Amy Johnson and Sam Roberts are owners of food delivery service, Field to Meal. The goal of Field to Meal is to encourage people to eat healthier by removing traditional obstacles around meal preparation. I sat down with the couple last week to learn more about their business. They discussed their journey from Sydney, Australia to Dallas, their passion for healthy food, and their involvement in the community.
Tell me about your beginnings in Australia, what brought you to Dallas?
Sam: It’s pretty straightforward, really. About two years ago, I met a beautiful Texan girl in Tasmania, Australia (Amy, obviously). She lived with me in Sydney for about six months. At that stage, we realized we wanted to be together. We sat down and had a serious conversation and thought about “OK, what are we going to do with the rest of our lives?” because I was pretty uninspired with the financial services game. I’d been in it a long time. Amy had this particular concept but she also wanted to move back closer to home, closer to her family. We decided to move back to Red Oak where Amy’s family is from. We began our business almost immediately, almost exactly one year ago.
What aspects of traveling to other parts of the world influenced Field to Meal? Are there any recipes from those experiences?
Amy: I would say a majority of them. I mean, I do take typical Texas home-cooked meals, I do a lot of those but I also try to throw in other ones from everywhere that I’ve been. You know, Australia has pretty similar food to what we eat but I’ll kind of change it up. We’ll have chicken parmesan, here it’s over pasta, but there it’s called a “parmi” and it’s served with chips, French fries, and salad. I just try to mix it up to be as new, but normal at the same time. It’s really inspired me a lot, as it brings creativity to the meals, I believe.
Walk us through a typical day of planning meals for customers.
A: I find out what the farmers have available. I use hormone-free meat. I get that mostly from a company called Full Quiver Farms. It’s local and close to us.
Meal delivery services are on the rise but what is unique about Field to Meal?
A: What makes it unique [is that] it’s local and as organic as possible. They’re starting to have a few companies out that are making the convenient food and meal planning but I haven’t found any that are doing what we do which is source the local natural and organic ingredients. The other part about it is i’m very conscious of creating family-style cooked meals. I try to make them as simple as possible, nothing spectacular. You know, they’re not going to take too long to cook. They’re all about 30 minutes or less to prepare.
Your goal is to remove traditional obstacles, can you explain what problems you wanted to solve with meal preparation?
S: There’s a number of obstacles that stop people from eating really well. People now are more conscious of eating healthy but what they encounter are issues. They still have issues around the time it takes to go grocery shopping, what types of vegetables they should be sourcing, where they get them from, and then not only that, but once they get [the vegetables], how do they cook them in such a fashion that it’s actually tasty. More importantly, their kids and family are going to want to eat it on a daily basis. We found that a lot of people are going into a grocery store with all the right intentions to buy all the right foods but don’t have the knowledge or skills to be able to take it home and cook it up in a way that was really tasty and want to do it again, and again, and again.
It’s a four-step process, according to the website. Can you elaborate?
A: Like I said, we source the ingredients from farmers. I create a recipe. I give you all the ingredients you need to make it at home. Then, we deliver it to your door. We use a broad range of menus that you can prepare quickly and easily.
Are these personalized meals or pre-set menus?
A: I create a menu of five dinner meals, and there are different selections you can do. We have a single menu: two meals or four meals. That will feed one to two people. Or you can choose the three or five meal plan which feeds a family of about four people. The menu gets updated weekly. Most of our customers are on a subscription, that means the payment gets drafted weekly and meals get delivered to your door, all in one bag.
The first year in business can be tricky. What challenges has Field to Meal faced?
S: Other than people not being able to understand my Australian accent, we’ve been pretty fortunate. First of all, they see a young couple trying to create a business with positive benefits for communities so people have gotten behind us and supported us. We’ve avoided a lot of the traps that young businesses encounter just because we’ve had a lot of support. In saying that, we’re learning. We’re improving our processes all the time. We’re making sure that food is the highest quality that we can possibly get. We’ve always had the ability to source it from local farmers, now we’re in a position where we’ve got better refrigeration, our delivery trucks with greater refrigeration we can make sure the quality is maintained from farmer to customer.
What can we expect in the future?
S: We’re ambitious, particularly now that we’ve seen there’s really potential for the business. We would like to (and we’re already doing it) grow further north into Dallas, Arlington, and Grand Prairie. We’re aligning ourselves with health and fitness industry people. There’s enormous potential for the business but we’re also realistic. We are a young company with a lot to learn. We want to offer additional things in the months to come like breakfast, lunch, and a kids meal menu. We would to love to engrain ourselves in the community in various areas in and around Dallas. So, we’re looking at other venues already. Over the next 12 months, we love to open a couple other stores as well. I think people really enjoy seeing [the product]. They understand the concept and value the business but they like to see the people behind the business actually involved in the community. We are conscious of that.
Where are you located?
A: We have a storefront in Waxahachie. That’s where we first began Field to Meal, but we also have an office and distribution center out of Dallas.
You can visit their website at fieldtomeal.com or call 972-921-6262 to get started. Field to Meal is located inside Fresh Market at 410 S Rogers Street, Waxahachie, Texas. There are two options to pick up meals in-person at the Waxahachie location or by delivery service. The hours are 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday. Sundays are delivery days in Ellis County.
