Today we’d like to introduce you to Benjamin Sunderland
Hi Benjamin, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Me and my partner started our business basically on a whim. We are both chefs at the Houston country club with combined 18 years of experience in professional kitchens. One day we were asked to do a small event for a member at their house from the club and enjoyed the experience so much we thought to ourselves “we should do this more often”. We then built our business based on this dream to be able to follow our own path and do what we find fulfilling.
At the beginning we didn’t have any business, after all my experience is as a chef not as a business developer or advertiser. One day we stumbled into a little health cafe and speaking to the gentleman who owned and operated the establishment we were told that he was planning to bring in a meal prep business and we quickly thought to ourselves “we can do that!” And just like that we found ourselves in this “meal prep space” we decided to call our project “squatch meals” presented by root provisions LLC over a year later we now provide meal preps for gyms all across Houston including Roman Empire, HNS training facilities, species Katy and many others. It’s still just me and my partner producing and hand delivering all these meals, staying up from the late night to the early morning to have everything finished for the days deliveries sometimes only getting an hour or two of sleep.the best feeling to me is after a long day of deliveries seeing our customers thanks and posts to social media showing off their products WE delivered, the gratitude we get from our community and knowing that we’re making a difference in people lives whether it be for them to make better healthy choices or just saving them time cooking is the most fulfilled I’ve felt by my work in my whole career as a chef.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Our biggest struggle has definitely been the amount of work we’ve taken on for ourselves. We’re currently still full time chefs at the Houston country club and balancing that and our business has been difficult at times. Some weeks we will work60+ hours and then every Sunday after work around 11-12pm we go to our commissary kitchen where we prepare the meals usually leaving around 6-7 am and come back the next day to package everything and make deliveries.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Root provisions LLC / squatch meals?
Root provisions being the parent company to squatch meals we originally and still offer catering and personal chef services. Squatch meals is a project we created in the demand for our meal preps which didn’t really fit the aesthetic of root provisions. We wanted a more dark, edgy tone for the meal preps. A lot of people ask about Sasquatch, like why? To explain it’s really something that represents strength and mystery and growing up in Oregon the stories and imagery of Sasquatch was very prevalent. It reminds me of home more than anything, and in a way allows me to share a piece of myself with the community here in Houston. What we do more than anything now is our meal preps which we present in a very different way than most other brand focusing on flavor and presentation, most other meal prep brands don’t understand the concept of good flavor and presentation. We want to share our passion which is tasty, healthy and beautiful food!
We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up?
One of my favorite childhood memories was watching food network with my dad and I really think that was one of the things that led me down this path into culinary. We lost my dad weeks over 2 years ago and in a way deep in my heart I’ve built this as a tribute to him. Even our logo for squatch meals the Sasquatch’s name is Benny after my dad.
Pricing:
- $12/meal from our rotating weekly menu found at most gyms we work with or by ordering directly from us
- $11/5+ meals from the rotating weekly menu when ordering directly from us
- $10/10+meals from our rotating weekly menu when ordering directly from us
Contact Info:
- Website: https://squatchmealsemail.eo.page/n418m
- Instagram: @squatch_meals
