the ingredient into their kitchens.
Any plans as your business goes beyond the one-year milestone?
We're just about to launch two special holiday boxes – one with some of our favourite vegan and gluten-free snacks, and the other focused on
chocolate. We're also looking at the possibility of an online store. Rather than having only a box a month, this would allow the customer to make his or her own box and customize it to their dietary needs.
Every month when we're packing boxes, I say to Erin: “Can you believe we're doing this right now? It’s crazy!”
Lesson learned. Business and friendship
do mix. Order a
Munch Better box online for your home or office to support these snacking queens and your own inner cookie monster.
Courtney Sunday from Toronto, Ontario
Courtney Sunday is a writer, yoga teacher, Pilates instructor and Thai massage practitioner. She teaches corporations in Toronto the fine art of breathing deeply, and travels too much for her own good. She likes to cook meals from scratch using ingredients from her garden, and would mill her own flour and make her own butter if she had more hours in the day. You can find out more about her at www.courtneysunday.com.
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