We were lucky to catch up with Niki Nichols recently and have shared our conversation below.

Niki, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear your thoughts about family businesses.

Being the CEO of a family business is the most challenging AND rewarding experience I have ever had! It is amazing to know that we have come together so consistently over the last 33 years to deliver stellar results while making a name for ourselves in the industry.

Family is where the heart is. They helped mold me into ME. My values came from their upbringing. I grew up with the business. Now it gets to be my baby while I show my girls how to cook.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

We are a family catering business started in 1989 by my mom, Kathy Neisen. I grew up in the industry and working alongside my mom. I learned my passion for food and for serving others. I could tell feeding people made a huge impact when I was a child that it is incredibly humbling being the one to feed the people now. We connect humans of all sorts over wholesome meals. My family also operates a dairy farm, and my Dad milks cows twice a day, everyday. Many of our dairy products are those we love using in our cooking! We love our customers deeply and hope they feel like family after they’ve shared a meal with us.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

I went from a 10 year nursing career to Caterer *almost* overnight. I’ll elaborate- I was furloughed from my long term career in March of 2020. My “side-hustle” had always been my family’s catering business. At this time, I went to my mom with a great idea. We would start creating frozen meals for families during this time of need. We were able to keep the business afloat during one of the most unsure of times. We have offered these ever since, and they are a great source of revenue for our company.

One key milestone is when I was called back to work in June, I went back and was able to leave to pursue the business full time after 3 short months. It’s been very awesome since to be able to fully step into the CEO role of the family business.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

Many of my clients are people I’ve been able to build personal relationships with. The rest of my clients seem to be the friends and relatives of the main group of people.

Knowing who my people are, recognizing their name, asking about their kids, petting their dogs… this is how I foster brand loyalty. It’s much more than just that- it comes down to mutual friendship and trust.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.bokiskitchen.com
• Instagram: bokiskitchen
• Facebook: Boki’s Kitchen
• Linkedin: Niki Neisen Nichols

Image Credits
Niki Nichols