Meet Melissa

Hi everyone! I’m Melissa. I enjoy long walks down the aisles of Whole Foods and eating my body weight in fruit. Dates specifically; they're my absolute favorite. I had my first date (Talking about the fruit...I'd been on dates before) when I moved to New York City for college and it was love at first bite. Dates are SO sweet and SO good for you! Better yet, dates have kept all of my unhealthy sugar cravings away. Overtime I found myself feeling so much happier and energized now that I could finally eat something sweet (and freaking-delicious) that didn't leave me feeling guilty. Food guilt was something I struggled with for years.

Cheesin' with the first real jar of Wanna Date?
Me working (kinda) at that smoothie and acai bowl shop!

An Acai Shop Sparks an Idea

After bouncing around a few internships (one was at a PR agency, one was at Seventeen Magazine, but my favorite one had been at a food startup) I decided to get a job at a smoothie & acai bowl shop near campus. Primarily to eat free fruit all day long and get paid to learn the ins and out of the amazing, ever evolving food industry.

During my very first shift at that acai bowl shop, I was shocked to discover that all of the acai we served was sweetened with added sugar. Over 15 grams per half cup! As if that wasn't bad enough, we would pour honey, agave, oily nut butters, and Nutella on the bowls. Smoothies and acai bowls are supposed to be healthy, but there was added sugar

and/or sweeteners in nearly everything! The acai was sweetened, the granola was sweetened, and the nut milks were too. Add up all of that added-sugar and you might as well go eat a pint of ice cream. 

One day I wondered why we didn't sweeten our blends with dates. Dates are healthy, naturally sweet, and maybe there was a way we could drizzle the dates on the bowls like honey or peanut butter. So I went looking around for a “date butter,” but it didn’t exist.

DIY Date Spread

That week I hopped on Amazon, bought a cheap food processor, and made the first batches of “date butter” in my dorm room with dates, water, and cinnamon. The result tasted better than plain dates! I started playing with other flavors like cocoa, vanilla, and pumpkin spice. I had all of my friends taste the spreads, and a few weeks later as I was running on the treadmill (where I do my best thinking) I had my next ah-ha moment; Wanna Date? would be the name!

The dorm room where date spreads were born! Look closely and you'll see my Amazon food processor and those first dozen jars from the little Italian man on top of my desk.

A Crowdfunding Campaign

The puns and ideas kept flowing, and everyone who tried my date spreads loved them. I couldn’t believe that no one thought to create "date spread" yet. I needed to be that person. I sketched out some designs, found a sweet old man in the West Village to print out a dozen labels for me, and finally I asked a couple of friends to blindly taste "Wanna Date?" on camera as I talked about the product. In February of 2018 I posted that video on Indiegogo (a crowdfunding website) as my way of saying, “Okay self...you’ve promised people date spreads. Now there’s no turning back.”

Started from the dorm room, now we’re here.

Since then I've come to discover just how hard it is to formulate, manufacture, market, finance, sell, and distribute a food product. I have no doubt Googled my way to a food science degree at this point, but I never gave up and continued to figure it out as I went, everyday, always learning something new on the fly and solving problems as they presented themselves.

The story of Wanna Date? goes to show that if you are passionate, true to yourself, and 100% dedicated and determined to do something then you can figure it out. It’s never about age, experience, time, or expertise (because I was a 20 year old college kid with none). Now 26, I still feel like the queen of amateur hour over here using Google searches to power me through “CEO things,” as I call the hardcore business stuff. But beyond the daily struggle I genuinely do wake up excited every single day to open my laptop and get to work on Wanna Date?

Thanks for reading! I hope your innermost nerd feels a little less alone and a little more inspired. 

I strategically got a loft bed so that I could keep date spreads under it when I was still a student living with two roommates

XO,

Melissa

 

P.S. If you're wondering about Shark Tank, yeah... THAT happened! CRAZY! 

And date dough? Well, that's my next step in building a date-based empire!