Today we’d like to introduce you to Melanie Carr.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Melanie. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Growing up, our family always ate dinner together around the table. My mom could make a meal out of almost anything, and often scrounged together whatever ingredients were available from our garden and limited pantry to feed the 7 of us regularly. After marrying, I continued to cook at home, and our family grew. My husband and I are both from large families with home-cooking “traditions”, so there were lots of recipes from both families that we shared as well as always looking for new things to try. Eventually, a plethora of family recipes, magazine recipe cut-outs, and fading recipe cards had collected in my kitchen, and I was ready for a way to organize it to easily find what I was looking for when I needed it, grabbing old favorites or new ideas for meal planning and grocery shopping, and easily sharing those recipes with family and friends. Thus in 2012 Dish Dish was born – to help families do just that – while being able to access everything online either at home or on the go.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It has definitely been a bumpy road. One of the biggest struggles along the way has been learning to speak up to others about my business; as an introvert, this is something I consistently have to be intentional about – getting out and about, interacting with others, and being loud and proud about how we can help families enjoy their recipes, foodie traditions, family meal gatherings, special occasions, and family heritage through meals shared across generations.
Of course, there are always those initial thoughts that if you build something wonderful, people will come running to experience it; but there’s a lot of work in building a brand, sharing the vision and story in a way that inspires others to jump on board and be part of a growing community.
An additional challenge was determining the best resources and providers for the various types of services my small business needed – from IT development and support to branding and marketing as well as product development. That was a bigger challenge than I had anticipated early on.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Dish Dish story. Tell us more about the business.
Dish Dish is a social gathering place for families and community groups to enjoy saving, sharing, and passing along favorite recipes and family traditions. We are centered on inspiring families to cook at home, enjoy time around the dinner table, and pass along their family heritage and foodie traditions to the next generation before that opportunity is lost. Members are able to not only save their recipes online, but edit them and add photos or notes, add recipe ingredients to their grocery list, resize recipes with the click of a button (for smaller or larger groups) and plan meals, download a printable copy of their recipe collection, as well as share recipes easily all in one place. Along the way, we’ve added an iOS app (Dish Dish Online Cookbook), 4-week Menu Plans with Grocery List, Dish Dish branded products – bamboo cutting board and a decorative apron, as well as a Digital Recipe Album service (we send an envelope to collect all your paper recipes and enter those into your online cookbook), and a Business Pro account for small business owners who save and share recipes privately with their clients or staff such as caterers, bakeries, health coaches, etc.
I love as a company that we allow members to follow their friends or family members, so they can view each other’s recipe collections (it is fun to look up my sisters’ saved recipes or the ones that my friends have recently added). We also provide a way for members to save recipes with tags such as gluten-free, dairy-free, diabetic friendly, auto-immune (AIP), and other health or allergy related categories, so they can quickly find the ones well-suited for their friends or family members, which sets us apart.
There’s so much less stress around mealtime when you can plan things out with all your favorite recipes at your fingertips along with your grocery list; cooking and dishing up meals are always more fun when we can share them with the ones we love – even if those people are halfway around the world.
Do you feel like our city is a good place for businesses like yours? If someone was just starting out, would you recommend them starting out here? If not, what can our city do to improve?
Yes, I feel like this area is a great place to start a business. The areas around here are growing significantly, booming really, and there are so many resources for helping small businesses on their journey in a variety of ways.
Pricing:
- One year Dish Dish pro membership $19/year
- 4-week Menu Plan with Grocery List download $19
- Digital Recipe Album service packages start at $50
- Business Pro Membership (caterers, health coaches, etc) $99/year
- Gather with Grateful Hearts apron $21.95
- Bamboo cutting board with handle $14.95
Contact Info:
- Address: 2230 Morriss Rd, Ste 100-173
Flower Mound, TX 75028 - Website: https://dishdish.us
- Phone: 214-450-7612
- Email: melanie@dishdish.us
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dishdishllc/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dishdish.us/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/dishdishmc
- Other: https://www.youtube.com/user/dishdishus
Getting in touch: VoyageDallas is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
