Today we’d like to introduce you to Jennifer Piette. Jennifer and her team share her story below.
Please kick things off for us with some background on the story.
After working for 25 years as a screenwriter in Europe – where people have a very different relationship to food – Jennifer returned to the US and founded Out of the Box Collective in 2010, with the goal of inspiring people to get back into their kitchens with amazing ingredients, and back around the table with their loved ones creating lasting memories and building their health at the same time. In 2019, Jennifer renamed her company Narrative Food, since storytelling has always been central to everything she does, whether with moving images or with food.
Since we have now completed our re-brand we are excited to grow our impact as a Certified B Corp with a social and environmental mission! We are very excited to be inviting investors to join forces with us via our WeFunder campaign — WeFunder is a B Corp certified equity crowd funding platform, which enables our customers and stake-holders to become part-owners in our company for as little as $100. Our campaign will be live until January @ wefunder.com/narrative.food.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
What we do every week includes dozens of moving pieces, so every week, we have challenges — from a box of grapefruit being mis-labeled, to landslides cutting off transportation for our growers — to the home of the founder burning in the Woosley Fire! But we have learned over the years that for every challenge there is always a solution — and this is where we excel and why our team’s golden rule is to “Stay in the Solution!”
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Narrative Food – what should we know?
Narrative Food is a woman-owned and operated, Los Angeles based, B Corp certified, produce and provisions delivery service founded by Jennifer Field Piette.
At its core, Narrative Food (formerly known as Out of the Box Collective) is more than just another start-up food delivery service, online grocery, or meal kit. The company’s goal is to inspire people to value Good Food sourced from a regenerative agricultural system and to connect to the people, stories and places which make up the Narrative Food community. We believe nourishment comes from way more than calories, proteins, and fats. We are also nourished by food memories and culture, by our community, and by our friends and family. Our approach to healthy food happens in the context of a healthy food system and a healthy community.
Founded in 2010, Narrative Food curates delicious, nourishing, handcrafted, artisanal and organic produce and provisions from trusted small-scale purveyors and delivers to discerning and satisfied customers all over Southern California.
We are best known for our Narrative Provisions Boxes. Each box tells a story with curated ingredients and recipes inspired by local food writers and creatives, cultural events, holidays and special occasions. We also include unique stories of the people and places behind the products in every box.
We have featured recipes from a wide range of local food creatives, including influencers like Helene Henderson of Malibu Farm, Kitchen Healer Jules Davis, Amelia Saltsman, author of the Santa Monica Farmers Market Cookbook, Barrett Prendergast, of the blog Valleybrink Road, Jessica Koslow of Sqirl, and many more…
The Narrative Food community now also includes chefs who are available to prepare the weekly boxes of provisions, in customers’ homes. Other planned services include:
– customizing food deliveries and meal plans to meet a customer’s particular nutritional goals
– coaching services to build our customers’ confidence in the kitchen
– kitchen optimization sessions so our customers are set up for success.
Although we welcome all stakeholders, we endeavor to support other like-minded women-owned businesses, ranchers, farmers and chefs.
Narrative Food’s founder, Jennifer Field Piette, is also very active in the B Corp Women CEO group, where she was a founding signatory of the #WeTheChange declaration and a member of the Female Founders Collective.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
Every single stakeholder in Narrative Food deserves credit — our customers deserve credit for supporting us, our growers and makers deserve credit for their determination to create organic and small batch foods, our team deserves credit for meeting our weekly challenges head on, and our larger community of business allies like B Corp or the Female Founders Collective deserve credit for leading a cultural shift which enables our work to be valued!
Pricing:
- Minimum order $43
Contact Info:
- Website: narrativefood.com
- Phone: 310 745 3556
- Email: info@narrativefood.com
- Instagram: @narrativefood
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/narrativefood
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/narrative-food-los-angeles
- Other: http://wefunder.com/narrative.food
Image Credit:
B. Evy-Marie Yarde
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