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

Lindsey, appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

As a busy mom of two on a budget, I had to learn how to meal plan, meal prep, and grocery shop on a budget. Not knowing how to begin, I started a Facebook Group called Dinner Darlings in 2017 to gather some quick meal ideas from friends. After the group exploded, I realized that there were plenty of people out there just like me who wanted to cook at home more, needed to, but didn’t know where to start. In 2019, I started The Weekly Dish recipe subscription service to help busy people save time and money while creating delicious meals for their families. It is a weekly email newsletter that goes out to paying subscribers for a small fee with 3 simple recipes, nutritional information and a comprehensive grocery list. Months after starting The Weekly Dish, I started The Weekly Dish Lite with healthier recipe options to cater to a broader audience based on their goals.

Thousands of subscribers, and countless recipes later, I am cooking at home, saving money, and helping members in my community do the same.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Cooking dinner can be so stressful, and as a full-time working mom, I just wished I had someone to TELL me what to cook each night. I got so tired of scrolling through blogs and cookbooks after working all day, only to realize my dinners looked nothing like the professional pictures posted. I knew there had to be an easy way to reach an audience that was just like me to help make life easier. Each recipe is tested on my family, and I share helpful tips to make them more family-friendly, ways to repurpose leftovers, or even simple changes for people with different dietary needs.

What I love about my subscription, is that every subscriber gets the same recipes each week based on their plan, and we have such a large community cooking the same things each week. It is a fun way for all of us to come together individually, create something delicious and easy, and share with friends and family. Organically, people started posting pictures of their own meals to social media and I have grown to such a large subscriber base simply by word of mouth which is pretty amazing.

I am so lucky to be able to provide for my own family, and help other people do the same.

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

My advice on building your social media audience is to be true to yourself. Instagram can show a lot of fluff, which is why all of my photos of my recipes are taken with my phone, of the exact dish as soon as it comes out of my oven. I want people to cook the same thing and it look the same, so they are more confident in their cooking skills. My business has been solely social media driven. My subscribers organically started sharing photos of their meals and tagging me, getting me more subscribers and more followers just from people being proud of something they created with the tools I give them

Patience is also something I have learned with social media. It took me 4 years to get 18,000 followers, and they are all organic followers who engage and stick around. The people that follow me are exactly who I am trying to reach, which converts followers into paying customers – the main goal. Quality of followers is so much more important than quantity.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Owning or starting a business is not for the faint of heart. Going into entrepreneurship, know that you will put in hours upon hours of time. It will take you away from family, friends, vacations, weekends and downtime. You have to put in the work to get the results you want. It took me a solid 3 years for me to get it to a place where I could draw boundaries and be comfortable taking time off. So know going into it, that it is very time consuming and difficult, but also the most rewarding thing you can do for yourself. Eventually, you will get to breathe.

Contact Info:

• Website: thedinnerdarling.com
• Instagram: @thedinnerdarling
• Facebook: Lindsey Bell – The Dinner Darling

Image Credits
First Photo in black apron – Edward Wall Family Photo – Russ Daniels