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

Jeanette, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear your thoughts about family businesses.

Our Green Affair is the definition of a family business. Our dad crunches our numbers and helps with the back end of things, our mom collaborates with Jackie and I on recipe development and R&D to make your mouth water, and Jackie and I to put it simply run the day to day operations of our Pacific Beach and Hillcrest. On top of everything we all used to live together, that is until Jackie got married and moved out, I know, messed up.

Working with your family can be amazing because you really wouldn’t rather share your success with anyone else. You also really get an excuse to spend an endless amount of time with them which is amazing but also leads to the pitfall. It’s EXTREMELY difficult separating your personal life from your work life. If you have a bad day at work it does tend to follow you home and there isn’t really a time to decompress at the end of a long day.

Jackie and I are still in our mid-late twenties so no kids just yet, but we would love for our kids to work in the family business. The restaurant industry truly shows you the meaning of hard work, and getting down and dirty. The one thing we would make sure of is that Jackie and I aren’t the ones managing our kids because we do feel like it could lead to a strain on the relationship since they wouldn’t necessarily have the space to decompress when they get home.

Jeanette, 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?

The idea behind Our Green Affair was planted with a diagnosis. In our family, we are major foodies. In fact, trying everything at least once was engined in our brains. That staple of who we were became a little more complicated when Jeanette, the youngest of the family was diagnosed with Crohn’s, an inflammatory bowel disease which causes severe abdominal pain and heavily regulates your food options. She was forced to change her eating habits entirely. It became clear that we were going through this together, and as a family we had to eat clean. But we weren’t willing to give up something that defined us: our love of food. With a change in lifestyle without compromising the taste in food sparked an idea in Jackie: to create something healthy and fun. A farm-to-table experience that would change the way people think about eating healthy. It’s easy.

What I gain most joy from in this business is seeing customers habits change. We have this one customer whose wife would always come in, meanwhile he would eat next door at either the tacos or pizza. He was sluggish, was over weight, and never wanted to eat healthy because he never got full off off it. We helped him create a meal plan where he was eating more carbs in the morning after his workout, and understanding that his food is his fuel. He stopped craving crappy food and started craving Whole Foods that would leave him going throughout the day. Since then he has lost 7 lbs by shifting his mindset on food.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

Our Green Affair as a whole is a big marketing risk. You think of healthy food as a nice pastel green and brown restaurant. Meanwhile you have us where you can order a Thai Me Up and a Romaine in my Bed. We are far from ordinary and what we tried to do is rebrand what healthy food is so that the typical connotation that people have when thinking about it isn’t oh I have to eat this way it’s oh I want to eat this way.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

I really enjoy Guy Raz’s How I Built This podcast. As an entrepreneur it’s super discouraging not being able to see the success that you hope for especially when you do put an endless amount of hours into the business, it is very encouraging that it’s not just you that has gone through this or that’s struggling. So many entrepreneurs too thought about quitting, but its the ability of getting back up, shifting that mindset and trying to adapt to what isn’t working to make it work that makes these big names what they are today.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ourgreenaffair.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/ourgreenaffair
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/ourgreenaffair
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/our-green-affair-san-diego-2
• Other: https://www.yelp.com/biz/our-green-affair-san-diego-3