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

Hi Lizzy, thanks for joining us today. Innovation comes in all shapes, sizes and across all industries, so we’d love to hear about something you’ve done that you feel was particularly innovative.

Before I started cooking professionally, I was a social worker for close to ten years. I earned my Master of Social Welfare from UCLA and worked with some LA’s most underserved and overlooked populations. I speak Spanish, so most of the clients I served were immigrants from Mexico or Central America, and all were severely impacted by trauma. During this time I also volunteer taught weekly creative writing for close to six years to detained youth in LA’s Central Juvenile Hall with the incredible organization InsideOut Writers (IOW), which to date has been some of the most meaningful and important work of my life.

After so long in the field, however, I started to burn out and I decided I needed to make a change. I had always loved food and cooking, and decided to figure out how to carve out a career for myself making food. I didn’t want to abandon my roots in social work however, so I knew I wanted to create a social enterprise. In 2017, during the avocado toast craze, I came up with an idea to start LA’s first-ever avocado toast-only pop-up and catering operation, and opened AvocaToast by Lizzy. And the employees I hired were my former IOW students once they got out of jail, and formerly incarcerated men and women members of the Antirecidivism Coalition. It was one of the greatest honors of my life to work alongside these incredible young people who had been through so much in their lives.

I started out in several farmers markets across LA, and very immediately found quick success with it, with long lines and selling out of food week after week at the Brentwood, Hollywood and Silver Lake farmers markets. Only a few weeks into starting the business, I was able to quit my full time social work job in order to dedicate myself full-time to the company’s quick growth. I also started selling my toasts at music and food festivals, catering influencer events, and eventually started private cheffing. I cooked for several incredible clients in LA for several years while simultaneously running AvocaToast by Lizzy, and then in March of 2020, COVID shut it all down. And I had to start all over again.

In October 2020, I did exactly that when I decided to move to New York City. I quickly found new clients, doing everything from weekly meal prep to events and celebrity dinners. I hit the ground running, and continue to work hard towards building my successful private chef business.

And then in the fall of 2022, I froze my eggs, not knowing at the time that it would inspire my newest venture—The Fertility Foods Chef.

Lizzy, 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?

After I froze my eggs, I realized after the fact that my doctor never once mentioned nutrition and what I should eat in the months leading up to the retrieval. A few weeks after the retrieval, after my body had finally started recovering from what for me was a very painful and intense experience, I thought about how nice it would have been to have some nourishing prepared meals in the months/weeks/days leading up to the procedure, and even after, to take the edge off the physical and emotional intensity of it all. So I did a quick google search on nutrition and optimizing fertility, and realized there was an entire world of research out there on the subject that until that point I had no knowledge of.

Because why would I know this information? My doctor had only told me to take a few supplements before the retrieval—CoQ10, folic acid, and omega-3s—and so I had no idea that what we eat can actually influence egg health. And I REALLY wish I had this information beforehand because IVF is very expensive, and being armed with this knowledge would have provided me with some added peace of mind going into it.

And then before I knew it I was suddenly on my own to figure it all out—I essentially became my own nurse, injecting myself with very heavy duty hormones for ten nights, had the retrieval, and that was that. But after it was all said and done, something didn’t sit right with me, and I wish I had more information going in to all of it.

And that’s when I came up with The Fertility Foods Chef with the goal of not only educating other women about the importance of nutrition when it comes to optimizing fertility, but also providing nourishing pro-fertility meals (and a recipe ebook for those more intent on doing their own cooking) for them in the months leading up to egg freezing.

To add an extra and much needed layer of credibility to it all, I connected with Dara Godfrey, the registered dietitian at Reproductive Medicine Associates of New York, an incredibly well-respected fertility clinic. I create the menus based on all the evidence-based research I have done myself on what foods can optimize egg health, and Dara approves them to ensure that each one has the right balance of macronutrients, antioxidants and phytonutrients to make sure that clients are eating the proper foods to optimize fertility leading up to fertility treatment or trying to conceive. Dara is not only one of the kindest and most encouraging people I have ever met, but her expertise and guidance are absolutely invaluable.

Going through egg freezing/IVF can feel incredibly isolating and scary. I’ve been there myself, so I created the Fertility Foods Chef with so much understanding and a lot of love. My mission is to take the guesswork out of what to eat during a really crucial time in people’s lives. I certainly wish I had something like this when I froze my eggs, so my goal is to empower women to take one aspect of their fertility that they CAN control into their own hands—the nutrition piece—while feeling supported and nourished along the way.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I’ve been a private chef for the last seven years, and my food speaks for itself in that I have retained clients for many years since they simply love the food I create. This might sound cheesy, but I think clients can taste the love I put into every dish! Not only through flavor and creativity, but also in how I present food. Plating and presentation are important to me—that dishes are as beautiful to look at as they are delicious and nourishing. So I get a lot of new clients through word of mouth and referrals, and that feels really good. I think I’m pretty easy going and easy to work with, which also helps!

So all of this has and will continue helping as I grow The Fertility Foods. Having Dara Godfrey on my team is also an immense help, because customers know they are in good hands with us. They know that the food is high quality and delicious, AND that it’s all dietitian-approved. It’s kind of a winning combo.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

So far I have been completely self-funded in all of the ventures I’ve started. When I started AvocaToast by Lizzy, my overhead was all incredibly low and my profit margins were amazing, so I did very well there. It was a unique business model in that sense, and I was very fortunate to have found success in it all. With The Fertility Foods Chef I am also self-funded and doing what I can to grow on my own, but having some capital to accelerate my growth could only help! So if anyone out there is looking to invest, let’s chat ;)

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thefertilityfoodschef.com
• Instagram: @thefertilityfoodschef and @cheflizzycooper
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizzy-cooper-67641713/

Image Credits

Noa Griffel