We were lucky to catch up with Lee Wallach recently and have shared our conversation below.

Lee, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you tell us about a time where you or your team really helped a customer get an amazing result?

Being in a customer-serving business makes client happiness paramount to our success—especially because word-of-mouth recommendations (whether in person or online) are critical to our growth. Being proactive is a main tenant of our customer service philosophy. Our team regularly, in authentic ways—never through other services—reaches out to clients to ensure they’ve had a good experience. If they haven’t? We remedy it before that story gets shared around or that person never returns as a client. It’s critical to acknowledge that what the customer believes happened did and from there, we either take responsibility or direct the person to where the failure in the system was. And we learn from that. At the end of the day, the cost to satisfy an upset client is irrelevant. The cost of a negative interaction is far greater than any monetary value of a product.

This is especially true with negative online reviews. I’ve seen the damage public feedback can do. When we do get a negative review, it means we didn’t live up to our mission multiple times, so I will reach out to the person directly to get to the bottom of the issue and make it right. I will then explain to them how damaging these reviews can be to a small business and ask them to take it down or change their rating—and they mostly do. And I want the feedback to be able to continue to improve. There may be an issue that I wasn’t aware of that this interaction can shed light on. I also need to acknowledge, as much as it pains me, that we aren’t a service for everyone and sometimes I have to tell a client that. But I’d rather admit that it’s not a good fit—that what we don’t won’t work with their needs—than have them think negatively about the core of our company.

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

Home Appétit is a Philly-based meal delivery service that I founded in 2014. Growing up, my summer jobs were always in restaurant kitchens. And after graduating from George Washington University in 2008, I went right back to cooking, working in eateries in Napa, Miami and New York. In 2013, I moved to Philadelphia to be closer to family and took the opportunity to reevaluate my future. While trying to figure out what was next, I took a temporary personal chef gig. And that’s when all the “aha” moments happened: I surprisingly loved the job, got requests for more clients, and quickly realized I could scale the personal chef concept. I launched Home Appétit from my city apartment with my mom as my sous chef. We now operate out of our own commissary and deliver more than 8,000 dishes to people in three states each week. We have 15 cooks, dozens of drivers and a growing corporate team.

Over the years, the meal delivery space has become crowded and I’ve seen many competitors come and go. What I’m most proud of coincides with our competitive edge.

First, I’m proud of the culture we’ve created in the kitchen. It’s supportive and positive—which is a very different vibe from many restaurant kitchens. We embrace the diversity. It’s what bonds us and what makes our food so great. Everyone on our team is heard and seen—from the most entry level position to the top. That’s really important to me. All the different kinds of people who work together in a kitchen is what drew me to the industry in the first place.

Second, I love that we take care of people. Being able to provide a service and product that helps people is incredible. People tell us how our food got them through cancer treatments, through having a newborn, through stressful work weeks and health issues or that our food is the only thing their picky toddlers will eat. Feeding people is a big responsibility and knowing that we do that well and that it impacts people is really rewarding, motivating and meaningful.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Social media is an important component of our marketing plan, and a social media manager was the first hire our marketing director made. We decided to focus on quality over quantity, creating content and social campaigns that bring people who could be potential customers into our world via social. That’s not everyone, so we’d rather have fewer followers who are most likely to convert to clients than lots of people who aren’t a good fit for our service. We look at our social media channels (Instagram, mostly, since that’s where most of our clients are) as our virtual dining room and use it as a way to bring people into our kitchen and show how we are real people, not just generic cooks in some warehouse. We also form relationships with locals who have real connections, like moms, business leaders, chefs, micro-influencers, and more. And lastly, it’s important for us to stay connected to our community. We’re proud of being a Philadelphia-based company and love this region, so being part of that conversation—whether that means cheering on the Philadelphia Eagles or showcasing restaurants we love—is valuable and fun!

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Small events have been impactful for us, for a few reasons. First, it allows us to ensure we are reaching the right group of people for our service. Second, we are able to talk to people, answer questions, and make a personal connection. Lastly, we can provide them with meaningful samples of our product that leave a positive impression. But, we make sure to create an entire program around these small events: We do pre-and-post promotions and lots of follow ups with the event organizers or business owners and people we spoke to (via email or on social) to ensure we are making the most of the partnerships.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.homeappetitphilly.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/homeappetitphilly/