Written by Barley + Oats Founder, Ashly Yashchin.
Barley + Oats a fully prepared meal delivery service, nutritionally optimized for female health + fetal development. Our market is any woman of childbearing age looking to eat healthier and outsource the cooking process. And, isn’t that all of us these days? Whether mom or not, women lead busier lives than ever before and cooking feels like the “sewing of the new millennium.” And when was the last time you picked up a needle?
I began the service during my pregnancy, after reading countless books on the effect nutrition had on my developing fetus. Turns out eating healthy boils down to micronutrients, and wouldn’t you know it, most of the foods we eat today are not dense in the vitamins and minerals our bodies need to function properly. In fact, studies show that anywhere from 30-90% of American women are micronutrient deficient or insufficient.
I didn’t feel well and was on bed rest part of my pregnancy. I didn’t have the time or energy to prepare healthy meals and I needed an easy solution then and for the rest of time-pressed motherhood. This solution didn’t exist. And so Barley + Oats was born.
When we nourish our systems with the vitamins and minerals they need, we are able to achieve proper hormonal balance and metabolism (increasing fertility, reducing pregnancy complications, regulating female cycles and boosting energy). We are able to fight infections and help prevent debilitating disease. And we are able to grow a healthier, happier future generation.
Our Inception:
When I was 8 months pregnant, I started talking to all my mommy friends. I sent out an online survey to a bunch of the NY parenting groups and got close to 100 anonymous responses in our core segment (confirmed through data submission). The response was overwhelming: 96% moms wished they had a service like Barley + Oats when they first became pregnant and 100% wanted to give it as a gift.
At 40 weeks, I incorporated, and within three months of giving birth I had set up shop in Hot Bread Kitchen (a commercial kitchen incubator in Harlem) to start testing the market. Being a huge advocate of breastfeeding, I would pump on the bathroom floor of this facility (gross, I know – but that’s where maternal rights stand these days) every few hours in between prepping organic veggies, washing all of our dishes, plating and packaging our delicious meals and sending them out via bike messenger to hungry mamas. It was truly a labor of love and I was driven by a passion to create a happier and healthier future generation of families.
Pivoting after Pilot:
We launched in Beta in September of 2015. We tested multiple models before landing on our go-to-market. We were selected out of hundreds of applicants for the venture-backed Food-X accelerator, where we gained valuable mentors and pre-seed investment. We tested multiple customer acquisition strategies before landing on a valuable marketing mix that works. We sent out over 500 bags of food, gathered customer feedback and leveraged that to build a new site (launching first week of September 2016) and a model that’s capable of scale.
Our customers were eager to chat with us, often sending us unprompted emails to just tell us about their newborns and how much the service was helping them, how much they loved the food, or how they wished they had us with their first pregnancy. They also told us the pain points – that our website was hard to use, that they wanted the flexibility to choose their meals. They shared that they wanted animal protein, so we pivoted from vegan to omnivore. Our customers wanted their meals delivered 2-3x/week when we were only delivering once per week, so we realized we needed to move towards this goal quicker. This early feedback throughout the multiple iterations of product and model we put out were crucial to informing our next moves and ultimately our current go-to-market strategy.
We’ve also now partnered with a seasoned chef, nutritionist, team of mentors in the female health and meal delivery space, and prominent influencers to gain exposure and credibility. We’ve developed brand partnerships with big names in the mom community and we are positioned for growth.
As a founder, mom, boss and friend, I couldn’t be more grateful to be on this journey. We are now excited to launch our new website and service to bring “motherfood made easy” to the masses.
Barley & Oats was part of Food-X’s last cohort- Applications now open for our fifth cohort
