We recently connected with Anna Vocino and have shared our conversation below.

Anna, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

Eat Happy Kitchen was created with the foundational mission of offering organically sourced, gluten-free, grain-free, and filler-free foods with no sugar added – ever.

The mission to create Eat Happy Kitchen was born out of my health challenges as a child and young adult. I battled respiratory infections, asthma, stomach distress, vitamin deficiency, and anemia. When I was 28 years old, both my mother and I were diagnosed with Celiac Disease, an autoimmune disorder.

At first, my diagnosis was emotionally and physically taxing. To make matters worse, despite the fact that my mother gave up gluten (the only prescription to help manage celiac disease), her health deteriorated due to her lifelong sugar addiction leaving her in a weakened state. In the end, the sugar addiction would leave her so unhealthy, she could not recover from a heart valve replacement surgery. The pain that came from watching my mother succumb to the effects of the disease drove me down a different path. While grieving her loss, I vowed to use this experience to help others kick their sugar addictions and hopefully save them from the same experience.

I made a deliberate decision to change the course of my life, something my mom was not able to do.

After I found the solutions that worked best for me in terms of diet and lifestyle changes, it became a challenge: How can I make this dish that I’ve enjoyed all my life gluten-free and low carb? The game-changer for me was when I went low carb because everything improved: blood pressure, blood sugars, A1C… the list goes on.

Eventually, I turned it into my life’s work to help people with food allergies and serious chronic illnesses like diabetes and autoimmune. I wrote two cookbooks, Eat Happy and Eat Happy Too, launched a recipe blog and built my social media presence to share healthy recipes with those who needed help.

At that point I started looking at what was on the shelves in my local grocery store and noticed that many of the products – even those that were advertised as healthy foods – had added sugar, gluten, or other unhealthy fillers, preservatives, or seed oils.

When I launched Eat Happy Kitchen, I made it my mission to ensure that my products would be healthy and sustainable, from the ingredients to the product packaging. I know the challenges that people with chronic illnesses face, so taking the guesswork out of the food they eat at their dinner table would be at the heart of Eat Happy Kitchen.

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?

My first career was in the entertainment industry as an actress, comedian, and voiceover talent. While I still maintain my voiceover career, my new career presented itself in the most unlikely of ways.

When I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease at 28, it was both a blessing and a curse. I finally had clarity on how to manage the chronic health conditions I experienced when I was a child and a young adult.

To manage celiac disease, I had to change my diet completely. I started to create recipes and share them with family and friends. Eventually, fellow parents and others dealing with celiac started to ask me how to make certain dishes that they loved to eat gluten-free.

That turned into two bestselling cookbooks, Eat Happy and Eat Happy Too, with a third cookbook, Eat Happy Italian, on the way in 2024. My website, AnnaVocino.com, was also a place where I could share my recipes and content, along with social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube and then with subscription-based platforms like Substack.

I ultimately started Eat Happy Kitchen to give people on their own health journeys a way to find products that they could trust to contain high-quality organic ingredients that are grain and gluten-free with no sugar added. I don’t just make healthy food products. I am helping those struggling with their health approach their diet in a way that doesn’t feel like you’re depriving yourself.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I was building relationships through friends and family and eventually on social media for years before officially launching Eat Happy Kitchen. Eventually, I read a book that changed my life: Fitness Confidential by Vinnie Tortorich. That turned into a friendship and partnership that marked the beginning of a new career. I produced and still co-host the Fitness Confidential podcast where we demystify food myths, interview experts, and inspire people to cut out processed sugars and grains to improve their health.

My advice to someone looking to build a presence on social media is to be authentic and build trust. I spent nearly a decade building trust with the core audience I built around this part of my life. I engage with people who take the time to follow me, I make time to answer and provide information to help people, and I am receptive to feedback that makes my brand better. That’s what builds trust. That kind of engagement breeds evangelism. I can’t tell you how many of my followers buy my products and recommend them to friends and family. They don’t do that just because I make a product that I believe in and that tastes good. You have to remember that loyalty is a two-way street.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

After working on building my personal brand, which included writing my first two bestselling cookbooks, I decided to create my own line of products that were true to the foundational mission of Eat Happy Kitchen, which focused on products for health-conscious consumers and families and those who were on their personal health journeys.

The result was a growing range of products that delivered on my vision, all the way down to the product packaging. It started with a line of pasta sauces and has since expanded to three seasoning blends.

Since I rely on co-packers for the manufacturing process, one of the biggest challenges I would face would be finding the right partners who would be on board with my authenticity and strict adherence to product integrity.

As I met with potential manufacturing partners, I learned a dark secret: lots of potential partners weren’t interested in 100% integrity. Some even suggested that I add disallowed ingredients that could help speed product commercialization, lower costs, and solve a number of other logistical challenges – all because I wouldn’t be required to legally disclose them on the label.

This is literally the opposite of what I stand for. To me, it isn’t about speed or cost. I decided that I wouldn’t do anything that compromised my integrity. If something was going to have my name on it, I insisted it included only the clean ingredients I guaranteed with my name and reputation.

I even had to search for the right partners to create the USA-made, upcycled, sustainable food-grade packaging for Eat Happy Kitchen’s spice blends. I was shocked at the many vendors who offered unethical solutions to cut costs, and I decided that if something was going to cost more money to produce and because it comports with my vision, then that was what I was going to do.

Before Eat Happy Kitchen was the seed of an idea, I spent years building my reputation with a highly engaged audience. It’s vital that you focus on building your personal brand because people interact with people, not brands. My filter is always: What would I buy? What information would I want to know? It seems like common sense, but you’d be surprised how many food manufacturers don’t care.

I know what my customers want and what their values are. That’s what sets Eat Happy Kitchen apart; I want to lead a new wave of companies that truly care about what their customers find most important. And customers respond so positively as the food is delicious and healthy, which people will often say is impossible to find.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.eathappykitchen.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annavocino/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RealAnnaVocino/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annavocino/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/AnnaVocino
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/annavocino
• Other: https://annavocino.substack.com/