We recently connected with Tom Thiets and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Tom thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
Our mission at Meals From The Heart is twofold:
To respectfully serve our neighbors who struggle with food insecurity.
And to provide joyful opportunities for people to serve.
But, behind it all
It’s all about the people.
It’s about connecting and engaging with others.
We serve our neighbors by building and nurturing relationships with distribution partners. Our goal is to help them achieve their mission in providing great tasting and nutritious food to our neighbors.
And on the second part of our mission is focused on inviting people into a relationship where they are comfortable to share their resources and time to help meet the needs of others.
Before you can consider connecting in relationships with people that allow such an exchange; one must find the courage to dare to make a difference in the lives of others.
One must:
Dare to dream big.
Dare to challenge people to do more than they ever thought they could do.
Dare to help them do it.
Dare to do what some would say is impossible.
Dare to fail?
No, rather dare to succeed.
Most importantly, one must dare to act big; rather than simply talk big while doing nothing.
Then you surround yourself with like-minded individuals and take the first step forward.
I have seen too many ideas about serving our neighbors die on conference room tables after being bludgeoned to death by committees espousing the fancy buzz words of the day, and they are followed up with no action.
Two conversations from my past have encouraged me to dare, and to act boldly in serving our neighbors.
The first was with Dr Rev. Tony Campolo, who told me a story of his experience while waiting on a grass airstrip in Haiti.
Where a young woman holding her starving baby pleaded with him to take her baby.
Then as she chased his taxing plane she screamed out “Don’t let my baby die!”
Tony looked me in the eye and said “Tom, we can’t let the babies die.
We have to act in order to make a difference.”
My second story of impact was a conversation with my mission friend Dr Mark Jacobson who did tremendous work in Tanzania.
Mission and nonprofit work requires a lot of fundraising.
Its not easy, but Mark’s words that day shifted my thought process on fundraising.
“Fundraising is work, but it’s not hard. The hard work comes after the funds come in. Rather, fundraising is an invitation.
It’s an opportunity to share your story about making a difference in the lives of others and inviting others to join in.
It’s inviting them to join you and make the mission part of their story.”
These pieces of wisdom merged together to focus my plans on meaningful and significant acts of service.
Plans that led to acts of service here at home as well as decades of service in Mexico, Tanzania, and Guatemala leading short-term mission teams.
Each team provides challenges and the opportunities to dare and to act.
It was a service done alongside our neighbors, to help them fill unmet needs in their lives and inviting others to serve.
We then extended those short term teams over decades to assist in building homes, schools, clinics , churches, and hospitals. And in the process build relationships and friendships steeped in sweat and accomplishment.
We had no time for what many term “relationship building missions” aka ‘poverty tours’ filled with photo opportunities and bus rides.
Then at the end of their visit one finds the team driving away to a vacation period at the end of their trip while our neighbors remain in the same position: lacking food, housing, water, schools, hospitals and more.
No, we learned that we can’t do poverty tours and let the babies die.
Thirty years of leading global teams doing significant and meaningful acts of kindness alongside our neighbors is the basis of the story behind the mission at Meals From The Heart.
Global missions led to combating global starvation; that then led to combating local food insecurity.
And eventually, to founding and leading Meals From The Heart.
Tom, 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?
How I got into the hunger relief business: I think that I addressed some of this in the previous answer.
It was decades of answering the call to serve my neighbors. And one yes, that leads to another. And so on. Looking back, I am amazed at the fact that at the age of 26, I dared to lead.
What are you most proud of and what are the main things you want potential clients to know about you/your brand/your work/ etc.?
At Meals From The Heart we are proud that everything we do is based in respect.
Respect for our recipe/meals, our neighbors, our event host clients, our distribution partners, our process, and our volunteers.
If it isn’t respectful; we aren’t doing it.
Our recipes/meals:
Professional chef Peggy W. donates her time and talents to create recipes with great flavor that are also nutritionally sound.
Our neighbors:
Our marketing consultant, Don F., creates appealing consumer oriented packaging that provides a grocery store feel for our neighbors that shop at the food shelf.
At Meals From The Heart we don’t care where mom and dad shop. Local grocer or the local food shelf. They should have access to a variety of great tasting and nutritious products that are pleasantly packaged.
Our event host clients:
“We Make It Easy To Make A Difference!” is our key message to our clients and future clients.
Most often, we bring our competitive team building and community engagement meal packing event onsite to our clients.
This makes it easy for their staff to participate.
We bring everything. The equipment, supplies, the music, and the tables.
We even bring the vacuum cleaners, so we can leave the space used for packing clean.
We create one page websites that our clients can easily promote their event.
After the event we provide photos and the leaderboard that shows the team by team results as well as the overall impact that they will make in their community.
We make the events as easy to plan and execute for our event key contacts or event planners.
Our distribution partners:
And the impact is in their community, because wherever we pack. The meals stay local.
If our client has a relationship with a food shelf or food bank, we will connect with them about providing the meals from the event.
And if they need a local distribution partner, we find one, so the meals that they packed go out to help their neighbors. Also, it is important to note that those meals go to the distribution partners at zero cost.
Our volunteers:
And finally, our tremendous volunteer event leaders bring a sense of joy and fun that is second to none.
We receive compliments from our clients about how wonderful our volunteers are and how they add great energy to the events.
Our events do not operate like the standard global starvation packing session.
Our events are fun, and face paced. Filled with a friendly competitive spirit cheered on by our volunteer leaders.
All-in-all, “We Make It Easy To Make A Difference!” is not just a tagline.
It is reality.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
Business pivot: Well, it was the early part of March in 2020.
Our event calendar was filled with 32 meal packing events. Many of them were multiple day events spread across the country.
Our warehouse was filled with recent purchases of ingredients to meet part of the demand, and a semi loaded with equipment and supplies departed to NY for an annual meal packing event.
And Covid-19 hit.
No one knew what was happening and what to do.
After connecting with our partners in New York we had the driver pull into a rest stop and hold while we contemplated our next steps. Well, the next step was to postpone the NY event and turn the truck around.
We offloaded that trailer into an already full warehouse.
Within two weeks, we had wiped the 32 upcoming events off our planning board.
Those events were our revenue stream.
Weeks of confusion turned to months as we seemed to be living in a snow globe that someone just kept shaking.
Then came the phone call that initiated our pivot.
Partners that received our meal packets soon called and asked for help.
Their plea was “We need more food.”
I explained that we were doing the best we could fundraising and packing with small teams packing 3 times a week to keep food going out the door, but they were seeking other food beyond our rice or pasta based meals packets.
And they explained that they needed other food, because the food shelves couldn’t meet the need.
It was a stressful and fearful time. We were concerned about the future of our organization, but we were also concerned about the growing need in our communities while more of our neighbors were struggling to put food on their table.
So, we elected to dare to not fail.
We decided to move forward with a three-point plan:
- To diversify
- To not only survive.
- But to thrive.
All in the face of potential failure that was shuttering many nonprofits.
We learned how to and began writing grants.
A very difficult and time-consuming process.
We were mildly effective, but we just kept writing.
Hundreds of grants and very minimal returns, but we dared to keep moving forward. Bit by bit, we combined a few grants to gifts of all sizes from generous individuals.
It was this phone call that led to what we titled our Budget Stretcher Food Box Program.
That became our Pandemic Pivot.
The Budget Stretcher Food Box Program is an intentional selection of up-to-date shelf stable products, a $5 Kwik Trip gift card for fresh or frozen items, along with 6 recipe suggestions that provided alternative options on how to utilize the products in a bag out a box that was delivered to the clients door by our volunteers.
I told you that our volunteers were the best!
The proposition to our Food Box clients was over $50 worth of product and a $5 gift card for $10.
Folks told us that they could help and wanted to be part of making a difference by paying the minimal fee of $10.
And if someone didn’t have the $10, they received the box anyway.
We didn’t collect data. We don’t care who you are. Where you live. Or who lives at your house.
Folks didn’t need to meet a certain criteria.
The only question we asked was: “Do you need food?”
It had been a very difficult period with months of setbacks and supply chain issues, but the first boxes were distributed the week before Christmas 2020.
2020 slipped by into 2021 and the Budget Stretcher Food Box Program grew as folks heard about it and demand kept increasing.
Folks from the military that operate the Minnesota Beyond The Yellow Ribbon program that serves our active military families called and asked if we would consider helping with a Thanksgiving box for military families struggling with food insecurity?
How many we asked?
“We are guessing about 150,” they answered.
We said yes and began planning a great selection of products while they created and launched a registration website. Two days after launching the registration they called in a panic, because they launched it without a limit and 413 families had signed up and had also requested a Christmas box if one was going to be available.
150 boxes for Thanksgiving turned into 550 at both Thanksgiving and Christmas!
The slow process of grant writing became phone calls and conversations over coffee to anyone that would listen and the funding came in and the boxes went out across the state of Minnesota. Distributed through 17 National Guard armories and air wings.
Now, as we recently ended 2023, our calendar is filled with meal packing events and we continue to do food boxes as funding comes in.
To-date we have distributed over 4000 food boxes (+100,000 pounds of food) to our neighbors.
This pivot, totally different from our core meal packing business, actually brought it full circle for our volunteers as they led participants at packing events and then delivered those meals in boxes to the kitchens of our neighbors.
And we will continue this pivot, because it is the right thing to do as demand continues to increase during these challenging economic times.
We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.
How I met my cofounders & how my “side hustle” became my business.
Well, I have already touched a bit on this in my previous answers.
It’s a bit confusing, because my life has never been a straight path, but every curve was setting the stage for the next phase of life.
And explaining this path leads to how I met my cofounders.
While I was working for a technical measurement company in electrical and mechanical design drafting I was also drawn to residential construction with a couple of friends, that led to being asked to join a design, build, and set trade show company, and finally being called into a church leadership position.
These various fields were developing separate, but complementary skill sets that I would eventually be extremely useful as life went on.
In the beginning, my wife Lisa and I were deeply involved in leading the senior high youth group at our church. While leading the youth group we were looking for a high quality service project that would challenge the youth and adult leaders on a variety of levels: faith, physical ability, sense of accomplishment, a broader understanding of life all while making a significant impact on the lives of our neighbors.
We struck out on finding a US based project that fit this criteria, because most local organizations were strictly adult focused.
If they allowed students, it was only very basic level cleanup, limited painting, and playing with babies.
Okay things, but they didn’t fit our thoughts of a meaningful and significant act of service for our neighbors.
So, we began exploring international possibilities and landed in Mexico.
One short term mission led to another and another.
Starting first at a border town, and then moving into central Mexico, and finally finding a long term site in the Yucatan Peninsula where we were called to assist families building their homes, communities building schools, and congregations building churches.
What started with a daring step forward in 1985 ended 34 years later in 2018 after helping over 1100 families build their homes, helping communities build 22 school classrooms, and 15 congregations building churches and one tremendous Bible camp that is utilized by hundreds of congregations.
What was my side hustle (organizing short term mission experiences) became my career when I was called into a church leadership position that eventually led to confounding and leading a hunger relief nonprofit.
My co-founders, Todd King and Dan Davis, were members at the church where we were leading the youth group.
And their children began attending the group gatherings and eventually they desired to participate in the global mission teams.
Both Todd and Dan desired to be part of the teams as well.
And from that our friendship began.
Well, it worked out for Dan and his wife Gloria to become part of our leadership planning and leading trips not only for our congregation, but for other churches from around the country that heard about the impact of our trips.
While this was going on my youngest child, Jackson, joined the Boy Scouts and became part of the troop that Dan and Todd led.
Working together on the trips and troop events developed a strong relationship that enabled us to say yes to the opportunity to create a new locally focused hunger relief nonprofit approach to the established global starvation meal packing industry.
Our focus was on distribution to local families struggling with food insecurity.
And to do so, meant improving the flavor profile, creating a variety of recipes, upgrading the quality of the ingredients, and utilizing full color consumer oriented packaging that provided a respectful shopping experience.
Meals From The Heart packaged our first branded meals on February 14, 2014 and have provided over 15 million to local families.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.mealsfromtheheart.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meals.from.the.heart/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mfthorg
- Other: https://mealsfromtheheart.org/the-pandemic-pivot-thinking-out-of-the-box/ https://mealsfromtheheart.org/category/enews/