Business for a Better World: Righteous Kitchen, Inc.
Righteous Kitchen, Inc.
390 E. St. Charles Road, Lombard, IL 60148
(630) 785-8495
www.righteouskitch.com
Industry: Food service, catering, ready-made meals
Annual revenue: $800K projected $1.2M in 2023
Number of employees: 16
An interview with Mimi and Matt Tolkin, owners of Righteous Kitchen
Q: Describe your company.
A: We shop, chop, create, cook and cool. You order, heat and eat. Kitchens don't get more righteous than that. Righteous Kitchen is a local, family-owned catering company that specializes in fresh, all-natural meal prep for you and your family. Fresh, delicious, interesting, meals prepared just for you - all our meals are made from scratch with fresh, all-natural ingredients and multiple sizes to feed everyone. We offer daily ready-made meals and drop-off catering.
We use only fresh ingredients and lots of artistic imagination to create amped-up versions of classic favorites and new tastes to get your whole crew asking for an encore. Great food that's a cinch to order, pick up and pop in your oven and that delivers an experience like no other.
Q: Do you plan to hire any additional staff or make any significant capital investments in your company in the next year?
A: Yes, we do. In 2022 we underwent a significant expansion and growth when we built a larger, newer kitchen for our catering business. Righteous Kitchen prepares and delivers about 1,100 fresh-made meals every day to schools (under the name Jack's Catering), offices, private events and meetings, and our former location simply wasn't big enough. We had a waiting list for events and customers, which was frustrating to everyone.
As we designed and built our new catering commissary kitchen in downtown Lombard, we wanted to include a longtime dream we'd had since 2008 of owning and operating a local ready-made meal business in our own neighborhood. We've always wanted to provide convenient, delicious, and fresh meals to busy families, commuters, single people, or to anyone who is simply tired of planning, shopping, and cooking and wants a break without sacrificing quality. We received a business grant from the village of Lombard to build in downtown Lombard and we moved in October 2021.
The response has been overwhelmingly positive and all signs are pointing toward needing further expansion in 2023, which could be in the form of additional equipment, more employees for more production shifts, or possibly even satellite locations earlier than planned.
Q: What will your company's main challenges be in the next year?
A: One of our biggest challenges this year has been the inflated costs of food and packaging. We need to maintain competitive pricing without losing money on the cost of ingredients. Since everything we make uses fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, high quality meats and cheeses, we are constantly monitoring costs and adjusting. Those types of ingredients tend to be a little more expensive to begin with, so it's compounded by inflation.
And like everywhere else, reliable labor is a very real issue. We are fortunate to have a great, talented and hardworking team, but in order to grow the way we want and envision, we need more of them. The Catch-22 is without reliable employees to help us facilitate that growth, an added strain and burden is placed on the rest of us and to avoid burnout we need to slow down.
It's a cycle we hope to break soon because we have big plans for Righteous Kitchen. However, we are realistic about this and realize that this will be an issue in the coming year as well, but hopefully we'll see some relief. Plus, we're good at finding creative solutions to things so we'll keep moving forward come what may.
Q: What's the hottest trend in your industry?
A: People ask us quite regularly about certain meal plans and diet plans that are trendy at that moment. We tend to stay away from those and focus on high quality food people love and return to over and over again - like Mom's cooking, but with a modern twist. So in that regard we tend to avoid the trends.
That said, convenience meals are very much a trend that is here to stay. Righteous Kitchen fills a void for every member of the modern American, over-scheduled household; our menu literally has something for everyone in one-stop. Modern families, singles and retirees alike all want a fresh, exciting meal at home but without shopping and preparing. We meet that need.
Q: Does climate change affect how your company does business?
A: Yes. Climate change definitely affects our business. For example, we use nearly 150 pounds of fresh fruit every single day. There are times when we are priced out of the fruit we need, or shipments arrive damaged, smaller or less than optimal despite their seasonality, due to climate change related weather events that affect crops and transportation.
Q: What does your company do to reduce the effects of climate change?
A: Climate change is an issue we are very cognizant of and that matters a great deal to us. We are well-aware that a great grab and go convenience meal concept produces a lot of packaging waste. To that end, in 2021 we rolled out packaging that is 100% compostable. What isn't compostable (like lids to these packages for example) is 100% recyclable.
We will continue to stay up to date on green packing and incorporate more and more of it as it comes to market. And as you can imagine, produce shipments of our size come with a lot of cardboard packaging of their own. Righteous Kitchen has installed an oversized cardboard recycling dumpster in our parking lot for just that reason.
In 2020 Righteous Kitchen eliminated individual packaging for the majority of our school meals (which account for a few thousand meals/week), instead opting for reusable bulk trays. This significantly reduced the amount of plastic waste that we were seeing. Each component - entree, fruit, vegetable - came with a container and a lid. That's six pieces of packaging in some cases, per child. Multiply that by a several thousand per week and it's a real packaging waste nightmare. We have been able to eliminate that by about 95%.
Q: Is your company minority-owned? Woman-owned? If so, what are the challenges of being a minority- or woman-owned company?
A: Technically we are a woman-owned company. Mimi owns 51% of the company and Matt owns 49%. We have certainly faced a good number of challenges, though I'm not sure they have been the result of being a woman-owned company.
We will occasionally have a salesperson, or in one case even a customer, ask to deal with "the husband" instead. Which is silly and well-deserving of an eye-roll. Unfortunately, as a woman, that type of thing happens whether you own a business or not so I learned long ago how to deal with that.
Q: Does your company donate time or money to any philanthropic causes? If so, what causes? Does your company do anything else to make your community better?
A: When COVID shut the world down we were no exception. In a matter of hours our catering events got canceled one by one, and our school contracts closed down instantly. And there we were. Like so many during that time we felt helpless. But what we had was a kitchen, a staff, the experience and the know-how to mass produce and deliver fresh, high quality, ready-to-heat meals to those who were working so hard to protect us all from the virus.
Our staff was game, so we started a GoFundMe in an effort to raise dollars to support our Righteous Kitchen Feed the Frontline program. We called on hospitals, doctors, nurses, and anyone we knew with a connection to a hospital, nursing home or caregiver center. Before long we had whole hospital respiratory departments, hospital housekeeping and maintenance night shifts, ICU wings, VA Hospital COVID screeners, nursing facility staff, and so many more all calling and asking for food donations to help sustain the men and women bravely looking COVID in the face each day.
Seeing how great the need was we kicked the fundraising into high gear and were positively blown away by the response to our call. We raised enough to deliver over 6,000 full meals. And we're not just talking delivering some pizzas or making a few sandwiches: these were high-quality entrees with salads and desserts. We wanted to show our support the only way we knew how - by feeding people. And the response from all who donated funds and received the meals was one of the most wonderful things we've ever experienced, despite the dark time that it was.
Righteous Kitchen has always been dedicated to community. We live in the community where we work, so do our employees. When our community is healthy and doing well, so are we. Righteous Kitchen regularly supports local PTA fundraisers, local sports team fundraisers, local charity events like Shop-With-A-Cop, local community organizations like The Outreach House, and larger organizations that deliver a local impact like Habitat for Humanity.
Righteous Kitchen led a team of volunteers in October 2022 for the Habitat for Humanity Women Build Event where we renovated a home for a young family in DuPage County and we sponsored the Habitat for Humanity Volunteer Breakfast in December.
We are a business in this community, yes. But we are also members of the community with a home and children just like everyone else. Our customers are our neighbors, and we enjoy having a neighborhood business where we know our customers by name, they know us, and we help one another out when called.
Q: What do you do to make your business a good place to work for your employees?
A: We are a family business, and having four kids means knowing that anything can happen at any time and that family always comes first. Our employees' lives and families are no different. We know our staff deserves the best and while we do try to pay the best wages our business can afford, we also offer the flexibility of knowing the value of taking care of family: whether it's children, parents, or just dealing with a plumber who says he'll come between 1-3 and doesn't show up until 5. We work to the best of our abilities to be able to accommodate personal circumstances and respect the outside lives of our staff.
We want them to be happy and confident at work and to stay with us for a long time. If this means they stay home with a sick child, or schedule time to leave to take an elderly parent to the doctor, then we respect that. Of course we've had people take advantage of this, and that's never easy, but to operate a business otherwise isn't something we're interested in doing.
All that aside - we are a hardworking and hard-laughing bunch. There's always a lot of joking around and camaraderie that makes the workday fun.
Q: Do you have a business mantra?
A: Yes - always expect the unexpected and be ready to roll with whatever comes our way. We've been business owners for eight years and exactly 0% of the time have things precisely gone the way we'd expected. The ups, downs, and everything in between have been a twisting turn of unexpected events (from initially naive business decisions to a global pandemic, for example). Although the end results usually manage to be what we envision, the paths to get there just get a little winding.
Q: What is one interesting fact about your company that most people may not know?
A: We came up with the logo for the company before we decided on the name. We loved the idea of the rock 'n' roll hands on the fork and our artist did such a great job creating exactly what we imagined. We had pages and pages of a notebook filled with names and racked our brains for months. Then, of all things, we watched Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure one night with our kids and it hit us out of the blue: Righteous Kitchen. We knew straight away that it was a most excellent choice.
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Righteous Kitchen, Inc.
390 E. St. Charles Road, Lombard, IL 60148
(630) 785-8495
www.righteouskitch.com
Industry: Food service, catering, ready-made meals
Annual revenue: $800K projected $1.2M in 2023
Number of employees: 16