Key Takeaways<\/h2>\n\n- McDuffie and Albers raised about $12,000 on Kickstarter before starting their side hustle, Dressy. <\/li>\n
- Dressy launched in June and hit $2,500 in weeks; now it\u2019s headed for $30,000 in six months. <\/li>\n
- The co-founders look forward to leaning into potential growth even more this fall.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n
This Side Hustle Spotlight Q&A features Portland, Oregon-based entrepreneur Lauren McDuffie, 42. McDuffie and her cousin Rachel Albers, 49, co-founded <\/em>Dressy<\/em><\/a>, a line of superfood-forward salad dressing mixes that can be prepared quickly and easily at home, this past June. Following a $12,000 Kickstarter fundraising campaign, Dressy launched as a side hustle and made $2,500 within its first few weeks. Now the business is projected to see about $30,000 in revenue by the end of the year. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.entrepreneur.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/Dressy-Lauren-McDuffie-.jpg?w=935\")
Image Credit: Dressy. Lauren McDuffie. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\nWhat was your day job or primary occupation when you started your side hustle?<\/strong>
Before launching Dressy, I spent more than a decade building a career as a food writer, recipe developer, cookbook author and photographer. Through my recipe website, My Kitchen Little<\/a>, and my cookbooks, I worked to help people make home cooking feel more approachable and interesting.\u00a0<\/p>\nRunning a recipe website gave me firsthand experience at building an online brand, creating content and understanding how busy people actually use their kitchens. Dressy grew very naturally out of that work; it felt less like swapping careers and more like solving a problem<\/a> that had been bugging me for years.\u00a0<\/p>\nRachel, who is an attorney by education, had ended a long career working as a political consultant and was preparing to send one of her sons off to college. She shared with me over coffee one morning that she was ready for something new, and I realized that working with her \u2014 combining our different skill sets, experience, interests and aptitudes \u2014 would make for a great partnership.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.entrepreneur.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/Dressy-GG-flat-lay-1-1.jpg?w=683\")
Image Credit: Dressy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nStarting a superfood-packed side hustle<\/h2>\n
When did you start your side hustle, and where did you find the inspiration for it?<\/strong>
We officially launched Dressy on June 1, 2026, but I first had the idea in the fall of 2024. Again and again, I noticed the same disconnect: People were willing to make homemade pasta sauces and fresh breads from scratch, but when it came to salad dressing, even enthusiastic home cooks almost always reached for a store-bought bottle.\u00a0<\/p>\nI realized it wasn\u2019t because people preferred bottled dressing. It was because homemade dressings, while mostly simple, still require keeping a long list of fresh ingredients on hand, unless you just use oil and vinegar all the time \u2014 which is great but somewhat boring after a while. So I started asking myself what homemade dressing might look like if it were designed (or re-designed, really) for modern life.<\/p>\n
The answer eventually became Dressy: clean, flavor-forward, superfood-boosted dressing mixes that let people make fresh dressing in less than a minute with just one staple ingredient they likely already have. Each Dressy pouch contains everything you need to create a fresh, flavorful dressing at home. Our flavors \u2013 Hello, Ranch, Green Goodness, and Sundress \u2013 are made with thoughtfully chosen ingredients and designed to deliver the flavor of homemade.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.entrepreneur.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/Dressy-image-all-products-flatlay.jpg?w=1024\")
Image Credit: Dressy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nInvesting $30,000 to launch the side hustle<\/h2>\n
What were some of the first steps you took to get your side hustle off the ground? How much money\/investment did it take to launch?<\/strong>
The first step was trademarking our name. Not to be all, \u201cit came to me in a dream,\u201d but it actually did. So, I scooped it up. The next step was validating that the problem was real. Before we worried about packaging or branding<\/a>, we spent time asking if we were solving something people actually struggled with. I\u2019d spent a long time watching others embrace homemade versions of almost everything \u2014 except salad dressing. That observation gave me enough confidence to believe there was a real opportunity to rethink the category.<\/p>\nFrom there, we focused on building the brand very thoughtfully, keeping operations as lean as possible and investing in things that we truly saw as mission critical. We invested in recipe development with food scientists that involved a lot of testing and iterating, as getting our flavors just right was a non-negotiable. <\/p>\n
Every decision has to earn its place<\/h2>\n
It was also extremely important to me to invest in custom packaging<\/a> and branding right out of the gate, and we did so by working with a fantastic Portland-based graphic design firm (Perspektiiv). We began sourcing high-quality ingredients and focused on obtaining them from local companies to keep shipping costs as low as possible. Because Dressy is a food product, there was also a significant amount of (less exciting) operational and structural work behind the scenes, from regulatory requirements, labeling and researching commercial production options to finding the right suppliers and manufacturing partners.\u00a0<\/p>\nBy the time Dressy launched, we\u2019d invested approximately $30,000 into the business. The majority has been self-funded, with about $10,000 coming from a small friends-and-family fundraising round. When you\u2019re spending your own money, every decision has to earn its place, so we fully gamed things out all along the way. I\u2019d like to think this approach shaped the bones of the company in ways that will pay off down the line.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.entrepreneur.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/Dressy-Hello-Ranch-flat-lay.jpg?w=683\")
Image Credit: Dressy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nScaling a CPG business with intenti0n<\/h2>\n
Are there any free or paid resources that have been especially helpful for you in starting and running this business?\u00a0<\/strong>
One of the most valuable resources early on was simply talking to people who have done it before. We sought advice from experienced CPG founders<\/a> and fractional consultants who were generous enough to share what they\u2019d learned, and those conversations helped us avoid some costly mistakes.\u00a0<\/p>\nWe also chose to work with the Food Innovation Center at Oregon State University, which was an incredible resource throughout our product development process. Many land-grant universities and schools with strong agricultural or food science programs offer benchtop product development services, food safety expertise, and both technical and business support for entrepreneurs, often at a much lower cost than private consulting firms. For anyone thinking about starting a food business<\/a>, I would absolutely encourage them to see what resources their state\u2019s universities have available.<\/p>\nWe also partnered with the consulting firm, FoodWit, whose guidance gave us confidence that our packaging and labels met FDA requirements before launch. Having knowledgeable experts in areas where we aren\u2019t specialists allows us to move much more confidently.<\/p>\n
More than anything, though, and at the risk of sounding platitudinal, I think curiosity has been our greatest resource. We\u2019re deeply aware of how much we don\u2019t know when it comes to running and scaling a CPG business<\/a>. So, we ask a bunch of questions and try to talk to as many people as we can all of the time. We read a lot, scan the forums over on StartupCPG (also a great resource) and try not to assume we have to figure everything out on our own. Every conversation with someone a few steps ahead of us shortens our learning curve.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.entrepreneur.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/Dressy-GG-Display.jpg?w=1024\")
Image Credit: Dressy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nDon\u2019t rush to a quick fix when things go wrong<\/h2>\n
Can you recall a specific instance when something went very wrong \u2014 how did you fix it?<\/strong>
One of our biggest early setbacks came before launch when the commercial kitchen<\/a> we\u2019d planned to use for first run production unexpectedly became unavailable. Overnight, we lost the manufacturing plan we\u2019d spent months preparing around and had to find an entirely new path forward.<\/p>\nIt was tempting to look for a quick fix, but we\u2019d been very intentional about staying lean in the early stages of the business. Rather than rushing into a co-manufacturer before we felt we\u2019d truly established product-market fit, we doubled down on our original philosophy of protecting our capital and proving the concept first. We found another commercial kitchen, adapted our process and kept production in-house.<\/strong><\/p>\nRaising $12k on Kickstarter, making over $2k in weeks<\/h2>\n
How long did it take you to see consistent monthly revenue? How much did the side hustle earn?<\/strong>
We\u2019re still in the early stages of building the business \u2014 it\u2019s only month two \u2014 so for us success right now isn\u2019t only, or even primarily, measured in revenue. We\u2019re focused on repeat customers<\/a>, word-of-mouth sales, retailer conversations and proving people genuinely come back once they\u2019ve tried the product.<\/p>\nThe month prior to launching, we successfully funded a Kickstarter campaign, raising $12,000 while also being selected as a coveted \u201cProject We Love\u201d by the editors. This was a fantastic early signal that people would respond positively to our brand and products.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We launched in June very softly, with lowkey announcements, but still made a quick $2,500 within the first few weeks, selling out of our limited-edition summer flavor, Sundress. We are preparing to roll out a local retail launch next month, will be selling at the Portland Night Market this fall and are kicking off a sustained, focused advertising push as well. As such, our projected 2026 revenue (first six months post launch) is somewhere around $30,000.<\/p>\n
Steady and controlled growth and revenue<\/h2>\n
What does growth and revenue look like now?\u00a0<\/strong>
The words that come to mind are steady and controlled. We\u2019ve been very careful not to overstretch our skis when it comes to our operational and production capacities, so that\u2019s what I mean when I say we launched quietly. But transparently, this decision was largely due to the fact that we\u2019re both moms and have very busy schedules in the summer that involve a lot of travel. That\u2019s just the truth of it, and we mutually agreed to avoid hitting the gas until the busy season had passed.\u00a0<\/p>\nAt this point, though, we\u2019ve had two months to understand how consumers respond when they discover our dressing mixes organically \u2014 and the response has been incredible. I\u2019m excited to see what the fall season brings now that we can take our feet off the brakes and let it rip.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.entrepreneur.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/08\/Dressy-Sundress-product-image.jpg?w=1024\")
Image Credit: Dressy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nNo two days look alike while running a side hustle<\/h2>\n
What does a typical week working on this side hustle look like?<\/strong>
Right now, Dressy is still in its early stages, so no two days look alike. Some weeks I spend time in our commercial kitchen making product, while others I focus on recipe development, photography, social media marketing, customer service or meeting with partners. Since it\u2019s just the two of us running the show right now, we wear a lot of hats.<\/p>\nThat said, I\u2019ve learned that being productive<\/a> isn\u2019t the same thing as being busy. At this stage, I\u2019m constantly asking myself what will actually move the business forward the most. Sometimes that\u2019s developing a new recipe and sometimes it\u2019s simply having a conversation that influences how I think about the business. I\u2019ve become much more intentional about protecting my energy and focusing on the work that creates the greatest momentum.<\/p>\nThe opposite of a grind \u2014 and the value in better questions<\/h2>\n
What do you enjoy most about running this business?<\/strong>
I\u2019ve wanted to create a brand and business like this for the majority of my life. So witnessing this thing bloom that\u2019s mostly lived inside my head is honestly thrilling. I still kind of can\u2019t believe it. That is easily the thing I enjoy the most. That and running it alongside Rachel. We\u2019ve lived on opposite coasts for our entire lives, but my family moved to the Portland area three years ago, and running this business with her has been so much fun. It\u2019s taken a process that is often described as a grind and made it the exact opposite of that.<\/p>\nWhat is your best piece of specific, actionable business advice?<\/strong>
The advice I have is a product of having started multiple food businesses, from my career publishing books to my work as a food blogger to now building a CPG company<\/a>.<\/p>\nDon\u2019t wait until you think you\u2019re ready to ask better questions. Just start talking and don\u2019t stop; make yourself a student of whatever it is you\u2019re trying to achieve or become, and don\u2019t turn that setting off. Find people who are five steps ahead of you, not 50, and ask them anything and everything you want to know. They\u2019re usually the ones who remember exactly what you\u2019re struggling with and what you\u2019re feeling, and they\u2019re often incredibly generous with what they\u2019ve learned.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\n\nKey Takeaways<\/h2>\n\n- McDuffie and Albers raised about $12,000 on Kickstarter before starting their side hustle, Dressy. <\/li>\n
- Dressy launched in June and hit $2,500 in weeks; now it\u2019s headed for $30,000 in six months. <\/li>\n
- The co-founders look forward to leaning into potential growth even more this fall.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n
This Side Hustle Spotlight Q&A features Portland, Oregon-based entrepreneur Lauren McDuffie, 42. McDuffie and her cousin Rachel Albers, 49, co-founded <\/em>Dressy<\/em><\/a>, a line of superfood-forward salad dressing mixes that can be prepared quickly and easily at home, this past June. Following a $12,000 Kickstarter fundraising campaign, Dressy launched as a side hustle and made $2,500 within its first few weeks. Now the business is projected to see about $30,000 in revenue by the end of the year. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\nImage Credit: Dressy. Lauren McDuffie. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\nWhat was your day job or primary occupation when you started your side hustle?<\/strong>
Before launching Dressy, I spent more than a decade building a career as a food writer, recipe developer, cookbook author and photographer. Through my recipe website, My Kitchen Little<\/a>, and my cookbooks, I worked to help people make home cooking feel more approachable and interesting.\u00a0<\/p>\nRunning a recipe website gave me firsthand experience at building an online brand, creating content and understanding how busy people actually use their kitchens. Dressy grew very naturally out of that work; it felt less like swapping careers and more like solving a problem<\/a> that had been bugging me for years.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
This Side Hustle Spotlight Q&A features Portland, Oregon-based entrepreneur Lauren McDuffie, 42. McDuffie and her cousin Rachel Albers, 49, co-founded <\/em>Dressy<\/em><\/a>, a line of superfood-forward salad dressing mixes that can be prepared quickly and easily at home, this past June. Following a $12,000 Kickstarter fundraising campaign, Dressy launched as a side hustle and made $2,500 within its first few weeks. Now the business is projected to see about $30,000 in revenue by the end of the year. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n What was your day job or primary occupation when you started your side hustle?<\/strong> Running a recipe website gave me firsthand experience at building an online brand, creating content and understanding how busy people actually use their kitchens. Dressy grew very naturally out of that work; it felt less like swapping careers and more like solving a problem<\/a> that had been bugging me for years.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rachel, who is an attorney by education, had ended a long career working as a political consultant and was preparing to send one of her sons off to college. She shared with me over coffee one morning that she was ready for something new, and I realized that working with her \u2014 combining our different skill sets, experience, interests and aptitudes \u2014 would make for a great partnership.\u00a0<\/p>\n When did you start your side hustle, and where did you find the inspiration for it?<\/strong> I realized it wasn\u2019t because people preferred bottled dressing. It was because homemade dressings, while mostly simple, still require keeping a long list of fresh ingredients on hand, unless you just use oil and vinegar all the time \u2014 which is great but somewhat boring after a while. So I started asking myself what homemade dressing might look like if it were designed (or re-designed, really) for modern life.<\/p>\n The answer eventually became Dressy: clean, flavor-forward, superfood-boosted dressing mixes that let people make fresh dressing in less than a minute with just one staple ingredient they likely already have. Each Dressy pouch contains everything you need to create a fresh, flavorful dressing at home. Our flavors \u2013 Hello, Ranch, Green Goodness, and Sundress \u2013 are made with thoughtfully chosen ingredients and designed to deliver the flavor of homemade.<\/p>\n What were some of the first steps you took to get your side hustle off the ground? How much money\/investment did it take to launch?<\/strong> From there, we focused on building the brand very thoughtfully, keeping operations as lean as possible and investing in things that we truly saw as mission critical. We invested in recipe development with food scientists that involved a lot of testing and iterating, as getting our flavors just right was a non-negotiable. <\/p>\n It was also extremely important to me to invest in custom packaging<\/a> and branding right out of the gate, and we did so by working with a fantastic Portland-based graphic design firm (Perspektiiv). We began sourcing high-quality ingredients and focused on obtaining them from local companies to keep shipping costs as low as possible. Because Dressy is a food product, there was also a significant amount of (less exciting) operational and structural work behind the scenes, from regulatory requirements, labeling and researching commercial production options to finding the right suppliers and manufacturing partners.\u00a0<\/p>\n By the time Dressy launched, we\u2019d invested approximately $30,000 into the business. The majority has been self-funded, with about $10,000 coming from a small friends-and-family fundraising round. When you\u2019re spending your own money, every decision has to earn its place, so we fully gamed things out all along the way. I\u2019d like to think this approach shaped the bones of the company in ways that will pay off down the line.<\/p>\n Are there any free or paid resources that have been especially helpful for you in starting and running this business?\u00a0<\/strong> We also chose to work with the Food Innovation Center at Oregon State University, which was an incredible resource throughout our product development process. Many land-grant universities and schools with strong agricultural or food science programs offer benchtop product development services, food safety expertise, and both technical and business support for entrepreneurs, often at a much lower cost than private consulting firms. For anyone thinking about starting a food business<\/a>, I would absolutely encourage them to see what resources their state\u2019s universities have available.<\/p>\n We also partnered with the consulting firm, FoodWit, whose guidance gave us confidence that our packaging and labels met FDA requirements before launch. Having knowledgeable experts in areas where we aren\u2019t specialists allows us to move much more confidently.<\/p>\n More than anything, though, and at the risk of sounding platitudinal, I think curiosity has been our greatest resource. We\u2019re deeply aware of how much we don\u2019t know when it comes to running and scaling a CPG business<\/a>. So, we ask a bunch of questions and try to talk to as many people as we can all of the time. We read a lot, scan the forums over on StartupCPG (also a great resource) and try not to assume we have to figure everything out on our own. Every conversation with someone a few steps ahead of us shortens our learning curve.<\/p>\n Can you recall a specific instance when something went very wrong \u2014 how did you fix it?<\/strong> It was tempting to look for a quick fix, but we\u2019d been very intentional about staying lean in the early stages of the business. Rather than rushing into a co-manufacturer before we felt we\u2019d truly established product-market fit, we doubled down on our original philosophy of protecting our capital and proving the concept first. We found another commercial kitchen, adapted our process and kept production in-house.<\/strong><\/p>\n How long did it take you to see consistent monthly revenue? How much did the side hustle earn?<\/strong> The month prior to launching, we successfully funded a Kickstarter campaign, raising $12,000 while also being selected as a coveted \u201cProject We Love\u201d by the editors. This was a fantastic early signal that people would respond positively to our brand and products.\u00a0<\/p>\n We launched in June very softly, with lowkey announcements, but still made a quick $2,500 within the first few weeks, selling out of our limited-edition summer flavor, Sundress. We are preparing to roll out a local retail launch next month, will be selling at the Portland Night Market this fall and are kicking off a sustained, focused advertising push as well. As such, our projected 2026 revenue (first six months post launch) is somewhere around $30,000.<\/p>\n What does growth and revenue look like now?\u00a0<\/strong> At this point, though, we\u2019ve had two months to understand how consumers respond when they discover our dressing mixes organically \u2014 and the response has been incredible. I\u2019m excited to see what the fall season brings now that we can take our feet off the brakes and let it rip.\u00a0<\/p>\n What does a typical week working on this side hustle look like?<\/strong> That said, I\u2019ve learned that being productive<\/a> isn\u2019t the same thing as being busy. At this stage, I\u2019m constantly asking myself what will actually move the business forward the most. Sometimes that\u2019s developing a new recipe and sometimes it\u2019s simply having a conversation that influences how I think about the business. I\u2019ve become much more intentional about protecting my energy and focusing on the work that creates the greatest momentum.<\/p>\n What do you enjoy most about running this business?<\/strong> What is your best piece of specific, actionable business advice?<\/strong> Don\u2019t wait until you think you\u2019re ready to ask better questions. Just start talking and don\u2019t stop; make yourself a student of whatever it is you\u2019re trying to achieve or become, and don\u2019t turn that setting off. Find people who are five steps ahead of you, not 50, and ask them anything and everything you want to know. They\u2019re usually the ones who remember exactly what you\u2019re struggling with and what you\u2019re feeling, and they\u2019re often incredibly generous with what they\u2019ve learned.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n This Side Hustle Spotlight Q&A features Portland, Oregon-based entrepreneur Lauren McDuffie, 42. McDuffie and her cousin Rachel Albers, 49, co-founded <\/em>Dressy<\/em><\/a>, a line of superfood-forward salad dressing mixes that can be prepared quickly and easily at home, this past June. Following a $12,000 Kickstarter fundraising campaign, Dressy launched as a side hustle and made $2,500 within its first few weeks. Now the business is projected to see about $30,000 in revenue by the end of the year. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n What was your day job or primary occupation when you started your side hustle?<\/strong> Running a recipe website gave me firsthand experience at building an online brand, creating content and understanding how busy people actually use their kitchens. Dressy grew very naturally out of that work; it felt less like swapping careers and more like solving a problem<\/a> that had been bugging me for years.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Before launching Dressy, I spent more than a decade building a career as a food writer, recipe developer, cookbook author and photographer. Through my recipe website, My Kitchen Little<\/a>, and my cookbooks, I worked to help people make home cooking feel more approachable and interesting.\u00a0<\/p>\nStarting a superfood-packed side hustle<\/h2>\n
We officially launched Dressy on June 1, 2026, but I first had the idea in the fall of 2024. Again and again, I noticed the same disconnect: People were willing to make homemade pasta sauces and fresh breads from scratch, but when it came to salad dressing, even enthusiastic home cooks almost always reached for a store-bought bottle.\u00a0<\/p>\nInvesting $30,000 to launch the side hustle<\/h2>\n
The first step was trademarking our name. Not to be all, \u201cit came to me in a dream,\u201d but it actually did. So, I scooped it up. The next step was validating that the problem was real. Before we worried about packaging or branding<\/a>, we spent time asking if we were solving something people actually struggled with. I\u2019d spent a long time watching others embrace homemade versions of almost everything \u2014 except salad dressing. That observation gave me enough confidence to believe there was a real opportunity to rethink the category.<\/p>\nEvery decision has to earn its place<\/h2>\n
Scaling a CPG business with intenti0n<\/h2>\n
One of the most valuable resources early on was simply talking to people who have done it before. We sought advice from experienced CPG founders<\/a> and fractional consultants who were generous enough to share what they\u2019d learned, and those conversations helped us avoid some costly mistakes.\u00a0<\/p>\nDon\u2019t rush to a quick fix when things go wrong<\/h2>\n
One of our biggest early setbacks came before launch when the commercial kitchen<\/a> we\u2019d planned to use for first run production unexpectedly became unavailable. Overnight, we lost the manufacturing plan we\u2019d spent months preparing around and had to find an entirely new path forward.<\/p>\nRaising $12k on Kickstarter, making over $2k in weeks<\/h2>\n
We\u2019re still in the early stages of building the business \u2014 it\u2019s only month two \u2014 so for us success right now isn\u2019t only, or even primarily, measured in revenue. We\u2019re focused on repeat customers<\/a>, word-of-mouth sales, retailer conversations and proving people genuinely come back once they\u2019ve tried the product.<\/p>\nSteady and controlled growth and revenue<\/h2>\n
The words that come to mind are steady and controlled. We\u2019ve been very careful not to overstretch our skis when it comes to our operational and production capacities, so that\u2019s what I mean when I say we launched quietly. But transparently, this decision was largely due to the fact that we\u2019re both moms and have very busy schedules in the summer that involve a lot of travel. That\u2019s just the truth of it, and we mutually agreed to avoid hitting the gas until the busy season had passed.\u00a0<\/p>\nNo two days look alike while running a side hustle<\/h2>\n
Right now, Dressy is still in its early stages, so no two days look alike. Some weeks I spend time in our commercial kitchen making product, while others I focus on recipe development, photography, social media marketing, customer service or meeting with partners. Since it\u2019s just the two of us running the show right now, we wear a lot of hats.<\/p>\nThe opposite of a grind \u2014 and the value in better questions<\/h2>\n
I\u2019ve wanted to create a brand and business like this for the majority of my life. So witnessing this thing bloom that\u2019s mostly lived inside my head is honestly thrilling. I still kind of can\u2019t believe it. That is easily the thing I enjoy the most. That and running it alongside Rachel. We\u2019ve lived on opposite coasts for our entire lives, but my family moved to the Portland area three years ago, and running this business with her has been so much fun. It\u2019s taken a process that is often described as a grind and made it the exact opposite of that.<\/p>\n
The advice I have is a product of having started multiple food businesses, from my career publishing books to my work as a food blogger to now building a CPG company<\/a>.<\/p>\nKey Takeaways<\/h2>\n
\n
Before launching Dressy, I spent more than a decade building a career as a food writer, recipe developer, cookbook author and photographer. Through my recipe website, My Kitchen Little<\/a>, and my cookbooks, I worked to help people make home cooking feel more approachable and interesting.\u00a0<\/p>\n