We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ashlee Mattingly a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Ashlee, thanks for joining us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.

As a business owner you are always looking for ways to stand out and to help people understand your mission.

I learned years back that I had Fibromyalgia and Lupus and in learning about natural healing and holistic care, I learned there were other ways out there to heal the body/gut. I learned that by avoiding gluten I was able to stop the inflammation that was making my life and health debilitating, and ultimately allowing me to get off of 5 pain medications and 10 other “health” related meds. It changed the way I saw things and gave me a new lease on life that I never thought I would have.

When I created the vision behind Daily Flavors Eatery & Juice Bar, I was sitting in a hospital bed pregnant with my 6th child diagnosed with an extremely rare pregnancy complication call Placenta Percreta. I knew that I needed to avoid gluten for my health but that was nearly impossible in the hospital, especially when you are relying on them for 3 meals a day for months. Since I was inpatient, I had my own room in the hospital and use of a fridge, so I was able to have food brought to me or order food, which I thought was going to be a lifesaver.
Ultimately, what I found was that my choices were few and far between. Almost every restaurant, eatery, and certainly the hospital was riddled with gluten filled meals but offered very few, if any, options for gluten free patrons. It was a problem that I had never even considered as I always cooked at home and wasn’t one to go out very often. But I knew that I was not the only one that was feeling this way and dealing with all the hurt and frustration of just wanting to feel normal. Wanting to walk into a place and not have to worry about being sick for days or to be made to feel like it was all in your head.
So as I sat in my bed for months, I dreamt of a place that everyone could feel included and that those with dietary restrictions could go and not have to worry or feel normal. Where anyone could eat no matter the restriction or need. A place where whole foods, real foods, were what was in the ingredient list. Not a bunch of chemicals that no one can pronounce or frozen food that is shipped in and dumped out of a bag.

When my daughter was born at 28 weeks, in order to save my life, we learned that she had an issue with dairy which left me at another crossroads: stop the dairy and breastfeed or put my daughter on formula? I am a mother before anything else, so my kids come first, which made the decision easy for me to make. So I added Dairy Free to my list, which made it even harder to find places to eat as our hospital stay seemed like it was never going to end.

I wanted a safe haven, for anyone and that is what we strive for at Daily Flavors Eatery & Juice bar.

Ashlee, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a homeschool mother of 6 beautiful children from the ages of 24 down to 2. In my free time, I also run our homestead where we have chickens, pigs, and goats. I am a self-proclaimed chef and started cooking at the young age of 4 with my grandmother who also owned a farm and used only the freshest ingredients and always served the best meals. On the other side I cooked with my other grandmother who also cooked everything from scratch and would feed our very large family every year for every single holiday with love and heart.
Daily Flavors Eatery and Juice Bar serves Nourish Bowls, Smoothies, Wraps, Salads, Raw Juices, and a large variety of baked goods as well. All of them are Gluten and Dairy free as is our entire kitchen and facility. We also offer several vegan and vegetarian options as well.

I want people to know that I am the proudest of making a place where people can belong. Where anyone can sit, eat, and enjoy themselves without a worry of contamination or getting sick.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

The dream of Daily Flavors Eatery & Juice Bar was mainly just a pipe dream and something that I never thought was going to happen until I talked to a few friends that believed in me and thought what I had was something special. They had a building that was going empty and needed a tenant, I had an idea but that was all. My husband and I talked about it and prayed about it and ultimately decided to invest all of our refund from our tax return into opening Daily Flavors and the rest is history.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.

Currently Daily Flavors Eatery & Juice Bars sells locally on our site Daily-Flavors.com but we also utilize DoorDash to help deliver our products to our customer base. We were recently approached by a company that can help us to expand into neighboring states and we are working on that as we speak. We are also working on shipping from our storefront to customers all over the US with our bakery items. This is after several customer requests.

Contact Info:

• Website: Daily-Flavors.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/daily_flavors_eatery
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/DailyFlavorsEateryandJuiceBar