Jeter learned the hard way how difficult it can be for pro athletes to eat food that enables them to perform their best. Imagine you had no legacy customers to satisfy, no assets to maintain, no dividend to pay—nothing to stop you from creating the perfect postmodern organization.What would you do?If you’re a seasoned and successful chief executive like Christine Day, you just might join something that looks a little like Luvo Inc., an ambitious young company that makes, of all things, healthy frozen dinners. © Copyright 2020 The Globe and Mail Inc. All rights reserved. Day notes that when she started last April, Luvo had 400 “likes” on its Facebook page, a number that now sits at almost 40,000. Don't forget to mention that since 2008, Gardein was featured three times on Oprah and three times on Ellen DeGeneres's talk show. Part of what makes it taste different from an old-fashioned TV dinner or airline meal is the way it’s reheated. They have no time to cook. Forget architecture. Develop a little self-help aphorism. “Hopefully by then we’ll have a great story that’s on its way to becoming a public company or potentially a strategic sale exit.” The idea isn’t to simply introduce a product, execute brand extensions and dominate one distribution channel. Sidwell had already had a big score in the food business. In part, she had been craving the challenge of a startup: “You’re building the brand, you’re building the business model and the culture of the company and, frankly, all the growth and value creation is ahead of you.” But she also says she was drawn by the company’s values and potential to do good in the world. At first he tried a rigid diet plan pitched by an athlete on TV, but it gave him headaches and made him tired and grumpy. In simple terms, the goal is to determine a set of routes with overall minimum cost that can … Carter notes that three out of every four meals eaten in Canadian homes are prepared in 15 minutes or less. He and his wife, Sylvia, a Chinese-Canadian, who is 12 years his junior, live in the tony neighbourhood of Kerrisdale in Vancouver with their two children and have a house in Whistler. SPOKANE, Wash. — Gold Reserve Inc. (TSXV: GRZ) (OTCQX: GDRZF) (“Gold Reserve” or the “Company”) announced that, at the annual general and special meeting of Shareholders held earlier today, James H. Coleman, Rockne J. Timm, A. Douglas Belanger, James P. Geyer, Yves M. Gagnon, Robert A. Cohen and James Michael Johnston were elected to the Board of … We hope to have this fixed soon. She was no fan of quantitative market research, urging executives to instead spend time in stores, folding clothes and talking to customers. 2. "It's like being in Vegas. Luvo might have arrived on the scene at the right time, though. “By not worrying about relocating people, and by building and focusing on great relationships, both internally and externally, we’ve been able to move quickly,” Day says. But it isn’t just about the freezing. “We take it from the position of, What is the brand we want to build?” Answering her own question, she talks of disrupting the convenient- and processed-food industries, before dropping the words every investor likes to hear: “to be a billion-dollar company by 2020.” We’ll be watching. Yves Potvin is waiting in the lobby of a downtown Toronto hotel, seated in the weak spring sunshine, ready to deploy his passion. True to Sidwell’s vision, the company soon started selling a frozen version of its entrees and snacks in grocery stores under the name LYFE Kitchen Retail. Can she do the same for frozen food? But most of all, she had the ability to execute a business plan, Sidwell says. To date, rising incomes have been a mixed blessing for Canada’s $3-billion frozen-food industry. He liked it. TV dinners or no, Day just might have chosen the perfect Canadian startup, at the perfect moment, to launch her next act. To the surprise of many, the 51-year-old didn’t go back to the U.S., where the British Columbia-raised executive had lived since her college days. Say things like, "It's the right product at the right time. When they couldn’t, as in the case of chief product officer Sheree Waterson and the company’s sheer pants debacle—in which customers reacted angrily to fabric so thin it bared their behinds—they were shown the door. Imagine you could do it all over again, start a new company in any industry. The ownership was identical for both firms, at least at first, but the management was divided, with Donahue and Roberts taking the restaurants, and Sidwell helming what would become Luvo in Vancouver. Welcome to The Globe and Mail’s comment community. "I have too many ideas. Finally he hired Stephen Ford, a nutritionist trained at the University of British Columbia, as his personal chef. If it doesn’t taste good, we’re not going back to that product.”. Article content. “Our brand is appealing to a psychographic more than a demographic,” is how Sidwell explains it, broadening the group to include moms and young singles. If you are looking to give feedback on our new site, please send it along to, To view this site properly, enable cookies in your browser. Summary: Eileen Glover is 67 years old and was born on 01/15/1953. Instead, last April, she joined tiny Luvo. I’ve really worked for free for the last six months so we could get to the [private-equity] funding level. “To my surprise, the food tasted amazing,” he says. He watched vintage movies, and one classic film, East of Eden, convinced him to take a risk by investing $10,000 of his own money and borrowing $30,000 from friends and family to begin development of the world's first veggie hot dog. A charismatic chef and a pioneer in the food industry, Yves Potvin created North America's first veggie dog in the 1980's and continues his innovative ways today with Gardein, an award-winning line of healthy and delicious plant-based foods. The day she announced her pending resignation in June 2013, LULU shares slumped 17.5% on the Nasdaq. His laptop is open on the table. In the 1983–84 season, Potvin made a comeback of sorts, scoring 85 points and making the NHL's second all-star team. hospitals and colleges. 1. So how do you make those quick, easy meals more nutritious? What do I have? “That matters more to me than a big paycheque. By the end, the industry veteran wanted in. One being fresh and one frozen, they had completely different supply chains. On coming home from football practice, she says, her 15-year-old son “eats two bean and cheese burritos, looks and me and says, ‘What’s for dinner?’”. His appearance has the look of a calculated pitch presentation. In May 2013, Carolyn Beauchesne, a blogger who runs a site called Lululemon Addict, wrote that “Day has ruined everything special about Lululemon. “I’ve lost two inches off my waist.” The Luvo dinners in her current rotation include chicken enchiladas, chicken chili verde, spinach ricotta ravioli and orange mango chicken, along with Luvo’s breakfast and snack offerings. Treat yourself to a motel on the seventh day. 1. Luvo employs techniques, one of them patented, that go a long way toward making its dishes distinct from traditional frozen fare. As Day describes it, Luvo’s target market is made up of busy professionals who are nonetheless trying to proactively manage their diets to increase their chances of leading long and healthy lives. And there's a hint of creative flair in the choice of an open-neck purple shirt. “They don’t want to eat the same things, so having that choice is critical,” she says. A puzzling choice, at least to some. His laptop is open on the table. Her kids eat it, too, though the bottomless appetite of a teenager is a curious thing. Readers can also interact with The Globe on Facebook and Twitter . The road is good for silent meditation. “I’ve changed what I eat dramatically, and it’s paying off,” Day enthuses. “When you look at her history with Starbucks and Lululemon, how can you not believe she’s going to be able to grow this company in the same way?”, If Starbucks sought to create a new kind of community space in an increasingly alienated world, and Lululemon promoted physical fitness and yogic mindfulness as paths to personal empowerment, Luvo’s social mission is even more ambitious. “Helping contribute to solving these problems is something I can get up for every day,” she says. He may have gone to cooking school for two years and successfully run a French nouvelle-cuisine restaurant in Sherbrooke and later worked in a Vancouver establishment, but "it doesn't pay well and you don't have a life. Cholesterol was becoming a big concern. This is a space where subscribers can engage with each other and Globe staff. Finally, in 1985, he launched his line of veggie wieners, burgers and deli slices. Day notes that nearly three-quarters of hospital admissions in the U.S. are for conditions linked to eating habits: diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, obesity.