Zack Arnold

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Taking Meal Prep to the Next Level (The Return of Prep Dish)

About Episode

Let’s face it: When you routinely work 16 hours a day in front of a computer, one of the greatest challenges is maintaining a healthy diet. On Monday morning you resolve to do better this week, but as the deadlines pile on and the time begins to disappear, your willpower quickly erodes and you’ll grab whatever you can quickly to keep moving. If you’re lucky it’s Chinese or Thai provided by your office assistant, and if you’re not so lucky, it’s a bowl of cereal and Oreo’s (I’ve been there myself…I’m not judging). And if you truly want to eat healthy either at the office cafeteria or by ordering out yourself, it’s going to cost you a second mortgage.

But what if you could start creating a workflow for your daily meals no different than your creative workflows? In this episode I chat with returning guest Allison Schaaf, the creator of Prep Dish. In episode 66 Allison and I talked about the basic fundamentals of bulk meal preparation, and in this episode we do an even deeper dive into how you can really optimize your process for creating a week’s worth of food in just a few hours every weekend.

Click here for 2 free Prep Dish meal plans

Transcript

Zack Arnold: I’m here today with returning guest, Allison Schaaf and I’m super, super excited about this episode, because I don’t remember exactly when it was. It was episode 66 so it would have been a little bit less than a year ago. I had the pleasure of having Allison on the show, but I was a little intimidated, because I really didn’t know my way around the kitchen, and I was like, What am I going to talk about on this show? But a lot has changed, thanks, in part, to the service that you provide prep dish, and we’re going to talk about that today. So thank you so much for being a returning guest on the show.

Allison Schaaf: Thanks for having me back. I’m excited to talk again.

Zack Arnold: And one of the things that you and I talked about offline a little bit ago, before we started, was how surprised I was at the response that I got to this episode, because I was really kind of doing it totally selfishly. I’m like, this is something I want to learn how to do, and it’s a skill that I need to possess. So I’m going to use that as an excuse to get you on the show, because you’re an expert, and we’re going to talk, and I don’t think anybody’s going to listen. And then you contacted me, and you’re like, This is one of the most popular podcasts that I did, and your audience loved it. And I was shocked.

Allison Schaaf: Yeah, no, it seems that your audience really was interested in meal prep. So that’s awesome.

Zack Arnold: Well, the pieces that I started to put together based on the emails that I received and the comments that I would get on Facebook or Twitter, I think what really resonates is the systematization of meal planning, because my audience loves workflows. They love efficiency. They love systems. So I don’t think it was, oh, here’s somebody talking about cooking. It was, here’s somebody talking about how to cook efficiently, because I have no time.

Allison Schaaf: Yeah, no, and that’s, I agree. That’s exactly how I look at it.

Zack Arnold: So that being the case, for anybody that’s listening that is a new listener. I have a lot of new people since we had our episode a little bit less than a year ago. That one is episode 66 I want to do a little bit of repeat just so everybody listening isn’t like I have no idea what the service is, and I’m totally lost. So let’s just kind of do we’ll take a step backwards, and I want to do a little bit of an introduction to the service. We’ll do a little bit of repeated information to catch people up. Then I want to really dive into the weeds, because I’ve learned a lot since you and I talked the last time. So assuming you had never been on the show, can you kind of give me the elevator pitch of who you are, your background and what prep dish is all about?

Allison Schaaf: Yeah, sure. So I started out as a personal chef, so I would go into people’s homes once a week and prep their meals for the week and set them up so they could, you know, eat healthy all week long. I’m also a dietitian by background, so eating, you know, real, unprocessed foods, is really important to me, and in my work as a personal chef, I realized one that I had developed a system to really efficiently prepare food for people. And two, I realized if I wanted to really reach more people, the best way to do that was to write out my system, so versus me going into everyone’s home and cooking for them, as wonderful as that might sound, you know, I had created this system, and I figured out a way, how can I write this down and send this out to the masses? And so as I sat down to think that through, I realized really, most of what I was doing could easily be replicated by the home cook. So it sort of broke out into three pieces. So one piece was putting together this really organized grocery list. Once you have that grocery list, there’s a few things you can do with it. One, you can go to the store. It’s organized by grocery store department, or you can even send it off for grocery delivery. So nowadays, there’s a lot of, you know, grocery delivery services. So that’s even, you know, a way to save even more time. And then the second piece was prep day. And this is really the key, and this is prepping your meal, you know, prepping the food ahead of time. So things like chopping your vegetables, mixing up the marinades, putting together a sauce, just everything that can be done in advance is done in advance. And when you do this, you know there’s efficiency in the fact that you’re, you know, only pulling out the cutting board once, and you’re, you’re really only having to invest time once a week versus every single night, scrambling to prepare the meals. And then the third piece was just once you get to that meal time, what do you do to get dinner on the table? But of course, at that point, it’s very simple, because you’ve already done the grocery shopping. You’ve done the prepping and shopping and all that. So mealtime is really pretty much a breeze at that point.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and that’s really the key to this whole service, is that it saves so much time. And that’s the response that I get from people. Is they say, Man, I just I can’t believe how much more efficient I am. And that is encouraging to people, because the number one challenge that I’ve heard about from my audience over and over and over for years, is I’m tired of sitting all day long, so that’s really where I put a lot of my effort and energy is building efficiencies and systems to allow people to move more throughout the day. But probably a very close second is I’m so tired of having Chinese food at 830 every night, because that’s what they feed me on my late evenings, I wish that I just had some. Thing that I could pull out of the fridge at the office that I had made three days ago. But I don’t know where to start, and that’s really where a system like this comes in. And I think that the the other thing that in, I think I don’t remember exactly how far I was into using the service when we talked, I think it was fairly new to me. I had heard you on another podcast, and I had said, Ooh, this sounds really cool. I should try this, because it’s totally my kind of thing. And then I connected with you, like, right after. So I think I had maybe only done a week or two, but one of the biggest discoveries that I had with prep dish was that not only was the meal planning really solid and really kind of taught me how to be like a professional chef in the kitchen and be very efficient, but dear Lord, the recipes are good.

Allison Schaaf: Yeah, no. I mean, you’re no one’s gonna eat healthy if it tastes bad, you really have to make sure that the food tastes good. And that’s what I’ve always said, is I’m a chef and a dietitian, but you have to be a chef first, because if the food doesn’t taste good, no one’s gonna stick with it long term. So yeah,

Zack Arnold: And it’s what I’ve also found has happened for me is there are certain meals that are now staples, where I started doing them in the prep dish format, but then it’s just gotten to the point where I’ve done them enough, and I know them so well, like in this was completely a coincidence. It was. I did one of your recipes for dinner tonight because it’s just a staple for me. It’s your meat sauce with marinara, and it’s a super simple recipe. It’s like, six ingredients, takes 30 minutes. I will never buy canned tomato sauce or spaghetti sauce again, because it’s cheaper and it tastes better. But I realized I’m like, Oh, wait, I learned this in prep dish, and I totally forgot about it, because there it’s with a lot of these meal planning services, and that’s one of the areas where I wanted where I wanted to go tonight, and I don’t think we talked about this too much, is they are everywhere. Now you go to any website and they’re click bait everywhere, like three reasons you should try a blue apron or here’s Hello Fresh or muncher. I mean, there’s so many different meal planning services, and I’ve experimented with two or three of them. Some of them are pretty good, and some of them are not so good. But like, for example, Blue Apron, they have a couple of outstanding recipes that I basically use as single recipes. But they don’t understand systematization, where once you’ve done prep dish and you do another one of these services, you’re like, Why in the world would I cook three meals over the course of four hours. Are you nuts?

Allison Schaaf: Yeah, well, and it’s because what it comes down to with prep dish is, I sit back and hand craft, you know, each menu, so that works well together. You know, if you use half an onion and the soup, use the other half here, and it’s kind of balanced, and everything’s done and thought out for you, because I put in, put in that thought up front, so that it is very efficient. Everything works well together. There’s a variety, not too much variety, but just enough. And yeah,

Zack Arnold: Let’s step backwards for a second, because I feel like I could just basically turn this into, I’m going to say good stuff about PrEP dish for an hour podcast, but I don’t know if that’s helpful to anybody except Yeah. So no offense, but I want to make sure that there’s a lot of value for my audience as well. So I want to start to reverse engineer this process. I want to get into your head a little bit deeper, because I love processes like this, and I try to apply this to everything that I do, and the one thing that I did find, and I don’t want to discourage anybody, but some of the things that you do in your recipes and your systems were a little bit more advanced, and some of those, I was like, whoa. Like, I don’t really know what this term is. I don’t know how to do this technique, but I was so inspired by all that that I ended up taking an online cooking course where, even though they didn’t do batch prepping, I basically took the systems that I learned from prep dish and I can now repurpose that knowledge to individual recipes and be able to batch prep four or five recipes on my own, combining the cookie knowledge with the knowledge of your systems. So if I’m coming to you like I did a year ago, and I’m a little bit intimidated, let’s start to reverse engineer the process and explain to me what’s actually going through your head as you’re designing one of these where you are focusing on both process but also taste,

Allison Schaaf: Yeah, so I guess sort of the most important part is how I look at the actual prep day and making sure that that is organized so it makes sense, so it’s really efficient. And this is what I used to do when I would go into someone’s house, and I was a personal chef, like, you know, I wanted to get in and out as quickly as possible, because the quicker I was more clients I could take on. So you look at it, and basically, I try and chop everything first. Well, actually, I should back up, so before I even start chopping, it’s like, is there anything that I need to prep today that’s going to take a long time? Because if so, you need to start with that. So does the oven need to be preheated? Is there rice that needs to be made? Is there a sweet potato that needs to go in the oven, start with anything that’s going to take a lot of time? And so again, like a lot of these processes, like you mentioned, you know, you don’t have to be using prep dish. It’s just, you know, kind of basic if you’re going to be doing any sort of prep work. Look at it this way. So what are the things that are going to take. While, and then I like to get everything chopped. So go through and cut up all the veggies, just so they’re there and waiting for you. Because once you get into making a recipe, if things aren’t chopped and ready, then you kind of have to pause and, like, it gets clumsy, you have to go back to the cutting board and do all this. So I, you know, sort of tackle the chopping next, and then if anything needs to get if there’s anything that needs to cook, I look at that next. And then at the very end, any sort of sauce or marinade or tossing together a salad, because those aren’t going to take any time. And I’m, I know I’m not going to end up having to wait on them at the end of the cook period. So those are always sort of what I end with at the end of the, you know, prepping session. And you can, you know, in that prepping session can be anywhere from 20 minutes to, like, a full hour to, you know, just getting everything ready. But you know, really, as you’re doing it, you realize all of this work that you’re doing now just means that there’s that much less work that you’re gonna have to do throughout the week. And then actually, another thing to add would be also looking to see, is there anything I’m making that I can use twice, but maybe not, like, exactly replicate, like, maybe I’m making a pesto, and I’ll put it on salmon the first day, and then maybe two days later, I’ll serve it with chicken and a different side, so it doesn’t feel like you’re actually repeating meals, but you’re also, you know, utilizing that pesto sauce twice. Because, you know, making double the amount of sauce doesn’t take that much more time than just making it once. So looking for ways that you can use something twice but not have the exact same meal two or three times in a row.

Zack Arnold: Well, and the other benefit from that, that I learned that has really helped me become more efficient with my checkbook, is not that anybody actually uses checkbooks anymore. So boy, did I just date myself, and I thought I used one anyway, is that it teaches you how to be more financially efficient with your food, too. Because I remember before I kind of get into this whole idea of learning how to cook and doing meal preparation ahead of time. It was just a weekly event where every Saturday before I went food shopping, I went through my refrigerator and I just threw out everything that went bad, like and I probably threw away 30 bucks worth of food a week. And now I never throw anything away my I’ve systematized grocery shopping and meal planning to the point where Saturday morning the refrigerator is empty. I know exactly what needs to be purchased. I can look at a weekly meal plan and say, buy this, this, this, this, this, 90% of the time we make it until the following Saturday, but I almost never throw anything away now,

Allison Schaaf: Yeah, and that that’s something that I really think about when I put together these plans. Because it is, it’s, you know, financially, it’s makes more sense. And, and there’s something about throwing away food that just really, it’s hard to do too, so, you know, but you really should be able to use a produce all the way through. But so many recipes, it’s like, you pick out this random recipe and this random recipe, and next thing you know, you’re left with 20 pieces of produce that have only been used part way. And that’s another thing with the recipes, is I make sure I never call for half a cup of onion. I call for half an onion and then half an onion there. Because no one if you only use half a cup, what do you do if there’s, like, you know, a tablespoon less left of onion. You know, I always think that’s kind of silly. When recipes call for an exact measurement of veggies instead of one piece of vegetable.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, exactly. I mean, when you’re talking about Baking, baking is a science, like, you know, you put in a teaspoon extra of yeast, like, you got problems. But when you’re cooking, when you’re on a stove top when you’re in an oven baking a chicken or vegetables. Like, yeah, I mean, we’re talking about, like, Paleo like, this is, that’s the whole idea ancestral health. We’re not trying to get it down to, like, it’s got to be four little, tiny pieces and four tablespoons. You know,

Allison Schaaf: Exactly,

Zack Arnold: Another benefit that I found, and it sounds like this is something that you’ve talked about a little bit already, but for me, one of the educational benefits because I’m always looking at something, not just all right, well, this is going to be a good tasting recipe, but it actually by default. And I want to make it very clear, this is not an educational course. So you’re not saying here’s how to hold a knife and here’s how to you’re you’re assuming some basic knowledge and cooking skills as people go in. So I don’t want to give any false sense of what the product is, but just by default the way that you organize it, there are certain habits and systems that I just learned. Like, for example, one thing that I’d done in the past, and one of the reasons that I never made vegetables like sweet potatoes or spaghetti squash or anything else is I didn’t know I should be doing that first, because it takes an hour. So that’s why I would buy microwave meals, because I’m like, well, when am I ever going to have an hour to just sit and wait for a sweet potato to bake? But now it’s just ingrained in my brain. I buy something like that just about every single week, and the first thing. I do habitually is I just preheat the oven, I put it in. I’m like, All right, that’s going to be in for about an hour. That gives me an hour to make other stuff.

Allison Schaaf: No. And I think there’s so many little things like that. Another one would be, I think people don’t think through on salad dressing. So I’m a big believer that, you know, you should really be making your salad dressings from scratch, because when you read the back of a store bought salad dressing nine times out of 10, the first ingredient is sugar, which kind of, you know, defeats the purpose of having a nice, healthy salad. And so most of the meal plans, I just do a simple balsamic vinegar and olive oil. And, you know, it’s basic ratio, one cup olive oil, half a cup balsamic vinegar, stick it in a salad dressing jar and shake it up, and there’s your salad dressing. And so I think that’s a another example of like, Hey, here’s a really simple thing that once you start doing it, you don’t even think twice. Of like, oh, I need to go buy this, you know, store bought dressing. You can just easily throw together your salad dressing, and it’s just a you don’t even have to think about it.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, exactly. So now I want to come at you like I’m somebody that I don’t think I’ve ever picked up a cooking utensil in my life, and I have gotten take out pretty much every evening from the time I graduated college, I work 16 hours a day. I don’t even know where to start. I’m thinking, maybe this is something that I can use. It sounds intriguing, but this sounds so overwhelming, I don’t even have the kitchen tools. So if I’m coming at you thinking I’m interested, but there’s no way this is right for me. What’s, what’s kind of the first, first thing that you would say, or the first, the first place that I could start?

Allison Schaaf: Well, one is, I always say, Don’t be scared, right? Like, I think, you know, part of cooking is just jumping in and, you know, being okay with kind of playing around and realizing you’re not going to mess things up that bad. The worst case is, you know, a dish doesn’t turn out that great, but you know, there’s really, it can be very intimidating. And I think the first place to start is with knife skills. If you’re going to be eating, and you know unprocessed foods, and you know more vegetables and all of that, you’re going to need some basic knife skills. And I highly recommend taking some sort of in person class. And there are videos online, and I’ll do basic sort of knife for difficult, you know, fruits and veggies, like a mango and pineapple and some of that, like, I have videos on how to do that, but if you’ve, if you don’t feel comfortable with a knife, I really recommend going, like, a lot of grocery stores, Whole Foods Central Market in Texas. But you know, any of the a lot of the grocery stores offer just a basic knife skills one on one class, and go to that so you can just kind of figure out, like, how to hold the knife and the basic skills. And from there, it really is just practice. I mean, a lot of the cooking skills can be self taught, you know, so getting in and, you know, if you want to learn knife skills, you just keep chopping, and eventually you get better. But you do need to kind of get the basic, you know, how to hold it and make sure it’s feeling comfortable in your hand. But from there, I think it’s just practice,

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I think one of the barriers of entry for a lot of people is they have the all or nothing mindset, which is something that I try to beat out of everybody’s heads as much as possible, because I’m so against that mindset in the media when it comes to diet or exercise. But I think that with something like this, it’s the same thing. It’s, well, I have plastic fork spoons and knives, and now I have to go buy a whole set of kitchen knives, and I have to get cutting boards, and I have to get a zester, and I have to get a zucchini pasta maker, and I have to get strainers and colanders, like it’s it gets so overwhelming, it gets very expensive very quickly if you think you’re going to do all of these things. And I always try to explain the Baby Steps approach. So if I just wanted to get the bare bones basic kit to start making my own meals, but I’m not ready to jump into the deep end, where would I start?

Allison Schaaf: Yeah, well, and I think you bring up a good point about not needing too much equipment. You know, the knife and the cutting board, that’s like, and you need a chef’s knife, like, you can’t do a large amount of chopping with just a small little paring knife. So one good, quality chef’s knife is the most important thing to invest in if you want to be prepping your food. And that’s something so when I was a personal chef, I would look at someone’s kitchen and say, Okay, I’m going to bring my own knife. And then there are a few basic things I look for. But beyond that, everyone’s kitchen, even my Bachelor’s that I used to cook for like they they had the bare basics that I needed. You know, they had a few pots and pans, but really the knife and the cutting board, if you’re going to get into it with the sauces and stuff, I do think a blender is helpful, but there’s just not a lot of fancy kitchen equipment that’s needed. Just it really is comes down to the knife and the cutting board. Those are the two most important things that you have to have.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I agree the knife was the game changer for me, because my whole life, I had either inherited my parents old knives, like, you move out of the house for high school and college and like, oh, here, take all of our stuff we don’t want anymore. And one of those things is you get that really crummy, $50 block of eight knives that you get a target or one. Mart, and I’m like, Oh yeah, these are knives, and they’re not very sharp, and they don’t really work. But then I don’t even remember when it was, but I think, Oh, my wife and I had been given a cooking class for our wedding. And one of the things, and this was an in person one, so it was like five sessions, just like a little intro cooking course. And one of the classes was nice skills, and they gave me a real knife and I cut something with it, I’m like, Wait, this is how nice are supposed to work? Like, this is amazing. So a nice

Allison Schaaf: Game changer. It can be a real game changer,

Zack Arnold: And it’s not. Here’s the other thing that I think is so cool that you’re not going to hear a lot of people mention or talk about, is that cutting stuff with sharp knives is awesome. Like it is fun. And I actually now see meal prep time as it’s almost kind of like a Zen meditation for me, where I have a very specific way that I’ve now learned, where to put the cutting board, where to put my glass bowls, where to set the knives. And I just like, I’m just gonna spend two hours just cutting stuff to pieces. And it’s a really, really fun experience. So that investment is totally worth it. Yeah? Well, I’ve always felt that way about cooking. I just feel like it’s very meditative and relaxing once you kind of, like you said, once you have your setup of like, okay, here’s the cutting board, here’s little trash bowls, you’re having to move around a lot, and you just kind of get in the zone and get it done. And there’s always a nice reward at the end, right? Like, there’s nothing better than a tasty, healthy meal at the end, to reward yourself for all the hard work so well. And I think that the biggest drawback, the greatest downfall of this product and learning all these things, is that I just can’t eat takeout anymore. I don’t even enjoy it, because I’ll be at a job, and everybody’s getting the Chinese and the Thai and all these other things. And I’m like, Yeah, but I have, like, you know, flat iron steak and a salad and this and all this other stuff. And it’s just it’s totally spoiled me, where I’ve just become kind of a food snob, because when you make it yourself, and you know what’s in it, and it’s not hard and it’s enjoyable, it kind of just takes any interest away whatsoever from the quick, easy convenience meals.

Allison Schaaf: Oh, yeah, I’m, I’m traveling right now, so we’re at an Airbnb, because after so many days on the road, I’m like, I need a real breakfast. And, you know, yeah, I think that we had Thai food the other and, like, there has to be so much sugar in here. I just like, oh, I can’t handle all that sugar. Yeah.

Zack Arnold: Then you really start to feel it. And that’s where the dietitian in you comes in, because you understand the biological effects of a lot of these processed foods on the body and on the brain.

Allison Schaaf: Well, even without understanding all of that, it’s like, you just know that you feel bad afterwards. And so sometimes it’s like, that’s enough to be like, Wow, my energy. Like, you know, if you really start paying attention to your energy levels after you eat certain foods, it’s kind of eye opening. So

Zack Arnold: Now let’s go back to the the bare bones process. Once again, I kind of am flittering between just vast amounts of praise and then some process. So if anybody listening can’t tell I really enjoy this process, and I’ve learned a lot from it, so I want to make sure that I’ve covered that, but I want to talk a little bit more about the actual amount of time required to do this, but then I want to start talking about some of the changes and the upgrades that you’ve made as well, because you were just transitioning to one when you and I talked, and you’ve now been doing that for a While. But first, if we’re doing the standard program. And just for clarification, you do this as a monthly subscription and a yearly subscription now as well. Correct,

Allison Schaaf: Yes, yep, and it’s weekly, like, it’s a weekly email PDF that comes out. But yeah, they can sign up either per month or per year, right?

Zack Arnold: So to clarify, there’s no video training other than a couple of, like, the tutorials, it’s basically, you like, what do I get in my inbox every week?

Allison Schaaf: Yeah. So it’s the PDF with those three pieces, the organized grocery list, the very specific prep day instructions. And then third piece is just, you know, what do you do at mealtime? Quick and easy. Throw it throw it together,

Zack Arnold: Right? So I’m basically setting aside one day, not full day, but one day over the weekend for the most part. Correct?

Allison Schaaf: Yep.

Zack Arnold: And then how long if I’m doing one of your standard meal plans, from the moment that I get the PDF out of my email to the point where I have meals that are not necessarily ready to eat, but ready to heat? What kind of amount of time are we talking about?

Allison Schaaf: So there’s the grocery shopping and that very you know, if you’re if you’re ordering that in, then that’s minimal time. But you know, whatever time, amount of time it takes you to get to and from the grocery store, and then the prep time is, it’s usually two to three hours. And we do have, once a month, a meal plan that sort of, it’s what we call the super fast plan that only requires about an hour of prep time. And the thinking being those are sort of for the those weeks where you really, like, just do not have time to put in, but you want to have some food at home. And I should mention that the archives. So you know, if you sign up for, like, our premium subscription, you get access to the archives. So then you kind of get all the archives of the super fast plans, but the monthly subscribers get one super fast a month.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and those were the two benefits that I really wanted to talk about today, where that was something that you didn’t have, that we really weren’t talking about last time. And the first one is the super fast because that was one of the barriers of entry for me, is that all this stuff looked fantastic, and I’m thinking, well, there’s five recipes on here, and I know, like, three hours for five recipes and an entire week’s worth of food, like, that’s awesome, but even for me, three hours just wasn’t doable. But then I looked at the super fast menu, and I was like, this is perfect and worth the price of admission all by itself.

Allison Schaaf: Yeah, I think that the super fast came to be because of a conversation that we had wait.

Zack Arnold: So I was the inspiration for the super fast menu,

Allison Schaaf: I kind of think. So, yeah, we talked about it. Well, it’s kind of one of those things, and it been in the back of my mind, but we had, before I came on your show, we had a conversation about it. I’m like, Well, gosh, like, I really took you kind of challenged me.

Zack Arnold: Well, I love it because those are, those are my favorite. Favorite parts are all the the super fast menus. And I mean, I I want to make my listeners want to be totally honest and transparent. This is not something that I do every single week. It’s not like a religion where I get the recipes and I do step by step by step, like but that’s the great thing. And I know that obviously you would want everybody to do every single recipe that you do in perpetuity until the end of time you’re a businesswoman, like, that’s good business. But at the same time you you start to get the hang of it really quickly, and you pick up the systems, and you start to learn how to improvise. And that, to me, is where a lot of the real value comes in for both sides.

Allison Schaaf: Oh, no. And, I mean, I think that’s, you know, that’s more of the goal is, you know, how can you get the skills and the knowledge to really incorporate it and make it a part of your a part of your life? So and, and with the meal plans too. Like, I really want people to make them their own, and look at it and be like, well, this chicken and broccoli sounds nice, but I know my family really likes asparagus better. And so you know, as you go on, using prep dish, that’s my goal, is to really get people to where they feel confident enough in the kitchen and that they can really make the meal plans into something that that’s really fits them and their family

Zack Arnold: All right. So speaking of that’s going to be one of my pain points, and I know that as a fellow online entrepreneur, because we’re both in the space where we are trying to spread our knowledge and spread our our skills to the world and share it with other people, and we learn how to really understand what are the things that are driving people the most crazy, and How do I solve those problems for them? So I have a problem I still can’t fix, and you and I have not talked about this at all. How do I get my children to eat this food? I love all of this food, and my one thing I will say is that I’ve created such a bond with my kids because they love meal prep Sunday. It is now just become a thing like Sunday, at about one or two o’clock, we’re just cooking together, and they’re really upset if they have something else that comes up, like, Oh man, I have to go to a birthday party, but I was supposed to cook with daddy. Like, oh, that, to me, is huge. But here’s the problem, we make all this great stuff and then they won’t eat it. Clearly, it has nothing to do with you. There are fantastic recipes, but they’re seven and five. They want their macaroni and cheese, and they want their pasta and like I, I make healthier versions of what a lot of kids eat, because there’s no way I’m going to be feeding my kids crass macaroni and cheese, but at the same time, it I just I cannot. I can’t crack the code. And I don’t know if this is something you’ve had experience with with other clients, or you yourself with your kids. But I know that I’ve been asked this several times by people in my community. They said, how do you get your kids to eat healthy? And I’m like, I don’t know, because I can’t do it either.

Allison Schaaf: Yeah. So you know, there’s a lot, there’s a lot that goes into it. And also keep in mind each kid’s going to be different. So you know, you can have, you know, to your first two kids, and they eat everything, and then the third one comes along, and it’s like, the pickiest eater ever. And you’re like, what’s up with this? Like, you know, this kid had, you know, was raised exactly the same as the first two. So there are going to be instances like that, but a lot of it is, you know, so you’re modeling the behavior, and that’s a big part of it. Is a lot of times you you have to be more aware, too, of the language you use, of you know, I’ll see mom say, Well, I know he’s just not going to eat the broccoli. He doesn’t like broccoli. Well, the kid’s going to pick up on you saying he’s not going to like it. And so a lot of times, you know, what they believe they like kind of starts with things that they pick up from their parents, and that can be a big part of it. But then, you know, also, kids taste buds are different, and so it can be, you know, it can be challenging, and you have to introduce it multiple times, so, but it’s just kind of like with adults too. Like, maybe you don’t like steamed brussels sprouts, but maybe. Like them roasted and, you know, so it can just take multiple introductions and playing around with it and and also keeping in mind that when you serve a meal and it’s, you know, chicken and potatoes and Brussels sprouts, if there’s one of those foods that the kid doesn’t like, well, you know, that’s okay, they can take a bite and say, Well, I don’t like this, but I’ll eat the other two things. And just because they’re not eating all three pieces on the plate, you know, they’re not going to starve. And so some of us just being okay with, you know, them trying everything, but then just kind of giving them the time to warm up to it. And it’s funny, though, like as kids, see adults modeling the behavior of eating all of these foods. And, you know, talking about how much they like them eventually, you know, they do kind of like cave in a way, or, you know, decide, like, Hmm, what is this like? You know, tasty Brussels sprout that dad keeps talking about, and, but, but it can take a lot of times they actually say that. It’s, you know, 10 times that you need to introduce a food before a kid may decide that they like it so, and that can change with years too, right? Like, you know, maybe they don’t like it at five, but maybe by the time they’re 10 years old, they love it. And that can change year to year.

Zack Arnold: Yes, well, I’m when I, when I go to my my grave, someday, on my tombstone, it will say, I got my son to love green beans because I did, like, there’s a lot of things that he won’t eat, but he loves when I make green beans with butter and sliced almonds. Just absolutely loves it. It’s one of his favorite meals. So it was, like, one of those giant parenting wins, where I like, did the giant fist pump, where he’s like, Dad, can you make the green beans tonight? And I’m like, yes, there’s a lot of stuff I can’t get him to eat. He’s still pretty picky, but he loves the green beans. Loves the green beans, so I’m very happy about that.

Allison Schaaf: That’s a win. And you I just have to, you have to take the wins and be excited about him.

Zack Arnold: Well, given that you’ve really pumped up my ego, and you helped me realize that I inspired the super fast menu because I’m so ridiculously efficient with my time, and I couldn’t even do three hours a week. I want to inspire a kids friendly prep dish next

Allison Schaaf: Well, so I might have to push back on that one, because I will say for every dish that I have, there is a kid out there that loves it and there is no kid friendly food. So your kid loves the green beans with almonds, the next kid loves the broccoli and the next kid loves the asparagus. So I don’t know that there would be such thing as a kid friendly menu.

Zack Arnold: Well, if there were, somebody would have figured it out by now. I mean, the kid friendly menu is the happy meal at McDonald’s, which absolutely makes me cringe,

Allison Schaaf: Not very friendly to the kids at the end of the day.

Zack Arnold: No, it’s certainly not that’s the stuff that I grew up on, and I’m still paying for it to this day in many, many different ways. The next thing that I want to go into, there’s a couple of things that I really want to still hit while I’m lucky enough to have you on here, the first of which is not just the idea of having a very organized grocery list and not just organizing the prep or even the heating and the eating. Here’s the other game changer that happened for me. It was the storage. And I know that seems really small and trite, but the way that I now purchase and organize Tupperware and the way I store my food has completely changed. So can you talk a little bit about that? Because you’re the one that inspired me to reshape everything that I have in my Tupperware cabinet.

Allison Schaaf: So glass storage containers are so much better than plastic for multiple reasons. You know, the plastic storage containers. One, they can usually contain BPA, but two, food is just much more appealing and stays fresh longer when it, you know, is stored in the glass container. So when I was a personal chef, I always had my, you know, it was a requirement that with the clients, I used the glass storage containers. I, you know, I was putting out a quality product. I wasn’t going to serve my food in a plastic container. And so I think investing in a good quality set of, you know, glass containers with BPA free lids, and it’s nice because they also transfer well to the freezer. And that’s, I don’t know if we talked about that yet, but like, you know, when you have, if you’re making, sort of like we’re talking about using it twice in one week, also if you’re making a nice soup, make double of it and have some of it in the freezer for instant like homemade, healthy freezer meals. But those glass storage containers just make a big difference in keeping it fresher longer. And if you’re doing in the freezer, you can go a step further, and they have, like, reusable labels, and you can, you know, label it with what’s in there and the date and all that. And so you can get pretty organized. No CD about it, but I, I like my organization in the kitchen. It’s just opening up. There’s nothing better than opening up the refrigerator to, like, very organized meals that are labeled and ready and you know kind of what’s going on. And none of There’s no mystery meat or mystery food all in there. It’s all there and waiting and organized and beautiful.

Zack Arnold: Yeah. In. The key word here is OCD, like, I’m raising my hand saying, that is me, where I will have I did the whole nine yards. When I do something, I do it. So I say, this is the way she says to do it. I got my glass containers. I got my little reusable labels, I got my reusable label marker. Did the whole thing, and my wife is like, what happened to our refrigerator? Like, oh my god. Like, are we gonna have to, like, put you in a padded room or something? This is ridiculous. I’m like, Are you kidding? This is awesome. So, yeah, there’s nothing quite like a Wednesday night where you’re exhausted 8pm you open the fridge, you don’t even have to open your eyes. You just reach for the Tupperware, and if it’s glass, you can put it right in the microwave, and you heat it up, and you have a amazing meal, like, it’s, it’s, it’s a game changer.

Allison Schaaf: And if you ever want to go a step further, I have videos on how I organize the storage containers, like, within the shelves. You know, there’s underneath the shelf, like trays you can put the lids on. And I don’t know I I like my organization.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I might have to look that up. I didn’t even know you had that, but that’s, that’s kind of like passing me the crack pipe. Or I’m like, oh boy, now I’m just totally gonna be hooked, because

Allison Schaaf: Another level

Zack Arnold: Videos on organization and Tupperware in the refrigerator, and like, my listeners, like, oh my god, this guy’s nuts. So yes, yes, I am. But you’ve been with me for 100 and some odd episodes now, so you knew all of this going into it. So the next area that I want to go to, because I feel like we’ve covered a lot of the food preparation stuff. We’ve kind of gone over some of the new offerings that you have. But my listenership has expanded quite a bit over the last six months to different areas, because kind of what’s been happening with this program is people are coming to me saying, Listen, I don’t know what post is, or post production, or I’ve I know you make movies, but I don’t get it, but I’m in the same position as you, where I’m in front of a computer for 16 hours a day, and I’m an Online Business Owner, or I do something else and you know it, or whatever it is. So I’m now getting a much more diverse audience. So I not only have, you know, an accomplished chef and dietitian, but I have somebody that’s built a successful online business. So I want to talk about some of the best business tips that you might have to share about how you have built this subscription service and basically turned it into a full fledged business, I’m assuming, right out of your own kitchen, correct?

Allison Schaaf: Yeah, yeah.

Zack Arnold: We’re gonna take a total tangent, and I’m probably gonna lose most of my film editors. But anybody that has a vision for something they they want to do. And I love people that have visions and have ideas and want to step out of their comfort zone and build something that inspires me, and you’ve done that, so let’s kind of talk about that side of it a little bit. And you know, I know that you were a personal chef, and you have the dietitian background, so it’s not like you were a banker that decided I want to do prep dish for a living, but at the same time, you’ve created something that’s fairly unique. So let’s talk about that journey a little bit.

Allison Schaaf: Yeah, well, and I will say like, you know, going from like, food and nutrition into online business. You know, online business is very, very different than the like cooking world. But I think, you know, I always had an interest in entrepreneurship and business almost more than the rest of it. You know, passion. Cooking was always a passion, but the business side was really what I wanted to do. And, gosh, so it’s been three or four years ago that I started the online prep dish calm, and it’s very rewarding, and it took, it took a few years to really get it to take off. But now that I’m here and have the online business, I have to say I absolutely love it. Because, you know, the business before with a personal chef company was very much, you know, one to one and in person, and very like, kind of structured hours. And now having the one to mini online, I can do the work when I want to where I want to. And, you know, having that flexible lifestyle and freedom has been, has been really amazing.

Zack Arnold: Looking at the journey from the point that you said, I’m a personal chef and I’m working one to one, I’m assuming that there was some thought in your mind of, I don’t want to continue trading dollars for hours for the rest of my life. I like to have a little bit more flexibility with my time, I would assume. I mean, that’s a pretty common story for anybody that wants to start a business. At what point, where was that transition? Because I’m assuming you didn’t just quit your job and say, I’m going to learn how to make a mailing list and send people PDFs. I’m assuming that there was a period where you were kind of doing both and learning the ropes and like, what was there kind of that, that balance for a while where it was full time job and building this,

Allison Schaaf: Yeah, and so that was actually kind of like not quite a balance, because I was working full time as a personal chef, and, you know, creating this on the side, although I should mention the personal chef company still exists in Austin, Texas, so I still have that company. I just hired a chef that now does all of that cooking for me, maintains a lot of the same clients that. Started out with seven years ago. So that sort of is a good business in its own way. But, yeah, I was doing both of them at the same time. And for me, it was perfect because, you know, with the online business, it required a lot of recipe testing and writing down my systems. Well, when I would go into a client’s home, I was basically getting paid to kind of create practice, right? Because I was using those recipes, and I just started writing them down as I was at people’s houses, and writing down my system and kind of putting it all together so they they were nice, and they kind of built off of each other. But then it did get to the point where, and like you’d said, like, I got to the point where I knew I didn’t want to be a personal chef every day for the rest of my life, and so I built the online and then it got to the point where, like, Okay, I need to hire the personal chef replacement, and I really have to focus on this online business full time, because otherwise it’s never going to fully take off. And I think once I was able to do that, it really was able to take off more. And I think just in general, with both businesses really making getting to that point and realizing, gosh, I’m doing too much, and someone else could be helping me, and making those key hires have been big turning points in the business of like taking it to the next level and realizing I need someone else to to help out with this so that I can really do my best work.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I’m looking forward to that day too. I’m hoping that day comes because, you know, I have several amazing people that are helping me now with and some of them just doing it because they’re they believe in the program and it’s made a difference for them, and they’re like, Hey, I just want to help and be a part of be a part of it. But at the same time, I have, like, you know, I have an editor that’s doing the podcast, and I have somebody helping me with some of that. But there are also those key hires where it’s like, you know, I as an entrepreneur, you start wearing like, 47 different hats, and you always dream of the day when somebody else gets those hats and you get to just do the thing that you do, which is create. And when you came into the world of online business, did you kind of walk in saying, I have no idea how the machine works. I don’t know what an email list is. I don’t know how to build it, and I just have this idea. Or did you walk in kind of having some basic structure already, and then you just fit your idea into that structure.

Allison Schaaf: I walked into it pretty blind. I jumped in head first

Zack Arnold: Virtual high five across the mic. Me too.

Allison Schaaf: I didn’t drown. But there were a few times where I’m like, climbing up, gasping for air. But you know, you just, and that’s one of the pieces of advice I always give is you just, you can never wait until you know everything, because you just have to make the mistakes, because otherwise you’re never going to get started. And so there’s, you know, there’s still mistakes that I’m making. Some like, oh, I should have known that, but I’m like, Well, if I would have known that, I would have started, you know, would have been this many months behind. And so I kind of had to make that mistake. But

Zack Arnold: Right? Yeah, it’s that whole idea of the minimum viable product. And that’s something that it really if you’re if you’re listening to this, and you’re not an entrepreneur in any way whatsoever, and you’re a film editor like me, or a graphic designer, or somebody that just does a very technical or creative job, it’s the exact same thing. It’s something that I’ve been teaching to my editing students for years, where, if you just sit there and think all day about what the scene would look like when it’s perfect and when it’s done, and that means you’re not actually making the bad decisions first that lead to the better decisions, you’re never going to get to the best product possible. So you really, you just kind of have to fail forwards. It’s like, all right, I’m going to do this, a lot of people probably aren’t going to like it. I’m going to do a bunch of stupid stuff, but something is going to come out of that that inspires me to move further. And whether it’s editing a scene or whether it’s building an online business, it’s either going to be universally, well, this was just dumb and I shouldn’t have done it, or it’s like, you know what? I could have done this a lot better, but there’s something here, and it seems like that’s something that you discovered. So what was that turning point then, for you, where you said, You know what, I really have something here, and I’m gonna cut the cord, like, I’m gonna kind of pass off the personal chef stuff, and I’m really gonna focus full time on the subscription service. Like, what was that moment, and how long did it take to get there?

Allison Schaaf: Gosh, I’m not sure when the moment was, but when I look back at things, I always feel like I probably looked crazy, like I can’t believe I pushed on for as long as I did, because everything took longer than I thought it would to come together. But I just always had this confidence within me that I knew, I knew it would succeed, and I don’t, I don’t know where that came from, because looking back, it was like, gosh, like, the first two years when you’re, like, basically just breaking even, like, Why did I keep pushing on? I think it’s because I just saw the possibility. And I don’t know. I mean, I think for me, a big moment was when I took. Like, my honeymoon, and we took off for four and a half weeks, and that was, like, the first time, because I just kind of quit the personal chef business, like, six months before that, and and I’d saved up a lot of money from the businesses. And so when we took four and a half weeks off our honeymoon, I’m like, wow, this is, this is what I’ve been working for. I’ve been working so I could do something, you know, so I could take an amazing trip and take time off. And so for me, it was kind of like the business had gotten to the point where I was doing what I wanted to do, which was travel more. So,

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and

Allison Schaaf: That was a big aha.

Zack Arnold: That’s the dream for me, not to taking the four weeks vacation. The dream for me is breaking even, when the day, oh, my God, I’m finally breaking even. I’m so successful. Like, that’s that, to me, is the that’s climbing Mount Pinatubo. Like, oh, my God, I’m finally breaking even well.

Allison Schaaf: And that was, it was so weird, because with the personal chef business, like, from day one, I was making money because there was zero overhead. I bought a chef coat and a knife, and then everything else, like, was just profit. And so then I get into this online world, and even today, it’s just like there’s always something you could be spending money on. And so even as you make more money, it’s like you still have to be careful, because there’s so much that you can spend money on. And I just with the first business was not used to that. So the online world, you just have to be careful, to really think through. You have to spend money, but where, where do you don’t have to spend everywhere, right? You have to spend all your money.

Zack Arnold: Well, that’s the thing that was that they hook you in, because that’s what happened to me, where I said, You know what? I’ve got this idea. And basically, this all started with, I was a guest on other people’s podcasts, and they would always, always ask me about editing. And they would say, hey, is there anything else you want to talk about? I’m like, Yeah, I would love to talk about to talk about how to live a healthier life in front of a desk. They’re like, yeah, we’d rather just talk to you about editing. So I’m like, Oh man, well, maybe I should start my own podcast. That’ll be fun. So I did that, and thought I was going to get laughed at, and I wasn’t, and it got an amazing response. And then started the blog, and you get sucked in, because it’s like, you can get a website for 1999 a year. I’m like, Oh, my God, this stuff is like, free. I can build a business overnight, but then you need this thing for $30 a month, and then you need that thing for $40 a month. Oh, but those two don’t connect until you have this third party service that connects them for $30 a month, and then all of a sudden you’re like, holy crap. Like, I have a rent payment just keeping a website online.

Allison Schaaf: Yeah, this is, like, what you just described. I feel like it’s a story of, like, practice. It’s just, like, so many, yeah, so many things, so many moving parts.

Zack Arnold: And nobody sees that because they think, Well, I went to your website and now you email me stuff. So that’s got to cost you, what, like, 10 bucks a month. It’s like, Oh, my God, there’s so many moving parts with trying to, like, and that’s the hard

Allison Schaaf: The moving parts never break down. Like, on a business day between nine and five. It’s always like, you know, Saturday night at 10 o’clock when that moving part breaks.

Zack Arnold: Well, when they also break is on the final day of a launch,

Allison Schaaf: Oh yeah,

Zack Arnold: You know, because I know that you don’t, you don’t have a launch model so much, and I’m sure you do specials and stuff like that, but for the most part, you’re just getting ongoing revenue, whereas, because I’m brand new and I’m still building my product, I’m doing more of a an enrollment model, and everything works fine until the product is available, then everything completely goes to crap. Nothing works. The plugins stop working. They’re like, I didn’t get the bonus document. It’s like, come on. And it’s just it never ends. And I always used to complain about how difficult it was working as a film editor. And I still do, like, that’s still what I do for a living, where it’s like, oh man. Like, I can’t export this file. But when I go from the world of developing online education products, and then I go back to editing, and I’m like, oh my god, this is so easy. It’s one piece of software that has to work. I have 15 different software programs running in the background to automate everything, because I can’t email everybody individually. And that was one of the and that was one of the and I don’t know if that’s something you experienced too, but that’s been really hard for me, where, when I first started, I had an email list of like, 30 people. I knew every single one of them, and yeah, I was using a mail program because it was easier to keep track of it, but it was really easy to keep it personal, and you felt like you were still writing to them individually. When you have 1000s of people and you want to share a message with them, you it’s virtually impossible to actually email them individually, which is why you have list services that help you do that, but then you’re trying to talk to as many people as possible, and I’m sure you’ve been through this as well, where there are some people, they email you their life stories, and You’ve changed their lives, and then other people will say you’re the spammiest spammer that’s ever spammy. Get out of my inbox, you horrible human being, and you’re like, I can’t win.

Allison Schaaf: It’s it’s a struggle.

Zack Arnold: Well, anyway, I have just gone on a massive tangent right now. I think, I think I basically. Just needed, like, a very brief, like, psychotherapy session. Because this is a, this is a tough business to get into, and I really admire what you have built. And kind of, I don’t want to say, created a category, but you kind of have, because these other services, whether it is blue apron or Hello Fresh. I mean, there are, like two or three others that are similar, where they send you boxes of pre prepared foods, but nobody has a system, and I know that we’ve talked about that a little bit already. They do have decent menus, but they’re very selective menus, and most of the stuff I just don’t want to eat, like, it’s just not food that, like, a couple of the meals are really good once, but I’m not going to eat the Mexican Chicken Quesadilla thing with all the fancy ingredients. I’m not going to eat that as a staple food three or four times a month. And that’s one of the things I really love about your service, is that it’s it’s really good recipes, but it’s simple enough that you’re like, Yeah, this could be one of my five staples that eat every other weekend. Like, I don’t have a lot of meals that I eat. I have, like, between five and 10 meals period that I know how to cook now, but that’s all you need. That’s the genius of this. Is you don’t have to know how to cook 50 things. If you learn how to cook five, you can feed yourself for life.

Allison Schaaf: I agree,

Zack Arnold: Well, that having been said, I just feel like I’ve just turned this into a massive Zack Arnold, psychotherapy session on the rigors of building an online business. So I don’t, we won’t go down that tangent too much more, but I really appreciate you being on the show, sharing your story, and not only sharing the process, but helping me and helping everybody else understand how you’ve actually built this and how you built it yourself, like it’s that’s one of the other great things about online business now, is that we’re not beholding just these giant corporations where people are now changing the way that they eat, because we can reach out to individuals like you and not say, Well, I got to eat the box food that’s at the Ralph’s, or that’s at the Kroger’s, because we now have other options.

Allison Schaaf: Yep.

Zack Arnold: So on that note, I want to be respectful of your time. I realize I’m an entire one minute ahead of schedule, which never happens. So I’m very excited about that. But on that note, I wanted to thank you once again for being on the show. And if anybody wanted to walk away with like, a little free gift or a way to get started, how could they do that? And how can they find you?

Allison Schaaf: Yeah, so I set up a page prep dish.com/post, and if you go there, there’s a two week free trial. So I always say the best way to see a prep dish is a fit is try it out for free for two weeks and you can see how it works. So that’s set up. And then if you want to get a hold of me, I’m on social media at prep dish. So Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, all the social media sites. So that’s at prep dish. And then the landing page you get is prep dish, comm slash post,

Zack Arnold: All right. Well, that is fantastic once again, I cannot thank you enough for your time, and I’m so glad that we were able to do this again.

Allison Schaaf: Yeah, thanks for having me back on. This is great.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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