Today we’d like to introduce you to Dee King.
Hi Dee, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
In 2014, I was a single parent, full-time student and part-time Account at a CPA firm in the middle of tax season. Time was short, I stopped working out, started snacking instead of eating and gained 23 pounds.
But, the real trigger was; one day while cramming for an exam I got hungry. I did not have time to stop so I grabbed a box of raisins. I hate super sugary boxed raisins, but it was the only snack in the house.
I binged on those raisins all day. At some point, I realized that if a food is convenient and you’re hungry enough, you will eat it. So I thought why not make it healthy, whole, nutritious and convenient. In that instance, the idea for my food company was born.
After finishing my degree, I started working for a large technology company. I was literally working from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. managing teams in Japan, India and Paris. My health took a hit, especially my blood pressure. At some point, I decided I was not being paid enough to ruin my health. So I left Corporate America to start Qi Natural Energy Snack Food Company and have never looked back.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
No, the road is not easy. I have faced and undoubtedly will continue to face obstacles. Business like life changes. In my experience, my ability to adapt to changes usually determines my level of success. In fact, based on our response to changes, our company has moved from selling food plates to primarily selling things like gourmet cookies, granola, whole fruit Italian shave ices and other premium frozen desserts.
Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, we were competing with large food delivery companies. I would often pull up to deliver a few plates and someone would meet me asking if I was one of those companies. It did not make me want to quit, but I did take steps to set our company apart.
One of those things was adding fresh baked scratch-made cookies to the plates. Pretty soon people started ordering cookies by the dozen. It did not take us long to pivot from food plates to bags of cookies. Once we started selling the more portable bags of cookies, we expanded our sales channels to include barbershops, farmers markets and other vendor events like BLCK Market.
Although it was time-consuming, we were doing very well; that is until Covid-19 shut the world down. By the time we came back online, our business model had changed. We moved into a licensed commercial kitchen, invested in more equipment and expanded our product line to include other small-batch whole food items, including authentic gelato and creamy non-dairy cream ices.
Changes are a huge part of our journey, but our biggest challenge has been and still is finding and keeping good employees. We have lost a couple of people who left to start their own businesses with stimulus funds and we lost one to the City of Houston. It is very difficult to compete with funded entrepreneurship and municipal employers. However, our biggest obstacle is school and school work.
From its inception, our company is focused on two groups of potential employees, disenfranchised single mothers and middle school-aged kids. We are working with non-profits NS4S and our own non-profit 3rd Millennium Skills Training Program Inc. to “Provide Pathways out of Poverty” and move people from “Welfare to Work”.
Our goal is to hire associates and train them how to run a business from the kitchen floor to the boardroom. As a founding partner, I graduated from the both the award-winning sales program and entrepreneurship program at the University of Houston’s Bauer College of Business. I have learned some things and I am committed to passing that knowledge on.
To be frank, my entrepreneurial journey has not been easy or smooth or even very lucrative comparatively speaking. As an individual, I made a lot more money working in Corporate America than I do working for myself. But, the results are more gratifying and the potential rewards are so much greater. Plus, I want to have a tangible, positive impact on my community and my people.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Qi Natural Energy Snack Food Company LLC dba Qi Sweets?
Qi, which is pronounced key, is an ancient word for natural energy or more literally, according to Webster, the “vital energy that is held to animate the body”. Ever since my daughter was born, I have had a keen interest in food as medicine. I strongly feel that our chemical-heavy food supply is the root of many chronic diseases, including obesity.
Shortly after I had my daughter, I read an article which stated that the person who will live to be 125 has already been born. I decided that if that person was my daughter, I would do as much as I could to ensure those 125 years were as healthy as possible, starting with what she ate. So, I started shopping exclusively at Whole Foods because they made it easy to buy whole and organic foods.
I quickly learned it is both limiting and expensive to maintain a whole foods diet. Chemically laden foods are cheaper because preservatives add to shelf life and reduce food waste. I get that; but the flip side is they also add to medical cost. To me, cheaper food is not worth the tradeoff. So, I decided to manufacture a line of small-batch whole foods, snacks and beverages.
I am a realist; I know I cannot compete on price so I decided to focus value. Over 90% of the foods we produce are from whole, preservative-free, fresh foods and are made from scratch in small batches. We do not use artificial or natural flavors.
Our watermelon Italian Shave Ice and water ices are made from fresh, cold press watermelon juice and pulp. When our customers say it tastes just like watermelon, I always say, “that’s because it is watermelon. No flavoring for us, just pure freshly squeezed or pressed juices, simple syrups made from raw pure cane sugar and filtered water. Oh, and in case you are wondering, 1/3 to 1/2 the mixture is the fruit.
We do not skimp on ingredients. Even in our baked goods, we load them up with the good stuff. I tell anyone who ask, our locally famous Loaded Butter Pecan cookies are 60% pecans. No kidding, by volume the batch is 45% to 50% dough and 50% to 55% Texas pecans, then we add a whole half of a pecan on top. Sometimes there is a whole half inside the cookie and a whole half on top.
Our lemon cookies and the cream filling are both made with freshly squeezed lemon juice and freshly grated lemon zest, and of course our vanilla extract is 100% pure Madagascar vanilla extract.
Even our gourmet granola base is 1/3 nuts, 1/3 toasted coconut and 1/3 oats, then we add the things like fresh berries, which we dehydrate ourselves, grade A dark amber maple syrup, unfiltered coconut oil and California or Texas extra version olive oils. When we label it loaded, you better believe it’s loaded.
Our brand stands for quality and value, not price. Are our products the cheapest? Absolutely not, but do they deliver premium value? Without a doubt. I have had many customers quote a higher price when asking how much they owe.
More importantly, a large number of our customers are both repeat customers and an unusually high number of them leave us generous tips. When you have a relatively high number of loyal customers who place a higher value on your products than you charge, you probably got it right.
When people ask me why don’t we charge more, I tell them we make a respectable profit, we can leave some meat on the bone. We want our brand to make people feel good about doing business with us because we are fair and we are about the community and building not taking.
So, when you buy our shave ice, gelatos, ice creams, cookies, granolas and other snack foods, know this, we are not just selling, we are buying, investing and supporting within our community. We buy local, we buy small and we buy black.
Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?
Qi Natural Energy Snack Food Company LLC dba Qi Sweets is about taking a community-based approach to dealing with some of the issues which historically and systemically plague our communities. We live in food deserts by design, we have a high rate of obesity by design, black dollars do not recirculate in the black community by design, we are disproportionately unemployed or underemployed by design.
As a result of this cyclical suppressive design, to0 many of us are subject to generational poverty. As a company, Qi Sweets is committed to helping reengineer that design. We want to be a part of the solution to food deserts by providing high-quality whole food alternatives to what is traditionally offered in our neighborhoods.
We want to provide whole food items like our cold press unsweetened or lightly cane sweeten fresh fruit sodas. They are a healthier replacement for the artificially flavored sugar laden sodas readily found in our communities.
We are committed to buying Black, small and local, as much as possible. And more importantly, we want to provide opportunities that go beyond providing a living wage. We want to provide wealth-building wages and the training necessary to make it happen. Qi believes if our communities grow so do we.
Pricing:
- Most of our products are $10 with some items ranging from $6 to $12.
Contact Info:
- Email: deeking@qisweets.com
- Website: www.qisweets.com
- Instagram: @qi_sweets
- Facebook: facebook.com/qisweets
- Twitter: @qisweets
