#2 - The Big Idea
An origin story made for Hollywood
But what was the idea, I hear you asking. How did this lightbulb moment happen? And when, and where?
By early 2014 Davy, our second and youngest bundle of joy, had been at pre-school for a few months. Subsequently I had more time on my hands and, not unreasonably, my wife had been asking me to think about going back to work in some form.
I knew I didn’t want to (and in fact couldn’t) go back into fashion. I’d been a product photographer, taking e-commerce photos of perfume bottles, shoes and handbags for people like Tom Ford, Donna Karan and Calvin Klein. But the industry changed overnight around the time that Davy was born, the work all being taken in-house by these brands when they realized they could pay a college-aged kid the same amount to work full time for a year that they’d been paying me to work for seven days. You couldn’t blame them.
So it was that one day I found myself sitting in our apartment on 10th street just after my 42nd birthday, looking out over the snowy rooftops of the West Village, not knowing what to do with my life and trying to control the associated incoming panic attack. Like most stay at home parents I was lonely too, and the lack of conversation - the silence - was making my head feel especially stuck, like I couldn’t use my brain properly to find a solution. I felt frozen. What the hell was I going to do?!
I’ve loved New York since I moved here from the UK in 1998. I don’t know where the breadcrumb trail came from that day but it went something like this: volunteer work = new people / conversation. Volunteer work with elderly New Yorkers = fascinating stories about this incredible city. And maybe, just maybe, it might even lead to some kind of inspiration regarding a new career. Why I thought that, I have no idea - talk about clutching at straws, right?
Regardless of (or maybe because of) my wildly unrealistic expectations, I forged ahead with this slightly mad plan. I did some Googling, found an amazing organization called Dorot and three weeks later, on a Friday morning, nervously got on the subway to go and visit my new friends Ben and Pegi. They were the loveliest couple in the world and we became fast friends, fast. Every Friday morning we’d sit in their sun-drenched apartment on the Upper West Side and talk about our week. It was like group therapy, but fun.
My contributions to our chats nearly always revolved around my children not eating, my discovery of the research about giving kids more responsibility at the table, and the increasingly urgent need for me to find a new career - and gradually, over time, the possibility that these things might all be connected. I was still surprised though, when Pegi emailed me one Thursday evening in early 2015 to say she had a business proposition. I hadn’t been serious - had I?
When I saw her the next day she said she’d seen an episode of Shark Tank and had watched, infuriated, as two women secured a deal for their product - multi-colored, neon-hued, sugar-filled edible cookie dough for kids. Forget unhealthy, this stuff was radioactive! Pegi said she’d sat and thought about it for a second and had almost immediately come up with a healthy version: little tubes of different-colored organic fruit and vegetable puree that kids could ‘paint’ on their food and then eat. Edible paint. An easy, low-impact segue from playtime to dinnertime, plus it would give kids agency at the table. When she’d finished describing it to me I stared at her in silence for a second, then picked up my phone and started tapping color / flavor combos into it, immediately inspired, asking her questions as I did so. Within ten minutes we had our rainbow set of “Food Paint” (red strawberry, orange carrot, yellow peach, green pea, blueberry and purple beet) and within twenty we were laughing, imagining how much we’d sell the company for.
And that was it. The train had left the station and was gathering speed fast, and it was all I could do to hold on: I was inspired, full of ideas and raring to go. I went home, ordered a Cuisinart blender on Amazon and got to work. As you can see below, the early results were promising.
This was going to be easy - right?
