From Food Blogger to Wild Rise Pizza Co. | Natalie Perry

Transcript note: This full episode transcript was lightly formatted for readability. Speakers are Jet Bunditwong and Natalie Perry.

[00:08] Jet Bunditwong: Hi, welcome to the Personal Side of Business. This is Jet Bunditwong. We are here in Boise, Idaho with Natalie Perry. She has been a food blogger for 17 years. We're gonna explore how she got here and what her story is into her second business. Welcome to the podcast, Natalie. So tell us, how did we get here?

[00:27] Natalie Perry: Thank you.

[00:31] Natalie Perry: So in 08, I had a personal blog of like, you know, when everyone shares their stories about their kids and whatnot, and I would always share recipes that I liked. And I realized that I was sharing more food than I was with my kids. And so I decided to move all the food to just a free website. And I liked the idea of having my recipe collection digitized so I could organize it and share links if I wanted. so I just did the I didn't anticipate becoming a food blogger. It happened sort of organically. And so when I realized that other people were leaving comments and saying things on my posts, I thought well maybe like I should make it look better. And so I just got into the photography. And so it kind of just morphed into this job that I have now. So it's I didn't set out to do it or to be a food blogger. It just sort of happened to me. And along the way I learned how to do photography and all the technical parts of it. And it's opened some doors that have been really exciting for me. I wrote a couple cookbooks. I worked for Ree Drummond. a pioneer woman for ten years on her website and it's just been a ride. So

[01:34] Jet Bunditwong: No, you were doing this in the beginning all on your own. Yes. When was it that you decided that you were gonna start to seek marketing help and help in other areas for the business?

[01:46] Natalie Perry: Well, I am still doing it all on my own. I mean, along the way I had help occasionally with social media. I had someone doing my newsletters for a while. There have been parts of the of the time where, you know, I had three kids during that time and so I would have to kinda pull back and then we moved a couple times. And so there've been periods where I've been all in and then and and periods where I've had to just let it float for a bit. And blogs are nice like that because you can kinda pull away when you need to and it kinda just keeps going. At the moment It's just me. But I've pulled away a little bit to do another gig. And so I'm doing that with my kids right now. And so I don't actually have any marketing help at the moment. It's just me.

[02:23] Jet Bunditwong: Yeah, so we're gonna come back to your your new cake. When you started your food block, what was the vision at that time, the first couple of years?

[02:35] Natalie Perry: I just wanted a place for my recipes to live in case my house burnt down. 'Cause I wouldn't lose them all in a binder. Honestly. Like I didn't anticipate being a blogger or an influencer or anything. I mean, I knew of food blogs. It was back in two thousand eight where it was a relatively new thing. Yeah. And people would just throw recipes online and we didn't have to worry about SEO or tagging things correctly or anything else technical. And so it was just a very I don't know to where it is.

[03:03] Jet Bunditwong: I was just like straightforward. It was just getting information. Yeah. And what what was it what were some of the things that you learned along the way that you had to adjust to as the almost twenty years transpired?

[03:16] Natalie Perry: So many things. I learned the first thing I learned was hey, I can actually make money from this. And so there's there are certain things I had to do in order for it to be worth my time. Someone

[03:28] Jet Bunditwong: Is that organically that you started realizing you can make money from this? Or you learned from someone else or other people that you saw they were making money and then you s decided to do it?

[03:37] Natalie Perry: It was that. Yeah. So I I had been following other food bloggers and realized like other more popular ones, like, people actually make money from this. And so I I worked hard to grow my traffic for a while and I was part of a few ad networks for a while, running ads on my site. That's how I earn an income from my website. And so I had to learn how to Pretty much appease Google. That's kind of the goal of everything and then beyond social media. So I had to be a recipe developer, a food photographer, lightweight website management, SEO, which is kind of the bane of everyone. If you ask any food blogger what the part they hate is always SEO. So I should ha have hired that part out right now. I have someone working for me who's trying to fix my site. Where we're the the there's about ten years where I just gave Google the middle finger because I just wanted to do things on my own and I hated it all. Just gonna you know, but it kinda shot myself in the foot for a while. So I'm c I'm digging myself out of that. And that's yeah, I've had to learn a lot of things. And there's parts that I like and parts that I really don't like.

[04:41] Jet Bunditwong: So w what were some of the ways that you got better at some of those very specific parts of the business? Like a like the photography photography part. Did you look up things on YouTube or go to C L for it?

[04:56] Natalie Perry: So I bought my very first big camera and on Cr so we were students at the time when I started my blog. My husband was in chiropractic school and I bought a camera on Craigslist and just taught myself how use it and I had other people that I'd followed online who I admired their photography and so I'd ask them like, Hey, how do you do this? And I kinda just picked the brains of people I knew and looked up stuff online and figured it out myself. As far as the photography part, the rest of it just researching online, I've taken some courses on SEO and like email management and things like that. So

[05:28] Jet Bunditwong: Yeah, so you were your your own team. Yeah. and then over the the time as you started gaining followers, what what was your vision and how did that change in it? Did you start to see it as a different type of business now that like I can make money in multiple ways? Because like you said, you got into writing a book or multiple books and now you're starting another business. And I feel like that business is kind of an offspring of this in a sense, right? Because you can gain you can use that to your followers to jump onto this, go, this is what I'm doing. So now you check it out. Come check out what I'm doing now. And by the way, for what Natalie i has started is a a pizza kit company, maybe you can talk about that as well a after you answer that question. So what was your vision as it started changing as you started gaining more followers and you got better at being a blogger?

[06:26] Natalie Perry: It did two things. It it made me realize what the potential was because food bloggers make it was a wide range. There's some that make multiple hundreds of thousand dollars a year. There's some that just do it as a hobby, that just kind of a side income. I'm kind of in the middle. And so I realized that there was a lot of potential, but I wasn't sure if I was willing to put in the effort to go there because I feel like after years and years and years and years of doing the same thing and a lot of it I love, but a lot of it really wears on you. And so I felt like I needed a change. And so I after I I wrote a couple of cookbooks and I kept going on my blog, I just I think I just got burned out a little bit and I just wanted to use I wanted to keep I wanted to keep doing the parts of blogging that I loved, which is the recipe development, the photography, and just sharing really great food with people and just turn it into something else. And I like and doing this pizza thing allows me to do more f more physical things with food interaction with people. Whereas online it's I have this. had this recipe, here, go try it. I like just making physical food for people. It just makes you really happy.

[07:29] Jet Bunditwong: Are there certain types of foods that you like to stick with or a genre of foods that you like?

[07:36] Natalie Perry: I've always had my blog has always had a healthier focus. we were mostly paleo for several years, so my cookbooks are actually book paleo friendly. my website is almost all gluten-free. There's a lot of paleo. we did whole 30 for a long time. That was really popular. I have a lot of recipes for that. Just kind of a fresher, healthier spin on it.

[07:58] Jet Bunditwong: Yeah, and are there in the future have you looked at certain types of cooking styles or foods that you want to get into that are gonna challenge you with your food plotting?

[08:11] Natalie Perry: I don't know how to amper that. I love dabbling in everything. So I've I mean I love dabbling in ethnic food and try to like recreate flavors I have in restaurants at home. I've tr I like making things from scratch, like things you probably wouldn't normally make from scratch. I like fermenting things like sourdough, kimchi, sauerkraut. I'm doing kombucha right now and I just I love that whole process. Kinda geek out.

[08:36] Jet Bunditwong: Yeah, you educated me on the whole beginning process of sourdough and what's called a starter, which I didn't l which I didn't know anything about and I almost wish I never learned that. Could you explain to an average listener who doesn't understand what a starter is, w what it looks like and w what what really it is? It's 'cause it's kind of bacteria. Yeah.

[09:01] Natalie Perry: It's basically a bacteria colony that you use. So when you make bread from yeast at the grocery store, the yeast is just is dried and like packaged and then it sort of comes back to life when you add moisture to it and add it to a dough and then it makes your baked goods fluff. So all sourdough is is a wild version of that yeast that people have been using for hundreds of years, maybe longer. so what it is it's the mixture of flour and water that's been fermenting and it's has little bacteria colony in it and you keep feeding it flour and water and you use it to bake and Yeah. It's like a little pet.

[09:35] Jet Bunditwong: Yeah. And she was describing it to me that she has to go up and and every couple days give it some some food or something for it to to stay alive. I was I don't know. I love sourdough, but not as much anymore. I think it's changed my view on it. okay, so let's talk about your new business, the Wabra's Pizza Company. what is it and what inspired you to to do this?

[10:03] Natalie Perry: So what I do is I sell sourdough pizza kits to for people to make pizza at home. So I give them my fermented sourdough, which I ferment for like four or five days, and it makes the benefit of sourdough is it's more digestible. it's got a lot of probiotics in it. It's it tastes really good. I love the texture it creates. And so I give them my dough and some sauce and cheese and toppings so they can make like a really, really great pizza at home. I make everything from scratch, all my sauces, I prep everything fresh. So it's kinda like a take and bake, but you put it they they get to do the best part. I spend it's like having a homemade pizza experience, but r fast forward to just opening the box and putting it together. So I do all the work and then they can just make it at home.

[10:46] Jet Bunditwong: What's what's the percentage of error that someone that buys it can can mess up on this when they get home? Or is it it's really straightforward?

[10:56] Natalie Perry: I try I include instructions in all my tips and so far it's been okay. I had some testers as I started doing this just to test the kits for me so I could get feedback on like what kind of instructions I needed to do and a friend of mine said that they're like way into pizza. They have an uni pizza oven. Her husband like launches it from a peel, like throws it in and out like legit, right? So it's like, Yes, try this. But a sourdo pizza dough I found is a lot stickier than a regular pizza dough. So he had a hard time like releasing it from his peel, so that's That's kinda one thing I learned about it. So I did make some notes about how to adapt for that, but that was kind of the only hang up I feel like out of well at least I've heard about. No one's told me.

[11:37] Jet Bunditwong: Yeah. Yeah. And what's interesting when you were describing to me how sourdough is made from that starter kit. So basically all of your customers are eating from the same sourdough. Yeah. Right. That's

[11:54] Natalie Perry: And my s and my starter's six years old. So I I started it six years ago and I've been continually using it and feeding it for six years. And there's starters like in San Francisco, so is huge. There's starters that are like almost a hundred years old, which is

[12:07] Jet Bunditwong: Does that taste change over time as a starter ages?

[12:16] Natalie Perry: think so like so it changes over time and it also changes depending on where you live because the starter takes on the bacteria from its environment and so depending on where you live there's different things in the air. And I think whatever is in San Francisco makes a really great starter which makes really great bread. So that's why it's the famous for that.

[12:17] Jet Bunditwong: Does it I don't know?

[12:37] Jet Bunditwong: Wow, that's that's interesting. I wonder if have have you ever heard of sourdough that's made somewhere else that maybe a major city or something? Mm my guess is San Francisco and nothing against San Francisco, but I'm sure there's certain pollutants and and bacteria and stuff that's in the air that's getting to that and probably makes makes it great.

[12:59] Natalie Perry: And a lot of times if you have a starter in one place and like you move across the country, sometimes a starter will struggle because it's in a new environment and you might have to like retrain it to be okay. That's always it's always good to get a starter from where you live.

[13:13] Jet Bunditwong: It's like a creature that you have to maintain. So how many flavors do you have right now with a a wild rice?

[13:21] Natalie Perry: So the kits. so we have I sell the dough by itself and then I have two basic kits. So one you can just build your own, add whatever toppings you want. I have a classic margarita with fresh basil and mozzarella. And then I have a seasonal couple of kits that I rotate out every few months. right now it's a barbecue chicken one, and then the other one is like a pesto sweet corn goat cheese.

[13:42] Jet Bunditwong: What was your inspiration for each of these? Tastes.

[13:46] Natalie Perry: the barbecue chicken one is actually my husband and I went to Boston to a pizza place and they had a similar one with it was I think it was pulled pork or something. And it had the caramelized onions and the roasted chilies on it. I thought that was such a great combination. And so I just s switched out barbecue chicken and added some things and ended up being really great. the pesto sweet corn one, I saw it online a couple years ago and I kinda just made it butter because I thought it needed help. But it ended up being like one of our favorite pizzas that summer. My husband loves it. And has a hot honey drizzle. nice. I love hot honey.

[14:20] Jet Bunditwong: Nice. Nice. And so right now you're you're ex growing this locally here in in Boise. What are you what are your plans for the business as it goes? It can it be an e commerce based type of business where people can buy it from four or five states away and be able to get it. Have you thought about that?

[14:42] Natalie Perry: I have and a lot of people have asked me, Hey, do you ship? And right now that's I don't know if I can even my first thought goes to like when I tell the health department, what are they gonna make me do? 'Cause it's there's so many hoops you have to jump through to actually do food that's not in your house. And that's one of the reasons why so when I was stri when I wanted to do a something else, I s I considered a micro bakery 'cause I'd followed some micro bakeries online, women who just or people who Do sourdough bread from home. So they sell the b the baked loaves, but I didn't want to buy a commercial oven from my house. And I thought I could do the pizza dough from home, but you can't. You have to do it in a in a in a a commercial kitchen. And so that's why I'm here. But I actually really love it. I've always wanted to work in a commercial kitchen. Not necessarily in a restaurant, so this is a good like middle ground for me. as far as long term, I've considered some things, but this is still really brand new. Like we literally just started a month ago. And so I'm gonna give it time to see if it's something they wanna do long term. I've been doing it with my kids, which has been really fun. I think if I could envision it long term, I would love to do either like a food truck and actually bake the pizzas and kind of morph it into that, or have just a brick and mortar place where people can just come pick up kits whenever they want instead of our weekly

[16:01] Jet Bunditwong: Yeah, I be I mean, I think that's normally that's a great way to grow with it, right? To have I think to test it out in different I guess stages of it when you're saying with the food truck. and I mean that's also branding. I always look at it then I think a lot of times people will, that I've worked with will go from I have this food I I make at home, it's great and then decide to get into brick and mortar right away and there's all these steps of Not just financially but testing to make sure that it's it's gonna be doable for the costs and analysis and everything like that. Is that something that you have really dug into for this, for how much it costs for each of them, and then how much you're selling it for? Is can you explain some of that to listeners?

[16:51] Natalie Perry: Yeah, so the reason why I kinda was okay doing this is because it it's not actually a lot of upfront investment. Renting a c r renting a commercial kitchen space is actually not as expensive as I thought it would be. And so, I felt like it was I mean c I mean compared to renting a commercial business space, which we've done in our family in the past and it's very, very expensive, especially around here. And so I felt like this is a low risk I can test out for a while to see if it's viable long term and even I could even stay here for a while. I mean this this kitchen I'm in has the capacity. I could be okay here. and not even move anywhere else for a while. and yeah, I I did a lot of homework. I broke down the cost of every single thing and took that into consideration as well as my time as far as how I priced things. I did a lot of recipe testing months before I started of There's a lot of details, like what's how much weight for each piece of dough and how much sauce needs to go in each thing, how many how many how many toppings and like finding containers for everything. Like I really tried to do it eco friendly. So I wanted to find compostable containers for everything. I'm working on that still. sourcing good cheese. Like it's just a lot of background work that went into this, but it was all like really fun. I loved it.

[18:10] Jet Bunditwong: And when you're when you were experimenting and making it, how many adjustments do you think if you can look back on it that you did in order to get to where you are now?

[18:20] Natalie Perry: Have a notebook. I'm just really glad my p my family does not get tired of pizza because we ate pizza a couple times a week for months. And they didn't care. Just like, hey, we're in pizza again. So it's I made lots of adjustments. I'd already had a solid pizza dough recipe that I'd been using for years. so it's just about

[18:23] Jet Bunditwong: Well you a blogger.

[18:45] Natalie Perry: It was just I wanted to scale it down so I can make batches of a certain number and have it be consistent. And so I would make like six to twelve doughs worth of dough at a time. Just to like test measurements. I tested a lot of like measurements for things and so there was a lot of tweaking and I got my sauce just right and that's kind of that's that that's the recipe development part that I love, that I've been doing forever and that I'm pretty good at and so that's I I love doing that part.

[19:12] Jet Bunditwong: So I I was curious of this and now what you're explaining all the different testing that you've done. When you were w normally when you're doing the recipes on your fruit blog, are you really do you live by the measurements and and all of those normally when you cook? No. Okay.

[19:32] Natalie Perry: Okay. But there are a lot of people on the internet that need r very specific instructions and very specific measurements. So I feel like cooking versus baking is a little more loosey-goosey, like you just throw stuff together and it turns out good, but not everyone's comfortable doing that. And so when I'm doing recipe development for my blog, I kind of make it how I want, but I I also measure things while I'm doing it and take notes. and so I can go back and recreate it again with the same measurements just to make sure it's consistently good when it turns out. And I keep in mind as I'm doing it, how would a person who isn't really familiar in the kitchen, like how would they feel making this recipe? Like would they have a question about this thing or this thing and try to put I try to be very thorough as I can when I when I create recipes.

[20:15] Jet Bunditwong: But then when you started the Wild Rise, now you have to be really accurate on it. I think I from a business perspective. Yeah.

[20:22] Natalie Perry: So like financially, yes, I don't wanna end up with a lot of wasted food and so I've done a lot of homework and pricing ingredients and things but and then I also want it to be scalable. So I mean right now if I'm just prepping stuff myself I can kinda eyeball things and it's turned out consistent 'cause I've done this a million times. But if I have someone working for me, I'm gonna have to write out more I mean, I kinda did that for my kids 'cause my two teenage daughters are helping me with this. And so I have like recipes scale to different amounts and they help me like prep stuff. But I'm learning I have to be even more specific with things because I can't just put a list of ingredients. They're like, well, when does this go in? When do I I mean they're I mean they know how to cook kind of, but that's something I've kept in mind as far as scaling and hiring employees and being able to step away and have someone run this for me if it's gonna be doable and and not just me and her all the time doing

[21:09] Jet Bunditwong: Pizza from my un what I understand is pretty I wouldn't say low cost f fo food to make, but I think it's more manageable than I don't know, trying to make like a I don't know, maybe a like a hamburger or something like that. I is is that correct? Would you say like is that accurate or

[21:30] Natalie Perry: It can be. So pizza cr like the dough itself is relatively inexpensive. because I do sourdough I feel like it it needs a higher price point because of the expertise involved in making sourdough. Not everyone wants to do that. It's a lot of work to maintain a starter. there's also more time involved. I let my dough sit for three or four days in the fridge before I I give it out in order for it to get the best texture and taste. it depends on what toppings, like. my seasonal ones are actually More work and it's more expensive than I anticipate. I mean I priced everything out, but just the work involved because I've tried to do everything from scratch. So my barbecue chicken pizza has a balsamic barbecue sauce that I make myself. I have a custom seasoning that I put on the chicken that I make myself. And so I'm making the chicken. I'm making the barbecue sauce. I'm spending 45 minutes caramelizing onions and roasting chilies and making my own cheese blends. And so I wanted this to be like the best pizza ever. And so I I have all this I love making stuff from scratch. And so that's kind of why I I could actually I sh should probably bump the price up a little bit on those. Just now that I've had a few weeks under my belt making those, like, that's a lot of work. But still learning too.

[22:37] Jet Bunditwong: But I think the And in terms of the products, how many flavors or different lines of the the pizza tastes are you gonna have, you think?

[22:50] Natalie Perry: Like long term? Yeah. I tend to be one that overschedules myself and thinks too big but

[22:57] Jet Bunditwong: You're gonna become like a California pizza kitchen. No.

[23:00] Natalie Perry: Theoretically that sounds so fun to me, but I need to I mean if I have the capacity, sure I'd love to have all kinds of offerings. But at the moment I'm really trying to have discipline and keeping my menu simple. And that's I follow a lot of microbakeries online and that's one of the biggest chips everyone says is keep your menu simple, especially at the beginning while you're getting your your bearings. I have so many ideas though. I have like a couple dozen different pizza ideas in the pipes. that I want to and that's kind of where the seasonal one is coming out. So I'm gonna replace those with some fall ones pretty soon and they'll have some winter ones and different seasons. and so I have big dreams but I don't know if I have like the f capacity to do that unless I have a lot of I guess I don't know, maybe I could do that someday. If I had like a brick and mortar place, I'd love to expand it. Yeah. But I'm trying to keep it small for now.

[23:49] Jet Bunditwong: Yeah, and you know, to start to wrap up, what are what would your advice be to someone who wants to get into food blogging and then will do a part two to it, someone who will actually wants to create a mobile food business.

[24:12] Natalie Perry: Food bug my first reaction was, Don't do it.

[24:16] Jet Bunditwong: Yeah, I it's it's always funny people in food and beverage tell other people not to do it.

[24:21] Natalie Perry: Just the blogging part though. So you have to really, really love food and really love cooking and just you have to just have that passion because it's hard and it takes a long time to build something to make it financially worthwhile. And just do SEO from the beginning. there are a lot more resources now than there were when I started. just do a lot of research, talk to a lot of food bloggers. the industry is changing. And so keep that in mind too. as far as mobile food business, I am still getting my feet wet in it. It's been a really fun change. And also if you I think you have to really love food and really love cooking as well in order to do that one is that one. And so there is a lot of things I've learned about working in a commercial kitchen, getting permits and certifications for things that I didn't know about before. So it's been really fun for me to learn that.

[25:12] Jet Bunditwong: How have you figured out all of those admin and legal and state and city aspects of the business? Just research or did you actually go get mentorship from someone?

[25:27] Natalie Perry: A combination of the two. when I realized that I couldn't do this from home, I started researching commercial kitchens and then through contacts I made with that, I learned I had to have a food safety certification. So I just did it online and then I talked to the health department about what kind of permitting I needed. Because my business isn't real it's not a restaurant, it's not a food truck, it's a permanent thing, but it's not here all the time. So I didn't know what to classify myself. So just call the health department and they'll give you they'll tell you everything you need to know. It was pretty straightforward after that.

[25:58] Jet Bunditwong: Awesome. And for those of you that are just listening to the audio, we're gonna put a YouTube video where Natalie is actually gonna show us how to make one of her kits, her pizza kits. So it's gonna be really interesting. So thank you, Natalie. If you are just listening to just the audio, thank you Natalie for joining the podcast, the personal side of business.

[26:21] Natalie Perry: You're welcome. It's awesome to be here. Thank you.