Founder Spotlight: Denise Woodard (Partake Foods)
Denise Woodard
Company:
Business Description:
At Partake Foods, we make super delicious, real and healthy, allergy-friendly foods for your kids and ours.
Startup Stage:
Seed
Location:
New York, NY, USA
What led you to where you are today?
My 5-year-old daughter, Vivienne, has multiple food allergies. I couldn’t find snacks that I felt good about giving her, so I left my career in corporate America and launched Partake in August 2017.
What do you wish you knew before embarking on your entrepreneurial journey?
I think it’s better that I didn’t know it, because who knows if I would have embarked on the journey. It’s hard - there is so much sacrifice and hard work and time that no one else sees that is involved in growing a business. And it’s expensive - we were really bootstrapped at first. As we’ve grown distribution, we’ve raised outside capital which has enabled us to hire and scale, but I naively thought that I could bootstrap the business forever - and continue to grow quickly.
What can you help the VEGPRENEUR community with
I spent nearly a decade at Coca-Cola prior to launching Partake, so I’ve been in Food/Bev for a bit of time and am happy to share all the things I’ve learned (the hard way) not to do along the way.
How can the VEGPRENEUR community help you?
We are still a very small but mighty team, and we are working hard to grow brand awareness about Partake, so please spread the word.
Fun fact about you:
My favorite part of every week is Friday night family dinner with my husband, Jeremy, and daughter, Vivienne. It typically involves pizza for everyone - and wine for me!