Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jasmiune Matthews. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jasmiune , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

Omg I love this question! I graduated from The Culinary Institute of America mid 2019. I settled in Napa Valley, CA for my last & best semester to study Farm to Table & learned so much about our food system and sustainable farming & food practices. After graduating, I ended up working for one of the best companies I’ve ever worked for, Bon Apetit Management Co with Google. This job was such a great opportunity! I was able to rotate through multiple management positions within the company to figure out not only what I wanted, but what pleased me in a  permanent position. These positions included Cafe Supervisor, Chef Instructor at the Google Teaching Kitchen, Farmer’s Assistant, etc. The Teaching Kitchen Instructor & Farmer’s Assistant was my favorite positions. I was able to tap into one of my first dream jobs as a kid, teaching.

Throughout my experience there, I started to hone in on what I really wanted to do to jumpstart my career. I started analyzing & concluded that I really wanted to combine my two passions, teaching & cooking. From all of the knowledge about food, farming & our broken food system I learned over those last few years, I felt that my duty as a chef was to pass that knowledge on to others to aid in better food choices, practices and a cleaner environment for a more sustainable food system.

I then came up with JazzyJ’s Creations. I wanted to create multiple lines under this umbrella to educate through different food avenues. My first idea was Unique Culinary Experiences, but at the time I called it Book a Chef. The Teaching Kitchen inspired this idea. I thought of curating an app where consumers could book a private chef to bring their desired experience to them. Some of these experiences include, in home classes, meal prepping for the week, creating an in-home fine dining experience for special occasions, or corporate luncheons for employee appreciation just to name a few.

I was so excited & full of adrenaline that I shared the idea with my mom & boyfriend at the time to get their perspective. They thought it was a wonderful idea & recommended to ask several people from my target audience to get a consumer’s perspective. Every time I shared the idea, the response was full of excitement then they would say something in the lines of not sharing the idea with anyone else until I’ve patented it. This big stamp of approval from so many different people confirmed that I had something great.

Following this, I came up with a plan – move back home to Houston, TX where the cost of living was more bearable, get a salaried job for the year to save as much money as I can, and develop a business plan in the meantime to build a solid foundation for my business. Everything went as planned except the fact that I was absolutely miserable at my corporate job. I didn’t have all of my cards in order, but I just had an overwhelming feeling that it was time.

I quit my job mid pandemic & started JazzyJ’s Creations which was very risky. I didn’t have all of the funds needed to start my original idea so I had to get creative. That’s when I came up with the Unique Culinary Products line. Creating a product line was the most affordable option to start with in my situation at that time. Looking back, I’m pleased it ended up that way because I’ve learned so much & it was the perfect start in that unfortunate time of social distancing & being on lockdown.

I turned to my mom, my support system & life long taste tester to brainstorm what type of product I should launch first. She immediately said, sauces. She then went on, “Jazz, remember before you went to culinary school how we didn’t really cook with sauces like that for dinner? You came home for breaks & started making different sauces with our meals & it would elevate each dish, so start there.” I took that information & my creative juices started flowing. I thought, how can I turn homemade sauces into a unique product? How can I come up with something educative, convenient & easy for anyone to use? I knew I didn’t want to jar my sauces, especially since my famous Garlic-Alfredo Sauce couldn’t be jarred without rapid spoilage. I looked around in my kitchen & opened the freezer & thought…FREEZE EM! I dug deeper in my creative mind & thought of the huge silicon molds used to make ice cubes for cocktails. That is how our first product, Sauce Cubes was launched under Unique Culinary Products. I made my 4 base homemade sauces & froze them in 5oz silicon molds so that each cube was about 1-2 servings. All consumers have to do is melt the cube(s) in a saucepan on low heat, add the rest of their ingredients & dinner is served! It was genius!

We started selling in & outside of Houston at different Farmers Markets, pop-ups & festivals to market our product & get face to face feedback. People rave about how easy, waste-less & convenient Sauce Cubes are for their restaurant quality meals. Two and a half years later & we still receive the same exciting reactions from our current & new customers. We also get investors & customers who inquire about how to invest in our business from time to time because the product is so Unique & successful. We’re in the process of growing & getting more exposure so that Sauce Cubes could be in more households in the near future.

Jasmiune , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

JazzyJ’s Creations LLC is a business founded by Jasmiune Matthews aka Chef JazzyJ. I graduated from The Culinary Institute of America with a Culinary Arts Associate & Bachelors in Business Management w/ a concentration in Farm to Table. I’ve been cooking & studying food since I was about 8 years old. I have about 12 years of culinary & hospitality experience working in multiple spaces from fast food, casual dining, fine dining, hotels & catering from all over the U.S. I have also worked in many positions & wore many hats in my profession to better understand the importance of each role. After my last job at Google in CA (best job ever!) & learning about our unfortunate food system, I decided to share my education through my own business under different umbrellas.

JazzyJ’s Creations has two main goals; to create Unique Culinary Products and Unique Culinary Experiences. Our goal is to transfer as much food knowledge as we possibly can to our consumers to aid better life choices and a cleaner environment. With this, we hope to create happiness and endless memories through the joy of food.

We create Unique Culinary Products high in quality that are easy, convenient, and health forward for anyone to use. Sauce Cubes was our first successful launch under this line. Sauce Cubes are homemade sauces that Chef JazzyJ makes from fresh, mainly organic ingredients that are frozen into portion-controlled cubes. Each cube is about 1-2 servings of sauce. All consumers have to do is melt the cube(s) in a saucepan on low heat (or in the microwave), toss your pasta, veggies, or meat in the sauce & your meal is served in minutes! Sauce Cubes teaches people waste management, portion-control, & how to make an easy, restaurant-quality meal in minutes.

We also create Unique Culinary Experiences to build relationships and create unity within our local communities while also educating through this medium. Under this line, we offer many different personalized services as a private chef to meet our client’s needs. We host educative-intimate in home classes that are themed to teach anything our clients want to learn. We also create well balanced, fun & delicious weekly meal-preps based on our clients dietary needs to aid an easy-healthier lifestyle. Lastly, we host small to medium intimate events from in-home dining experiences for special occasions to corporate luncheons for employee appreciation.

Our motto is “Food is life, knowledge is power, & love is everything!” We use food as our medium to transfer knowledge while developing a strong community powered by love.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Wow, an array of emotions came over me from this question. Resilience is something that I’m sure a lot of people like me, especially black women in business have to conquer. It’s like we have no choice because we have nothing to fall back on. I choose to be successful in this business and in order to be that, I HAVE to be resilient.

My first introduction to resilience was with my single mother. She had to be resilient to survive and was the best at doing so. With that, I learned so much from her experience & was able to do the impossible on so many levels & I’m so grateful of all that I’ve accomplished because of it.

As it pertains to my business, there were so many times where I wanted to give up. There were many moments where I thought, if only I had the financial means or a leg up as my counterparts, I would be able to be in a better position more rapidly than the time it’ll take for me to get there myself.

Before starting my business, I was able to analyze what I wanted, make a plan on how to get there & execute in a timely fashion. I followed the same sequence when I started my business, but was slapped in the face with the timing aspect. I naively thought that in year 2 of having my business, I was going to be in grocery stores, have multiple partnerships & bringing home 6 figures as my pay LOL. I had to learn that running a business is not linear, nor do you start seeing profits or all of the hard work you put in until later. It’s like real estate, investing in real estate is a great idea if you are in it for the long haul, not a quick return; same as owning/running a business. Also, most small food businesses and restaurants fail within 3-5 years just to paint a picture of what this looks like.

Last year, I had one of those negative moments & made up my mind that I was going to go back to corporate. I thought, I just want to get a consistent pay, go do whatever job I’m paid to do, and leave it at work once done. I started job searching and quickly got the motivation needed to put my all back into my business. While job searching, I saw that the job descriptions and job rates offered didn’t match. I started having flashbacks on the stress, hours, & the squeeze of doing more & more most corporate jobs expects of you especially in my field as a chef. It was that push I needed to get my head back in the game.

In order for me to continue to grow my business to the next level, I need more financial pull. “It takes money to make money.” It’s frustrating being at a logarithmic growth when you don’t have the means to grow in the way that you’ve planned in the amount of time you’ve planned for. Especially if you want to grow without investors or being in debt to anyone. With that being said, I had to get creative on how to develop multiple streams of income & work smarter, not harder. I currently have a new plan in place on how to get to where I need to be. I still have a rollercoaster of emotions depending on the day, that didn’t stop, but I keep pushing because my goal is much bigger than temporary emotions.

Having a business isn’t easy one bit, but for me, it’s easier than quitting and settling for something I know for a fact I would be miserable doing. I see life differently than others. I don’t believe we came here to work to live & survive, we came here to enjoy this experience. I don’t want to get older and THEN enjoy life, I want to enjoy life WHILE I’m living it. This is my purpose. Fulfilling your purpose on this Earth and doing what you love on your own terms is so rewarding on so many levels. Although, it takes time, especially not having all of the resources you need to do so, the art of patience and enjoying the process in the meantime is impactful. It’s a rollercoaster of emotions in the meantime, but I plan on continuing to be resilient through it all because I know what’s to come from all of this is bigger than I could ever imagine.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

I’ve learned that growing your clientele & marketing is about 80% of your business. With no customers you have no business. So you have to continue to figure out creative ways to grow your consumer base, keep that consumer base and how to develop new consumers in order to continue to grow.

To be honest, social media marketing is my least favorite part of the business, but is such a huge part of it. That is why I’ve decided to hire a marketing team to tackle that part. The nice thing about running a business is that you can pay other people to do the things you’re not quite good at or simply don’t want to do. This also gives you the opportunity as a small business owner to support other small businesses and help generate a healthy economy within your local communities. I love that aspect of the running a business.

Although I’ll be moving in the direction of having someone else strategize the growth of my clientele for me, I had to do it myself to get to where I am currently. My biggest advantage of doing so was direct to consumer sales and word of mouth. Word of mouth is one of the most effective ways to spread information about a company or product and our Sauce Cubes under JazzyJ’s Creations is a successful example of that. Word-of-mouth marketing helps a company reach new audiences and build a positive brand reputation. Not only that, but talking DIRECTLY to consumers telling them my “why”, developing relationships with them through my bubbly personality & conversations & having them taste the sauces while I educate them is such a huge aspect on how I grew my clientele.

I made them comfortable and made the brief interaction at my booth memorable and impactful. We are all human which means we are emotional creatures. When businesses hit that personal trigger (but also keep it professional), the chances of a customer sharing their experience with 10 others is immense. Then those people are going to come and get that same experience and share it with 10 more people.

That strategy is what has helped us grow, maintain & get new customers locally in and outside of Houston. Now, we want to grow beyond that and get the consumers who don’t go to Farmers Markets, festivals etc. We want to reach broader customers and grow beyond what we’ve done which is why we are hiring digital marketing to help us do so.

Contact Info:

• Website: jazzyjscreations.com
• Instagram: jazzyjscreations
• Facebook: jazzyjscreations
• Linkedin: JazzyJ’s Creations
• Other: Want to try our unique & innovative Sauce Cubes we’ve mentioned or check out our balanced weekly meal-prep menu posted every Sunday? Order yours today on our website at jazzyjscreations.com