Cecilia Robinson is the modern day definition of Superwoman. She is the co-CEO and mastermind behind My Food Bag, a rapidly growing company turning out multi-million dollar revenues. Simultaneously she is a dedicated, doting mother of two young children.
My Food Bag answers the tricky question families’ face every day – what are we having for dinner tonight? The increasingly popular service is based on the home delivery of food parcels containing all the ingredients needed for a week’s main meals together with simple, healthy and delicious recipes.
The business was co-founded by Cecilia and her husband James Robinson, together with celebrity chef and brand ambassador, Nadia Lim and high-profile business personality Theresa Gattung.
Cecilia explains she and husband James run the business together. He oversees the finance, marketing and IT departments, while she runs customer love, operation and procurement and the development kitchen.
“My husband and I are fortunate to have a fantastic working relationship – we complement each other’s skill sets and enjoy working closely together.”
Nadia is the “fantastic” brand ambassador whose food philosophy guides the recipe development in the test kitchen and last, but not least Theresa, fondly known by Cecilia as TG, brings a wealth of business knowledge and connections. “The mix of the people involved has been our magic formula.”
The powerful team have a lofty goal; they want to revolutionise the way New Zealand’s eat. “We want to create healthier and stronger communities throughout New Zealand using food.”
While speaking to Cecilia over the phone, she tells me she’s breastfeeding her three month-old daughter Leila and keeping one eye on four year-old son Thomas as we speak; a handful for any parent, “but that shouldn’t affect our interview” she coolly says. And it doesn’t – she manages all three tasks simultaneously without missing a beat.
Perhaps her ability to multi-task is just a glimpse into how she won the 2012 HER Business Woman of the Year award, the 2013 EY Young Entrepreneur of the Year and the 2014 Business and Innovation category at the annual NEXT Woman of the Year Awards.
Now or never
Originally from Sweden, Cecilia found the inspiration for My Food Bag on a trip visiting her home-country. “I saw this concept overseas and fell in love with it. Immediately I thought ‘that’s what I need’! I love cooking, but I hate the day to day grind of trying to think of what to cook.”
During that stage in their lives the couple was running their first outrageously successful start-up, Au Pair Link – a live-in childcare service.
Cecilia was also pregnant with their first child. “I’d gone on maternity leave and I got sick of doing the things you normally do, like cooking and ironing. I said to my husband that I’d had the idea for My Food Bag and I wanted to write the business plan he looked at me pretty bewildered, but said ‘yip, go ahead honey’, so I did.
“At 41 weeks I was navigating a fat belly while leaning over the computer typing up the business plan for My Food Bag, it was pretty crazy.
“I clicked ‘save’ on the business plan about four hours before I went into labour with Thomas. Four weeks after I’d given birth we were presenting the plan to the board of Au Pair Link.
“Looking back now it was one of my best decisions to pursue My Food Bag when I was just about to give birth! It’s taught me that there is never the right time to pursue a dream and that really it’s the things we don’t do that we generally regret.”
A growing appetite
Launched originally in Auckland in March 2013, My Food Bag struck a chord with kiwis overnight. Now, just over three years on, it’s grown significantly, sweeping the country. So much so it was named national Rising Star in the NZ Deloitte Fast 50 Awards in 2014.
Forty thousand families nationwide from Invercargill to Whangarei now rely on it for their evening meal. It’s catching on across the ditch too after jumping the Tasman in 2014 with operations in Melbourne and Sydney.
“We’ve had huge growth, our forecast revenue for the 2017 financial year is expected to be more than $135 million and that’s in less than three and a half years of being in business. So that’s pretty incredible growth.”
Growing quickly is all well and good, but it means nothing if you’re not equipped for it, a fact that Cecilia is well aware of.
“It sounds amazing to grow at the rate that we have, but it can cause a real logistical nightmare as well. You have to really know what you are doing and put an appropriate plan in place to be able to service that growth.”
She says her strategy to deal with the fast growth is to always stay one step ahead and know the numbers inside out, to be able to anticipate its needs and fill customer demand.
The originally Auckland-based businesses growth into the regions has been fuelled by customer demand, “we go where we are wanted”.
That was certainly the case when the Invercargill and Taupo communities set up Facebook pages calling for My Food Bag to service their towns. “That sort of demand is amazing, we love it. Obviously we have to go to the regions where you’ve got people who rally behind it like that.”
The roaring success of the business comes down to one simple fact. “We have solved the ‘what are we having for dinner tonight’ problem for so many families. I think that is why they choose My Food Bag.
“A lot of our customers come back to us and say My Food Bag is life changing. ‘Suddenly my husband is cooking and my kids are helping and people in the family who wouldn’t normally cook are actually contributing’.”
Double act
Being a full time mum and a business leader is a “really interesting juggle,” Cecilia says, but she has got the double act down to a fine art. Most people think that they have to separate their work from their personal life, but the trick to fulfilling both roles equally is by integrating the two she says.
Both she and James are focused on being working parents, which has been made possible by getting the children into a routine that works for them. She stays present for Leila and Thomas during the day and pops into the office while Leila is napping.
In the evening she and James cook dinner together, using My Food Bag of course, before putting their children to bed and continuing to work on the business into the evening. “It means I’m able to maximise my time with them while still being able to be there for the business. We just make it work.”
Coincidence, or not, Cecilia’s two start-ups Au Pair Link, which they sold almost two years ago, and My Food Bag, both serve functions which ease the pressures of daily domestic life.
She says James often jokes that she creates companies just to make her life easier, but that’s just an added bonus she laughs. “I’m really passionate about solving real problems that families come across every day. I identify with the target market and see what the problems and opportunities are because we have the same problems and struggles as any other family.”
Just as her time is split so too are her goals. Personally her focus is on raising a happy family and spending a lot of time together. But of course the business woman in her has big goals too.
She aims to continue the development and expansion of the My Food Bag empire. What that will actually materialise into is under wraps for now, but no doubt it will be a raging success.
