Winning Recipe: Co-Founder on Food As Love, Community & Success
It was early on Thanksgiving morning a few years back and I had just placed a stuffed 24-pound turkey in the oven. I called my mom to double check how long to bake the extra stuffing in a separate casserole dish. After I dialed her familiar number, I could not believe I momentarily forgot she passed a month earlier and this would be my first holiday without her culinary help.
Sure, I had her cookbooks, my cookbooks and boxes filled with stain-splashed recipe cards, but calling my mom was easier, until it wasn’t.
Rachel Abady, co-founder and chief marketing officer of Manna Cooking, a new recipe sharing app, has heard oodles of these recipe stories before and lived through a few. It is why she and her brother, Josh Abady, and friend Guy Greenstein, created this new enterprise. And this multi-leveled “recipe repository” launches just in time for Thanksgiving to avoid any culinary mishaps.
“@RachelAbady is the co-founder and chief marketing officer of @mannacookingapp, a new #recipe sharing app that launches just in time for #Thanksgiving to avoid any culinary mishaps. #femalefounded”
Partnering with celebrity chefs, avid homecooks and kitchen dabblers, Abady says Thanksgiving is the perfect time to launch the app that is “lifehacking these recipes of turkey and sides, and answering the question, "‘How do you make Thanksgiving work for you?’’’
Growing up in New York City, with an older brother, Aaron, and younger brother, Josh, Abady says her family always made time for family dinner each day. Even as her father was a lawyer and her mother a doctor, ”Every Friday we would have Shabbat dinner together. We always had one hour of communal family time to connect, check in. Food is a central communal force in my life.”
After graduating from Barnard College in 2012, majoring American studies and also studying in Argentina, Abady went to work in media as a journalist and audience specialist, landing first at Huffington Post from 2012 to 2014, then at The New York Times, where from 2014 to 2017 she worked on social media teams.
Collaborating with the NYT Cooking section on projects, Abady says she learned about the creativity and care behind presenting food stories and recipes. Claiming she grew up “addicted to ‘Top Chef’ and ‘Chopped,’” Abady then worked as a media strategist at Vox Media, which also owned Eater.
“Collaborating with the @NYTCooking section on projects, @RachelAbady says she learned about the creativity and care behind presenting food stories and recipes. #womenleaders”
In 2014, her brother Josh was diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and she became acutely aware of dietary limitations and the fact that “nothing was out there,” to modify recipes for his needs and restrictions.
In 2019, she quit her job at Vox to work on Manna Cooking full-time with her brother and Greenstein, who was inspired by his mother, private chef, Miriam Greenstein. Crowdfunding their initial investment of $150,000, then an additional $150,000 from angel investors, Abady says they are seeking another $1.5 million in investment as they continue to “get our conceptual ducks in a row.”
Greenstein’s mother’s profession was also a rarity, as Spectrum reports 76% of the chefs in the U.S. are male, and only 24% identify as female.
Read more in Take The Lead on women in the restaurant industry
While there are other recipe apps available that have different offerings, Manna can be interactive with you adding your own recipe changes, Abady says. “You can create a recipe chain.”
“While there are other #recipe apps available that have different offerings, @mannacookingapp can be interactive with you adding your own recipe changes, @RachelAbady says. “You can create a recipe chain.” #food #community”
While they were working on their app idea before COVID, the realities of remote work and quarantining are an ideal backdrop for Manna.
“When everything felt dire and hopeless in 2020, everyone was looking to nurture themselves,” Abady says. “It is a chance to provide value and help people feed themselves in a way that is delicious.”
The realities of working from home, performing childcare, supervising remote schooling and home care disproportionately land on women, and is particularly daunting for mothers who hold positions outside the home.
“The realities of #WFH, performing childcare, supervising remote schooling and home care disproportionately land on #women, and is particularly daunting for #mothers who hold positions outside the home. ”
Due to COVID and additional work and home responsibilities, BBC reports, “According to a survey by LinkedIn of almost 5,000 Americans, 74% of women said they were very or somewhat stressed for work-related reasons, compared with just 61% of employed male respondents.”
BBC reports, “A separate analysis from workplace-culture consultancy a Great Place to Work and health-care start-up Maven found that mothers in paid employment are 23% more likely to experience burnout than fathers in paid employment. An estimated 2.35 million working mothers in the U.S. have suffered from burnout since the start of the pandemic, specifically ‘due to unequal demands of home and work’, the analysis showed.”
A separate Harvard University, Harvard Business School and London Business School study of “30,000 individuals around the world and found that women – especially mothers – had spent significantly more time on childcare and chores during Covid-19 than they did pre-pandemic, and that this was directly linked to lower wellbeing. Many women had already set themselves up as the default caregiver within their households, and the pandemic obliterated the support systems that had previously allowed them to balance paid employment and domestic work,” BBC reports.
Time-strapped, stressed parents know that looking for recipes for lunch or dinner has to take minimal time and be especially efficient.
“Time-strapped parents know that looking for recipes for lunch or dinner has to be especially efficient. “Even if you don’t want it to be” a gendered conversation about mealtime, “women are a large part of it,” says @RachelAbady, co-founder of @mannacookingapp. #genderequity”
Read more in Take The Lead on women in culinary industry
Abady says, “Even if you don’t want it to be” a gendered conversation about mealtime, “women are a large part of it.”
Yes, both men and women are target audiences, she says. “This is so much about food as a form of love and nurturing.”
For herself, Abady says nurturing comes in the form of chicken parmesan, that was her go to comfort food growing up.
“It was the first recipe I put in the app, an amalgamation of my mom’s recipe and so much more to create this new recipe,” Abady says.
Users of the app can adapt for specific dietary restrictions and preferences.
“You can take beautiful recipes that are Rosetta stones and then they can bloom.”
Now that she has turned her lifelong passion about food and community into her career, Abady offers a recipe for success for other entrepreneurs looking to do the same.
“My perspective is to just go for it. I’m a painfully curious person and information gatherer. You need to find people you think are smart and experts and have something to teach you.”
“Now that she has turned her lifelong passion about #food and #community into her career with @mannacookingapp, @RachelAbady offers a recipe for #success for other #entrepreneurs: “You need to find people you think are smart and experts and have something to teach you.””
That does not mean you randomly ask people to give you their time so you can pick their brain. Abady says you can ask, “Can I take five minutes of your time to learn about what you’re an expert at? Those questions turn into relationships.”
But before all of that happened, Abady says, “Believe your idea is worthy. You have to commit to knowing that your idea is worth exploring.”
““Believe your idea is worthy. You have to commit to knowing that your idea is worth exploring”—@RachelAbady, co-founder of @mannacookingapp. #entrepreneur #success #femalefounded”
Then prepare, bake and serve your idea to the world.
