We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Adrienne McNicholas. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Adrienne below.

Hi Adrienne, thanks for joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

Just about everyone who’s ever had a fridge has, at some point, found a forgotten fruit or veggie that’s rotten and wrapped up in plastic wrap at the back. Nobody likes to be wasteful. Wasted food and plastic trash is something everyone was all too familiar with and nobody wanted. It was the perfect kind of problem to try and solve.

We started with the realization that fruits and veggies are designed with their own protective peels and skins. There was no need to build layers of protection around the natural and breathable protection mother nature already had in place. So we focused on the exposed cut surface. Fruits and vegetables come in an infinite variety of sizes and shapes. We needed a solution that would protect the food and adapt itself to each individual piece for a snug airtight seal.

Silicone was the natural material to choose. It has anti bacterial properties, is flexible, and is dishwasher safe. We played with a few different designs before landing on the nested set of four Food Huggers. With this set, we could promise a snug seal on anything from a cucumber to a half grapefruit or sweet onion.

We took our colorful reusable silicone food savers to kickstarter and the rest was food hugging history.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I have always been working as a bridge that connects businesses with design. I have always been excited to help a designer build a business plan and equally happy to help a business navigate the creative world to get the designs they need to reach their goals. One foot in each pond, I am now delighted to be running a business that blends creative design and traditional business approaches to solving problems.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

Food Huggers got its original capital from Kickstarter. We presented our plans and our prototypes to the kickstarter community in 2013 and thanks to the support of over 5,000 generous food lovers, we raised $183K to begin production and secure the patent on our invention. Our gratitude to those kickstarter backers will never fade.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

We have a ton of fun at Food Huggers. Each person on the team is working from their home and we do not have a head office any where. Putting some extra effort into connecting with the team members as people makes us all enjoy our work a little more.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://foodhuggers.com/
• Instagram: @foodhuggers
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/food-huggers-inc/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@FoodHuggers

Image Credits
Image credit: Food Huggers