Between 2014 and 2019, Sun Baset grew from George and a friend in a room to a company with 1,800 employees and $300MM in ARR.
George was one of four founders of Sun Basket, the healthy, organic meal kit service. In true start-up fashion, he helped grow the company by taking on each new operational and creative challenge as the company rapidly scaled.
Phase 1 - Growing from $0 to $100MM
This period was characterized by rolling up sleeves to experiment, iterate, and pick the right problems to solve as the service rapidly grew. From brokering a culinary partnership with Food Network talent Tyler Florence, to building the first creative communications team to draft recipes and emails, to getting customer service emails answered, to getting more and more boxes out the door every week, George had had to solve multiple challenges simultaneously as the company found its legs.
Image: George celebrates the packing and shipping of the first pallet of boxes with his chilly colleagues Amy, Justine, and Daniel.
Phase Two - Growing to $200MM
Through this phase, George focused on hiring to scale operations. He added James Beard nominees and Food&Wine Magazine veterans to the editorial team along with photographers, videographers, writers, and editors. He led real estate expansion for HQ staff and test kitchen over five company moves and hired key executives to grow customer service, food manufacturing, and print publishing capabilities.
Image: George shares a silly joke at the opening of Sun Basket’s 150,000 square foot production facility in New Jersey.
Phase 3 - Growing to $300MM
George’s efforts during this phase focused on building a brand marketing powerhouse and advancing a design-thinking-focused strategy. He led a reorganization to form “Sun Basket Studios”, an internal creative agency to design digital marketing materials as well as product collateral. He worked with his team to launch a weekly, branded magazine with an eventual annual circulation of 2.5m issues featuring 18 recipes and original articles. Finally, he conducted in-home consumer interviews to identify deeper business opportunities on how to enable healthier eating at home.
Image: Sun Basket in a nutshell - a weekly home delivery with recipes and fresh, prepped ingredients for three delicious and nutritious dinners.