Dan's Gourmet CEO encourages students to turn passions into businesses
Kim Chaudoin | 615.966.6494 |
It isn’t every day that one can turn a childhood passion for eating macaroni and cheese into a fast-growing company that in less than two years has products in groceries in 35 states.
Dan Stephenson, 30, founder, chef and CEO of Dan’s Gourmet, has done just that. And he is loving every minute of the journey.
He recently shared his story with business students as Entrepreneur-in-Residence in Lipscomb University’s College of Business for a day this fall.
“It’s great when students have the opportunity to see someone who has really done it — to take an idea and go from zero to a million dollars in sales in a short period of time,” said Jerry Stubblefield, entrepreneur-in-residence in Lipscomb’s Center for Entrepreneurship.
“He has a unique business model that gives students an opportunity to get a perspective on how he launched a business without having to do everything himself and using partners to help in areas, such as marketing, that are not his area of expertise. Hopefully stories like Dan’s helps generate ideas in the minds of students for businesses they want to launch some day.”
Stephenson, a native of Ohio, has been in Nashville since 2003 when he came to Vanderbilt University to study business and economics. He began his career as a research analyst with Laffer Associates, a macroeconomic research firm serving institutional investors. He also served as chief of staff there before joining Ingram Industries as a business analyst in November 2008. In June 2011, he was appointed financial analyst at Ingram Barge Company. Two years later, Stephenson set out on his own to focus full time on his dream company — Dan’s Gourmet, offering a line of all-natural artisan macaroni and cheese dishes for grocery stores and food service across the country.
So how did this business analyst go from corporate America to making a living selling mac and cheese?
“I’ve always had a passion for cooking,” said Stephenson, “and I never lost that creativity. Macaroni and cheese is the first thing I learned to make as a kid. I would take the macaroni in the blue box and add in different ingredients.”
In fact, Stephenson said his brother would challenge him to macaroni and cheese competitions in their kitchen at home, where the boys would try to out-do the other one using whatever was in the pantry to make a good dish. He would often win the competitions and share his concoctions with friends and family.
Stephenson never lost his interest in cooking and began making his own dinners to share with his friends after working long days in the finance world. Stephenson’s friends encouraged him to turn his cooking hobby into a business. Stephenson and his girlfriend, Mandi, spent hours experimenting with different cheeses, seasonings and ingredients to discover the right flavor combinations and consistencies.
“One of the toughest aspects of owning a business is focusing on one thing,” he said. “So I focused on macaroni and cheese and changed up the sauces.”
The Nashville Farmer’s Market became the first selling point for Dan’s Gourmet. He said that was a good channel for increasing sales and to demonstrate demand for potential manufacturing partners.
“About a year or so after being at the farmer’s market I took my products to a food show in Washington, D.C. It was a great opportunity for me to get honest feedback. I didn’t even have packaging together for my product. But it was a hit.”
Stephenson said things moved quickly from that point. Dan’s Gourmet Mac & Cheese was picked up by its first retail chain, Central Market in Texas, in November 2012. He enlisted the services of Andersen Design in Nashville to develop “unique packaging that stands out on the shelf” for his products. Today, Dan’s Gourmet has become one of the fastest-growing food and beverage companies in the country with products sold in more than 2,000 groceries in 35 states across the country.
“We moved from my kitchen—a commercial kitchen— to a manufacturer. We launched five products, the original, three meat and two vegetarian varieties of macaroni and cheese. Things happened in a hurry,” he recalls.
Stephenson shared with the budding Lipscomb entrepreneurs lessons he has learned through his experience of taking his dream and making it a reality.
“Find a niche and then find a way to be unique and own that niche,” he said. “Start small, but think big. Then do what you do best and outsource the rest, such as design, production or distribution.”
For more information about Lipscomb’s Center for Entrepreneurship, visit www.lipscomb.edu/ entrepreneurship.