Imagine being promoted to a new position, working, and traveling a lot more, with two young kids at home. You love to cook for your family, but don’t have as much time anymore. Well, this was the case for Atlanta resident Erica Tuggle.
Erica Tuggle is the founder & CEO of Livin, a platform that bridges busy professionals with personal chefs, creating healthier home-cooked meals.
Formerly known as Cookonnect, Livin, Tuggle says they took what was once reserved for the 1% and made it 100% more accessible to real people.
“We’re for those who’d rather spend time making moments than making food,” she said. “Whether you have a group of picky eaters, have no time to pick up groceries, or just don’t feel like cooking, we get it.”
Livin, she says, takes care of every step of meal preparation by booking their personal chef from their network of experienced pros, and they will do the rest right in your own kitchen.
Livin’ Her Best Life
Livin, formerly known as Cookonnect, began its journey in January 2022 on Google Forms, where Tuggle would take orders from customers.
Tuggle’s journey to entrepreneurship was sparked by her own challenges as a working mom and her drive to create solutions for families navigating similar struggles. She began her career as an entrepreneur to use her industry and consumer knowledge to build valuable ideas centered on food and family.
With over a decade of leadership at global brands like Coca-Cola, General Mills, and American Express, Tuggle’s professional ability provided a sturdy foundation for her pivot to entrepreneurship.
“I started Livin to answer a problem I was having, which was around making sure that my family was eating well at home,” she said.
While working at the Coca-Cola Headquarters downtown, she had two kids. She then took on a new role as director on the Coke Trademark team, so she was traveling and working a lot more. Cooking for her family, she said, was always important to her, so she had to find a way to make her new way of life work all while providing for her family.
Also, she says growing up in a house where her mom loved, and still does, cooking has conditioned and spoiled her to have homemade healthy meals, which she wanted her family to have.
“You could find someone to help with various tasks around the house, but the cooking always felt like the thing I couldn’t really solve very well, and we didn’t like the meal kits, and didn’t solve our time problem,” she said. “We didn’t love eating out all the time, so I wanted to find a way for someone to help us have homemade healthy meals.”
She had colleagues tell her about babysitters, nannies, and college students to help, and this excited Tuggle saying, “it’s doable”.
“They were essentially paying people what they would pay a babysitter to come in and cook meals and provide ingredients,” she said. “This started me on my path to Livin, and as I thought about the health disparities in our country, I wanted more families to have access to home-cooked meals as well.”
After upgrading to Type Forms, which is like a nicer Google Forms, Tuggle received an investment from Tech Stars to build Livin as a software-based company.
“It was easier and had a lot more features to book your services, and it’s been working well so far,” she said.
How does Livin work?
Their goal, Tuggle says, is to make things as easy as possible for their subscribers.
If someone is interested in Livin’s services, they would go to the website, sign up, and determine what type of package or service level they need.
“They answer two questions that tell us how many servings they are going to need and how many menu items. The servings are essentially how many people are eating, and the menu items is how many different meals do you want to have with us,” she said.
Then, the subscriber decides how they buy the package whether it is one-time or a monthly subscription, which most of their current subscribers select. Customers can also determine how often they want the meals as well.
“They might want it just once a month or every week, so they make that determination and set up their plan with us, and from there, the scheduling is really simple,” she said.
Once the customer selects their package and pays for the subscription, they will pick a date and time and select their menu items and provide any details like dietary needs, preferences, etc. After this, they can request any chef that’s listed or a specific chef. The chef will then pick up the job and begin grocery shopping based on the menu items ordered.
The day of your service, the chef will come to your home, prepare the meals in home, clean up, and store everything for the family.
“It’s one visit to the home and they’re set for however many meals they have ordered,” she said.
The menu changes the first of every month, according to Tuggle. It’s important, says Tuggle, because their customers tell the team “time and time again” one of the reasons they come to Livin is because they’re stuck in a rut at home.
“When they do actually cook at home, they tell us they’re eating the same things, and they’re tired of it, so they are looking for variety without having to think about it,” she said. “We do maintain a good diversity of protein types, and also vegetarian and vegan options.”
Menu items can be customized, and they look to make sure they have variety in terms of diary free, nut free, and gluten free.
“You’re going to see a little bit of Mediterranean, Italian, Caribbean, and some Korean,” she said. “We try to provide a nice range for people.”
A benefit subscribers have is if they ever try something and love it, they can favorite it and turn it into their own personal menu. Subscribers can order from their “favorites” menu at any time, and it helps families keep some of their favorites in rotation, but still see the monthly menu that changes.
Some of Tuggle’s favorites are the Tuscan Salmon and that’s roasted in a cream sauce with tomatoes, basil, Parmesan, and spinach. Another is a chipotle-braised steak with corn salad.
Additionally, Tuggle says her kids love the chicken nuggets on the menu, as many children can be meticulous eaters.
“We’ve had a journey with our kids trying to figure out what they want to eat. Kids are hard and they’re so picky and have all different quirks,” she said. “There are some commonalities, but they also like things separated, like don’t mix the beans and the rice for example.”
Tuggle emphasized the importance of employing Black and brown chefs in a white-led industry. She says there are two distinct parts of what Livin is trying to do, which is one to help people eat better and get their time back to spend it in meaningful ways in their home with their families or partners, but also to support diverse culinary talent.
“We want to support diverse culinary talent in achieving greater economic opportunity,” she said. “Doing research before starting Livin, it became clear to me that many of the models and competitors are white-led and there is a limited diversity within the chef sets.”
Livin’s goal and belief is there are incredibly diverse talent within the culinary space, and they deserved to be elevated.
Also, Tuggle says there’s a huge trust factor within their services that cannot be ignored when it comes to screening chefs to go into people’s homes.
“We find chefs who have multiple years of experience working in a professional kitchen, do an interview, a tasting interview, and background/reference checks.
Photo by Kerri Phox/The Atlanta Voice
Looking Ahead
In five to 10 years, Tuggle says she wants to see Livin expand geographically as they currently only provide services in Atlanta.
“We love the idea that as we built this software, we’ve built it with the ambition of being able to support chefs anywhere, and that’s the beauty of the business,” she said.
She said they are also looking forward to continuing to strengthen their partnerships in the health and wellness space, which they are currently activating.
“In five to ten years with this, I do see us as being integrated into how people manage their health, and that can be in the form of health professionals referring us and using us as a part of their health care plans for their patients,” she said.
The idea is to have health professionals implement Livin into their plans with patients, because Tuggle says Livin provides whole and fresh foods, having the choice if the family wants to go organic or not.
Additionally, Tuggle says in that five-to-10-year span, they want to grow their footprint, especially in the marketing perspective, using bigger partners and influencers to come onboard and aid keeping eyeballs on Livin to grow.
As far as advice to entrepreneurs, Tuggle says to make sure you have a support network in place. Her husband, she says, is incredibly supportive, and it’s necessary because they have two young kids.
“It’s very hard but he’s willing to step in and help out in every way when it comes to family life or even helping me think about the business,” she said. “My family as well has been incredibly supportive, and I think both of those things are important and necessary because it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.”
Also, she says be willing to take risks, try new things, and be willing to have something not work out.
For more information, visit https://www.chooselivin.com.