Prescription Chicken with Taryn Pellicone and Valerie Zweig feature 138 of Together Talks

"Together Talks" feature 138: Prescription Chicken presented by KLS, freight company

Some Background on Prescription Chicken

For today's edition of "Together Talks" campaign, KLS had the privilege to speak with Prescription Chicken and Co-Founders, Taryn Pellicone and Valerie Zweig. They are dedicated to making the MOST delicious, practically homemade chicken soup – aka liquid gold – around. What started as Prescription Chicken™, delivering soup to hungry bellies throughout the Washington, DC area in September of 2016 has since expanded to a line of premium, all-natural chicken soups under the moniker Chix Soup Co in grocery stores across the country. They are obsessed with chicken soup and it’s all they make, so you better believe it’s the best around.

The “chix” behind Prescription Chicken are cousins Val and Taryn who started the business after they saw a real need for really delicious chicken soup…that they didn’t need to make themselves.

When did the company begin?

Taryn: The company was founded about eight years ago. We started ideation around April of 2016 and then this upcoming September 1st is going to be our eight years in operation.

Story of how it was created?

Valerie: I got laryngitis twice in six weeks and I couldn't find a great chicken soup. In fact, the only way to get something that would soothe my throat was to order $50 of Chinese food just to get wonton soup. That just wasn't realistic. Fast forward a couple months later, I said to my cousin, Taryn, I have this crazy idea for a chicken soup delivery business. She said, I love it. And we said, let's dive in.

Meaning behind the name?

Taryn: Chicken soup makes everything better. We feel that if you're sick, you're hungover, you're having a bad day, no matter what is going on, having that bowl of practically homemade chicken soup just gives you the feeling of relief. We feel it is the perfect prescription for all ailments, chicken soup can help cure it!

It didn't take us really long to get to that name. I have a very specific memory of being on a bike and texting Val. We were just having this whole dialogue and the name resonated as chicken soup is the perfect curative comfort food.

Valerie: Secondarily, our retail line go by Chix Soup Co and that’s because we wanted a very clear and concise name that told people exactly what we were, who we were…. chicken soup run by two chicks!

What separates your company from competition?

Taryn: We're starting everything from scratch: We use bones. We use feet, which gives this beautiful gelatinous texture. But when you look at a lot of labels and other soups out there, typically they are made from bases or bouillons. That's not what we do.

We believe very strongly soup should be made from scratch. We use a lot of upcycled ingredients (ingredients that would otherwise be wasted). Beautiful chicken soup doesn't have to be made with a whole beautiful bird – we use bones, carrot nubs and onion skins – to mimic a flavor you might get at home!

What have been the biggest challenges?

Valerie: Finding a manufacturing partner. In our minds, who wouldn't want to make the most delicious chicken soup in the world? We found that most manufacturers don't actually want to make the product. They don't want to handle raw chicken. They didn't want to make the broth the way we made it. It's expensive and it takes more time. It took us time to find a partner that would make the product to our standards.

Another challenge is the price point of a premium product. At pennies to pennies, we are more expensive than other soups on the market. However, we're far better in terms of the way that we make it, in terms of the flavor, in terms of the nuance. Unfortunately flavor is not always the leading decision maker for retailers or even consumers

Funding has also been a hurdle for us, it can be difficult to be a women-owned business. It's also difficult to be a highly, highly niche business. Taryn and I think that this business is the most interesting business in the world. However, there are people out there that are not chicken soup fans or not as passionate about chicken soup as we are (shocking, right)? So there can be some limitations.

Taryn: Another challenge we face is knowing that we don't have to be the experts in everything and that's a tough place to live as we feel like we should be the experts in everything! Val and I are experts in our brand, product and how we run our business, but there are some areas where it's okay to lean on other people who are the experts in the space. It's finding comfort and trust in those who you surround yourself with and trusting your own gut to find those experts. It’s been a challenge to get comfortable that we don't have to have every single piece of knowledge to the utmost point, and we are still successful. We have to trust in ourselves to make the right decisions for outsourcing sometimes and not taking everything under our wing.

Reflect on a goal you set and how it made you feel to accomplish it?

Valerie: To make our first million dollars in revenue. At the time it was such an insane number.   When we got to it, I took a screenshot of our QuickBooks and printed it out, actually I have it hanging up on my wall because it was the most amazing thing.

Taryn: I remember saying I want to travel anywhere in the United States and get our soup.

And we did it. That was an insanely incredible feeling of wow, I can walk into a grocery store and get our soup almost anywhere! That's pretty amazing. I remember that being sort of that checkmark of we've done it. We really push ourselves to get in as many places as possible and spread ourselves across the country to just be as readily available as we can. Our goal is to get as much chicken soup in as many mouths as possible. Because we just want to make people's days better. We want to be there for people. It's about our product. It's not about us and we just want to help.

Goals for upcoming year + Next phase of the company?

Valerie: Continuing to grow, focusing on performance and new accounts. We have been strategic to not grow too fast as we don't want to dilute the excellence of our product. Instead we have focused on supplying our partners and growing those relationships. We have done a good job focusing on increasing velocity. We want to continue to do that and expand, add more retail partners in different key parts of the country. There are also new SKUs. It seems like chicken soup could be limiting, but  there are so many flavors!  

How have you dealt with being the face of the company?

Valerie: We're just organic to who we are. We are our brand. We as humans, believe in transparency and openness and information and sharing and comfort. That's how we approach being the faces of the business. It's how we handle our brand approach. It's the way we handle customer service, the way we handle partnerships.

Chicken soup is meant to make you feel better. And the most important thing is to get it to you when you most need it. That is our customer approach, caring and comforting and quick and responsive.

Taryn: We are confident. Being confident in our product, brand and voice allows us to be the face of the company with ease because we trust ourselves. That is such a huge component of it, knowing that we are doing something that's really spectacular and sticking to it.

What has entrepreneurship taught you?

Valerie: Everything!   One thing I feel that entrepreneurship has taught us, every day, is responsibility. Ensuring that we deliver on the promises that we make- to our customers, to our partners, to our team.

Taryn: I think flexibility is another big one and being able to just really roll with the punches. Every single day something new happens whether it's at our restaurant or manufacturing facility or with a supply partner. You have to be able to make space and be able to make the decisions and react with intention. If you can manage to do that repeatedly without it being explosive, that can be very beneficial.

Also the scrappiness that comes with starting a business. I had worked for pretty big businesses before that we had solid sized budgets, a lot of the decisions that we could make, we could just make it. With us, you have to think of every single decision that you make. How it's going to affect your dollars, your people, the brand, we must have our finger on the pulse at all times.

What do you need to work on as a leader?

Taryn: Finding balance and being able to understand that as individuals, we can't do it all. We have to delegate. We have to seek out the help that we need. It's hard to let go of some of the things, especially if you think about this as our baby. We want to be a part of every special moment. But when you take a step back and you think about it from a more realistic standpoint, you just can't.

Valerie: Transitioning to newer roles. We're thinking about how we grow, what are roles are as we expand? It's learning there are bigger picture things that we should be focusing on and understanding the value that we bring.

What aspect of entrepreneurship do you appreciate the most?

Valerie: I love that we get to make decisions. It's scary to not have somebody else to bail you out if you make the wrong decision. I love that we have created a brand that is so strong and thoughtful.   It’s an amazing feeling to know something so intimately and to be able to implement the strategy and do what is right for the business.

Taryn: it is also a little bit of pride. Walking into a grocery store and seeing our product on the shelf and knowing “we did that”. The tangibility of real products sitting in front of us is wild. Knowing what goes into this and reaching success is an incredible feeling. We look at it, feel it, touch it, taste it, we eat our soup almost daily.

Share a mistake and what you learned from that experience?

Taryn: It didn't end up negatively impacting our business, which is good. But we learned relationships are so important. There was a project that we worked on that we went pretty far into the process with a supplier. We realized we weren't going to be able to hit deadlines or match what we needed. Consequently, we shifted to solve the problem and it wasn't the ending of a relationship that we had wanted.

That doesn't sit well, because we want to make sure that no matter how many doors we close, they are always doors that can be reopened. It doesn't feel great when you shut a door, and you know that it's closed. That was a massive eye opener for us to understand we want to pick the people who we work with. We're going to choose people who are going to support us and who are going to help us hit our goals. It helped underscore why preserving relationships and why creating good relationships is so important.

Valerie: You're never going to be the expert from day one. One example we think about a lot is a situation we had with under weighing product from when we started our retail journey. We weren't super familiar with weight and measures. We didn't know that the product needed to be weighed and we didn't necessarily know to be validating that. A retailer partner told us that there were some weight issues, and so we went and spent a whole day in our freezer taking apart every single case and weighing every soup. This taught us we needed to have documentation on weighing soups to validate the filling process was going as designed.  It was a hiccup, but it was a lesson that taught us a lot about operations, processes, and accountability.

Do you recall your first moment of traction?

Valerie: The first day. We opened first as a chicken soup delivery business. We had signed a lease for a shared kitchen and we started making chicken soup. We flipped on the tablets, September 1st. I think we got around 12 orders and most were from people we didn't know which was the validation.

What is your why?

Taryn: I create something that I am proud of while remaining happy and having fun while doing it. I think that that also goes hand-in-hand with the helping of others. The people who work with us, the people who are serving our soup and making days better for customers creates some of the most memorable experiences of your life.

When you are ill or you are going through something so traumatic and all you have is our soup, that sort of becomes the thing that you rely on. You have that memory of this is what made me feel better. Knowing that, that's the juice I need to keep going.

Valerie: The why is we help. We help make it better. Whether it makes people feel better or it makes them feel memories of their family or it triggers a feeling, it does something for people. People tell us ‘this made me think of a memory’ or ‘this made me feel a certain way’ and that means that we're doing something right.

If you had a magic wand, what would you change about your industry?

Taryn: the barrier to entry. I think that this industry operates a little old school, and although we talk about innovation and how the industry is changing, I don't necessarily see that. I think that there are times where grocery operates, exactly how it's always operated from a margin perspective, from the costs in which, essentially, the money to play the game. I think if we were to shift a little bit, be a little bit more open-minded and flexible in the industry, it would give small businesses a much bigger chance.

Valerie: Giving people opportunity for better food. I would change how hard it is to break through. Really speed up the desire for smaller brands, which I think is starting, but I think if it could evolve it would have a positive impact.

Do you have a moment that brings you the most joy?

Valerie: It's hard to define ‘most joy’, but the moment I felt the best personally and professionally was when we had a meeting with the potential partner. It was a company we really admired. It was our first meeting where we felt like the other side spoke our language. Taryn and I were on our game and everything just felt right. We had this opportunity with a huge company and we were just delivering.

They were impressed with us, we were impressed with us, and it just felt so awesome.

All of the hard work came together, going back to our desire to be authentic, it paid off.

Taryn: when our team texts us pictures of their babies or tells us about their travel or that they're getting married or they're graduating, we get to be a part of it. They are a part of our journey and we are a part of theirs. It feels like this big happy family talking about everything and sharing everything with another. I think that is incredibly spectacular, because our people make our company.

Piece of Advice?

Valerie: It's important to stay curious and it's important to be aware. There's so much more to learn at all times and to know that you know you might not know, but that is okay. We've been and remained successful because we have an understanding that there is always more to learn. We want to continue learning as it keeps us humble and hungry.

Being an entrepreneur is an affliction. You have to be all in. That that was surprising to me, I didn't think I'd be this when I was growing up, I didn't plan on doing this until we did. And now that we have I want to do it again. This is a real thing and a real feeling so if you plan to do it, listen to the reasons why and chase it. Let it happen.

Taryn: Be open minded, be kind, listen, stay hungry, and take feedback as feedback.

People are going to have a lot of opinions. You must listen and you must hear them; however, how you choose to take the feedback and react is your choice as an entrepreneur. As you continue to grow in a business, it's things that you just have to be aware of.

In Closing

KLS wants to thank Prescription Chicken and Co-Founders, Taryn Pellicone and Valerie Zweig for today's "Together Talks" feature. Follow along for their journey with their social handles below!

LinkedIn / Instagram / Facebook / TikTok

Klimson Logistics Solutions - Together Talks with Prescription Chicken feature 138