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

Cristie, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you come up with the idea for your business?

• The story behind your mission

At Eat Me Guilt Free, our core belief is that freedom should not have limitations so in 2021, we launched our “Free Delicious” campaign. The main message of the “Free Delicious” campaign is that eating better-for-you foods that taste good is a choice consumers should make for themselves. For decades, food companies marketed foods with addictive ingredients and misleading messaging. With our “Free Delicious” campaign, we are redefining delicious and making products with better nutrition fact ratios, less sugar, no preservatives and no GMOs. Eating better-for-you foods that taste delicious is the freedom our society deserves.

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

I started baking Eat Me Guilt Free – a better-for-you line of bread, brownies, cake mix and tortilla wraps – from my very own kitchen in 2013 while working as a registered nurse and certified sports nutritionist. Eat Me Guilt Free was created to fill a void for my original customers. I worked closely with clients to craft nutrition programs, helping them with everything from disease management to improving labs, to just being able to move and feel better about themselves. Eat Me Guilt Free has worked hard to help consumers feel less restricted and more open to being able to enjoy the everyday foods they love, without sacrificing taste. Our consumer base continues to consistently broaden – from athletes to bariatric patients to everyday consumers who are conscious about what they put into their bodies – for a range of reasons beyond external appearance.

We source ingredients primarily from Europe for higher quality food standards and we never sacrifice taste and texture when creating our recipes. All of our products are hand-crafted by artisan bakers in small batches in order to ensure optimal freshness. We also use Modified Atmosphere Packaging in select products to exclude unnecessary preservatives. Our product line of bread, brownies, cake mix and tortilla wraps offers an unprecedented protein-to-carbohydrate ratio, making them a high-protein, low-carb alternative to traditional snacks and foods.

Since inception, Eat Me Guilt Free has grown from a direct-to-consumer online business with sales fueled by Instagram to being distributed nationally and internationally. Today Eat Me Guilt Free’s protein-packed brownies, cake mix, bread, baguettes and tortilla wraps are available for purchase at more than 8,000 independent retailers nationwide including Winn Dixie, United Supermarkets, GNC, The Vitamin Shoppe, Albertsons, Safeway, Gold’s Gym, Planet Fitness, 24 Hour Fitness, as well as Amazon.com, Walmart.com and EatMeGuiltFree.com, with many other leading national retailer partnerships in the works.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

I originally started Eat Me Guilt Free in my own kitchen more than 7 years ago. As a registered nurse and certified sports nutritionist, I noticed that many of my clients and the people I treated in the emergency room needed much better nutrition options.

I became obsessive about food ingredients, nutrition facts, and what made something “better for you.” The US food industry was and is full of conglomerates serving the masses “delicious’ foods with unhealthy ingredients and harmful nutrition facts. They convinced society into thinking that we had to eat unhealthily to experience delicious.

Because of my NEED for freedom, it just felt natural to fight back. One of the most important pieces of feedback from people, that I heard over and over again, is that they wanted to eat healthier, but they also wanted their food to taste good. Thus, our magic formula was born – better-for-you-foods that taste delicious.

Seemingly against all odds but encouraged by the early success of the original chocolate brownie, I turned to social media, (predominantly Instagram) and began to see early, explosive growth. Now a broader set of consumers from around the world validated the love and desire for the Eat Me Guilt product and brand.

This propelled me to continue to innovate with a range of truly unique, never-before-seen brownie flavors, and the Eat Me Guilt Free product line extended beyond brownies to tortillas, bread, and in 2022, the first-ever protein cake mix.

In 2019, based on continued success in direct-to-consumer sales, we expanded Eat Me Guilt Free to being distributed into brick-and-mortar retail and rapidly secured the product line in more than 3,000 retailers. In 2020, we secured our first big retailer, The Vitamin Shoppe, and within one one week became the number one grab n’ go snack. As of 2022, Eat Me Guilt Free is now in more than 8,000 retailers including Winn Dixie, United Supermarkets, GNC, The Vitamin Shoppe, Albertsons, Safeway, Gold’s Gym, Planet Fitness, 24 Hour Fitness, as well as Amazon.com, Walmart.com and EatMeGuiltFree.com, with many other leading national retailer partnerships in the works.

Eat Me Guilt Free has also grown from me alone in the kitchen to a team of more than 30, with all our products being hand-crafted by artisan bakers. As of 2022, Eat Me Guilt Free has started to plan for its production plant to meet consistent, increased capacity and consumer demands.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

• Registered Nurse has been the most trusted profession for the last 20 years in a row. My career as an ER nurse and passion for a fit lifestyle was a great combination that built trust when sharing my thoughts on social platforms. I went to school for biology, chemistry and nursing, so I always have science behind the decisions that I make for the brand. My background is the perfect storm for people who are looking for advice from a personal trainer or nutritionist who is a little more knowledgeable beyond the scope of fitness. Nursing is typically a very holistic practice; we take the entire human into account when coming up with a plan. I always look at things as a whole and consider my health and medical background before I make a final decision. With that said, I think within my industry I receive a lot more respect because of the way I approached things.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.eatmeguiltfree.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eatmeguiltfree/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eatmeguiltfree/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/eat-me-guilt-free/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/EatMe_GuiltFree
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPVEzw1SCOI-Q0DwgrV_Qpw