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

Carlos, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you tell us about a time where you or your team really helped a customer get an amazing result?

We do tend to go above and beyond for our customers. One example from the past is a customer who contacted us after placing an order because she was leaving for a trip in two days and wanted the products to take with her. We paid for the extra shipping to make sure she got it ahead of time. Recently we had our first customer living in Hawaii. She bought 2 small items, and since it was our first Hawaii customer, our system charged her a large amount for shipping. She still placed the order because she wanted the items. We got quotes from 3 delivery options, and got the order to her at a reasonable price, and then refunded her more than 50% of the shipping cost.  These are just two examples of how we give customers amazing results.

Carlos, 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?

Well, my name is Roberto Carlos Leo, and most people call me Carlos. I’m originally from the Dominican Republic. My family had a beauty salon and a flower shop and I grew up meeting a lot of great people and learning about business. At some point my family tapped into the catering business, but I unfortunately never learned how to cook back then. When I first came to the USA, I ate a lot of frozen food in front of the TV watching all the Food Network programs, and then began to cook for myself. At this same time, I met my now husband Geoffrey who was a very willing “guinea pig” to test all my cooking skills.

When I first started learning how to cook, many recipes called for a special ingredient that would not be part of any other recipes that I found in the future. I ended up with many different half-used jars of various ingredients in my fridge. In 2012, we started Spoonabilities, and our Recipe Concierge Service, as a way to help new and seasoned chefs (pun intended) discover other ways to use the forgotten jars in their pantry or refrigerator. Our motto then became “No Jars Left Behind”. All of the gourmet products we sell at Spoonabilities.com have various recipes using that product, and any of our customers and visitors can contact us for ideas and recipes for ingredients that they have sitting in their fridge.

With now over nine years of food styling and photography experience, I’ve started offering my services to brands and companies in the food and beverage industry who are interested in professional food photography for their products. Our primary focus is working with small gourmet companies, taking their lifestyle product photos, and any other way we can work together to support them. We are also open to working with large companies if we identify with their products, and they have a social responsibility to the community as well as value the artistic work of an upcoming photographer like me.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

We’ve discovered from customers that we offer exceptional customer service, communication and follow-through; we’re easy to work with, personable, and relatable. I think that goes a long way these days in giving people a great experience. We all know what it’s like calling the big telecom companies or banks trying to get an issue resolved. So being able to have a real person available to help is a great way to grow and keep your customer base. Although our growth has been very slow, our number of followers and subscribers is always (knock on wood) been in the positive direction month after month.

Other ways to grow your clientele is to be consistent with social media and other marketing; keep learning and adapting; and keep going even if you think one day you want to stop. And I think the most important thing is to continuously put out quality work. If you do, people will keep coming back, and will talk about you. Word of mouth is the best marketing.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I mentioned earlier that throughout the years we’ve hired different experts that possessed expertise we didn’t have, but sadly they have not panned out to the extent of our expectations. Each time we find somebody who we believe will help take us to the next level, we still are not able to increase our website traffic beyond our current numbers. It’s very frustrating, but we’re determined to find the right people to help us find the missing piece of the puzzle that will give us faster growth. We believe in this project, and will continue to learn, and grow, and seek the best people to be part of our team. We got to keep on keeping on.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.spoonabilities.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spoonabilities/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Spoonabilities
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SpoonabilitiesMiami
• Other: Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/Spoonabilities/