Episode #244: Rowena Scherer – Growing a cooking kit brand to seven figures without VC
How a finance-trained founder grew a global cooking kit company to seven figures with no VC funding and a small team.
For consumer brand founders sitting at the million dollar revenue plateau and deciding what to bet on next.
Rowena Scherer is the founder of Eat2Explore, a global culinary experience company that helps adults and families explore world cultures through cooking. She left a finance career that brought her to the United States through J.P. Morgan, launched a fresh meal kit in 2017, and pivoted to shelf-stable kits after deciding the meal kit model would not work. After crossing $1M in revenue, she made a conscious decision not to raise VC and to grow organically instead. Jason and Rowena cover how homeschool families found the brand through Facebook comments, why she launched an adult edition with drink pairings that is already 40% of revenue, and how she keeps a business that earns more than half its revenue in Q4 working the rest of the year.
WHAT YOU’LL HEAR
– Why Rowena chose not to raise VC after crossing $1M, and what happened to brands that raised after COVID
– How a live survey at the Bryant Park holiday market and her appearance on How I Built This led to the adult edition with drink pairings
– Why the fresh meal kit model broke within three months, why school sales can swallow a founder’s time, and why PR became pay to play
– How to test ideas without really spending, then scale only what works, while keeping costs flat
