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marginalizedmormon · 1 year

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I thought I had purged my mental files of the negative things that I’ve experienced in Utah but apparently I’m not finished.

Nepotism

prejudice against people who are not them

AR who sat at the breakfast table with me at a birthday brunch, wouldn’t talk to me, make eye contact or eat the casserole I had brought. Had a baby shower for a woman I ministered to, invited all the women in the ward but me. Her best friend’s sons tried not to pass me the sacrament on 3 Sundays. She and her family wouldn’t participate in events I invited them to from birthday parties to scout events. I took them homemade cinnamon rolls when his father died.

I attended funerals, helped with family luncheons, took care of dying friends. When my dad died I got a text that maybe came from the bishop, I'm not sure. On my hardest day, my 2 ministers came over to comfort me

when mom died in my home, I got a text from the bishop, 2 people came up at church to offer condolences and a week later the RS president brought me an orchid. That was it, it really hurt my feelings

A palpable dislike of Californians, especially odd when they haven’t met us or continually exclude us intentionally and I find so many things in California of superior quality. Disneyland vs Lagoon, the San Diego zoo vs the Hogle zoo, Monterey Bay aquarium vs the Sandy aquarium, the Pacific Ocean beaches vs the Salt Lake. Temperate weather and gardening year-round versus heat and snow. Lots of snow. Utah has great skiing but I don’t ski

aggressive, rude drivers -getting rear-ended at a red light, having the driver’s mother contact us saying her daughter has a perfect record and could we let their mechanic fix our car instead of going through the insurance because we were not injured, after we both had whiplash

poor spellers

so many possessive apostrophes on simple plurals

aggressive, rude behavior in public and private

being chewed out by some guy at church for being too busy with college to accept an extra assignment regarding the ward Christmas activity

when I was returning home from the hospital and stopped at smiths to get food, was in line and a woman crowded in front of us, put her groceries on the belt ahead of ours, explaining, not apologizing or asking to go first, that she was in a hurry to get her son to work

the mistaken notion that Utah products are superior to everyone else and Utah businesses must be supported with they deserve patronage or not

The incident in Costco where a woman tried to force me to buy Mrs calls caramels when I was buying Bequet brand which was far superior bcausemrs callsis a Utah brand

The Mandarin restaurant in Bountiful, cupbop, taco time,

ageism, although I was well-qualified for several jobs as an art teacher and was not hired

having a car window shot out

having my son accused of vandalizing a neighbor’s car when he was innocent and had helped the neighbor on several occasions

having my social media hacked multiple times-especially while traveling

being so fed up with the above activities and more subtle bullying and abuse that I refused to attend church with these people, and subsequently moved so I could participate and losing about $140,000 in equity

having a neighbor’s tree fall and tear the electrical wires off of our house and us having to pay for the repair, no power for 3 days and he didn’t offer to pay the $300 to have the power wiring and tower repaired nor did he apologize

not being allowed to serve at Davis High on the PTA, even though my catering skills and creativity far exceeded those I experienced

sitting in temple training and taking notes like I did in San Diego to take back to relief society to share, only to be accosted by some pushy woman as I exited

while in school at the u and working in addition to housekeeping, attending a 7:00 am meeting where the bishop wouldn’t talk or even look at me. There were only 3 of us present

being told women don’t make comments in Sunday school

working as an art teacher for a school with over 600 students and getting paid less than $13 an hour, with not enough hours to teach every class every week, I donated the time for 1 kindergarten class. Having 1/2 hour a week to prep- prepare lessons and art supplies for 630 students with no curriculum in place. I donated as many hours as I got paid for, effectively earning $6.50 an hour with a BFA. Only did it 1 year

being told by a smirking kindergarten teacher that one of her students’ parents complained their daughter wasn’t perfecting her art in my class. I had each class for 25 minutes a week with 25+ students in each class. I was introducing them to techniques and projects they could do independently outside of school.

having a 6th grader kick over my expensive camera on a tripod.the school paid for the repair but it never worked well after that

being repeatedly ignored at church even though I was an emerging artist and author. I wrote 60 articles that were published, was on 16 international radio interviews, made art for Macys city creek, was on television and hardly ever received any recognition or encouragement. There was one man and a neighbor that were very kind and encouraging

ignored and discouraged by the intake editor at shadow mountain

When I requested my records be transferred to a neighboring ward, I was told by the stake president that the 1st presidency had to approve the request. When I asked why the people in Kaysville 10 ward were so mean, he replied that they don’t like change and that I was fat. There were people in our ward that resided in another ward’s boundaries. They were wealthy.

was told by the adult daughter of a man who had been excommunicated for “outside ideas” that we didn’t fit the profile required by that ward

from my perspective, so many Utahns are culturally, artistically and intellectually deficient but they insist that if you are not doing it their way, you are wrong and deserve shunning or worse

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magzoso-tech · 5 years

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New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/diet-autopilot-thistle-raises-5m-for-health-food-subscriptions/

Diet autopilot Thistle raises $5M for health food subscriptions

What if it was easier to eat salad than junk food? Most diet routines take a ton of time, whether you’re cooking from scratch, making a meal kit, or seeking out a nutritious restaurant. But on-demand prepared food delivery companies like Sprig that tried to eliminate that work have gone bankrupt from poor unit economics.

Thistle is a different type of food startup. It delivers thrice-weekly cooler bags customized with meat-optional, plant-based breakfasts, lunches, dinners, snacks, sides, and juices. By batching deliveries in the less-congested early morning hours and optimizing routes to its subscribers, or by mailing weekly boxes beyond its own geographies, Thistle makes sure you already have your food the moment you’re hungry. Whether you heat them up or eat them straight out of the fridge, you’re actually dining faster than you could even place an Uber Eats order.

The food on Thistle’s constantly rotating men is downright tasty. You might get a sunrise chia parfait for breakfast, a chicken tropical mango salad for lunch, a microwaveable bulgogi noodle bowl for dinner, with beet hummus and kale-cucumber juice for snacks. Thistle’s not cheap, with meals averaging about $14 each. But compared to competitors’ on-demand delivery markups and service fees, wasting ingredients from the grocer, and the hours of cooking for yourself, it can be a good deal for busy people.

“We see Thistle as part of a movement to make health convenient rather than a high will power chore” CEO Ashwin Cheriyan tells me. What Peloton did to shave time off getting a great workout, Thistle does for eating a nourishing meal. It makes the right choice the easiest choice.

Thistle COO Shiri Avneri and CEO Ashwin Cheriyan with their daughter

The idea of button you can push to make you healthier has attracted a new $5.65 million Series A round for Thistle led by its first institutional investor, PowerPlant Ventures. Bringing the startup to $15 million in funding, the cash will expand Thistle’s delivery domain. Dan Gluck of PowerPlant, which has also funded food break-outs like Beyond Meat, Thrive Market, and Rebbl, will join the board.

Currently Thistle delivers in-person to the Bay Area, LA metro, San Diego, and Sacramento while shipping to most of Washington, Oregon, Utah, Idaho, Nevada, and Arizona. Thistle actually held off on raising more since launching in 2013 to make sure it hammered out unit economics to prevent an implosion. It’s also planning broader meal options, additional product lines, and fresh distribution strategies like getting stocked in office smart kitchens or subsidized by wellness plans.

“The reasons that so many food delivery companies have failed likely fall into two buckets: one, a lack of focus on margins and unit economics, and two, premature geographic expansion before proving out the business model” says Cheriyan. “Thistle makes money similar to how a well run restaurant would make money – by having strong gross margins, efficient customer acquisition costs, and solid customer retention / lifetime metrics. We currently deliver tens of thousands of meals on a weekly basis to customers on the West Coast and our annual average growth rate since launch has been 100%+.”

It’s nice that Thistle hasn’t gone out of business because I’ve been eating its salads 6X a week for three years. It’s been the most efficient way for me to get healthier and lose weight after a half-decade of ordering takeout sandwiches and then feeling sluggish all day. I legitimately look forward to each one since they often have 20+ ingredients and only repeat every few months so they’re never boring.

It’s helped me keep my work-from-home lunches to about 20 minutes so I have more time for writing. Thistle is one of the few startups I consistently recommend to people. When asked how I lost 25lbs before my wedding, I point to Peloton cycling, Future remote personal training, and Thistle salads — none of which require me to leave the house.

Cheriyan tells me “We wanted the better-for-you and better-for-planet choice to be the default choice.”

Growing Out Of On-Demand

Thistle has already pivoted past the business model burning tons of cash across the startup world. The company started as an on-demand cold pressed juice delivery service, sending hipster glass bottles of watermelon and charcoal extract to doors around San Francisco. It was 2013, yoga was booming, and people were paying crazily high prices for liquified lemongrass. Health made simple seemed like a sure bet to the founding team of Alap Shah, Naman Shah, Sheel Mohnot, and Johnny Hwin, some of whom run Studio Management, a family office and startup incubator. [Disclosure: Hwin and Shah are friends of mine but didn’t pitch or discuss this article with me.]

Thistle eventually straightened things out with a shift to subscriptions and batched delivery under the leadership of the hired executives, Cheriyan and his wife and COO Shiri Avnery. “I came from a family of physicians – both my parents, brother, and enough aunts, uncles, and cousins are doctors that they could start a small hospital” Cheriyan, a former corporate attorney in M&A tells me. “A common point of frustration was about patients suffering from diet related illnesses who were unable to make a lifestyle change because it was too hard.”

Avenery, a PhD in air pollution and climate change’s impact on agriculture, had become exasperated with the slow pace of policy change and the inaction of governments and corporations. The two quit their jobs, moved to San Francisco, and searched for a point of leverage for positively influencing people diets and interaction with the environment. They teamed up with the founders and launched Thistle v1.

A lack of experience in logistics led to the initial detour into on-demand. But rather than trying to fix the problem with VC money, Thistle stayed lean and discovered the opportunity nestled between UberEats and BlueApron: sending people food they don’t have to eat now, but that takes low or no time to prepare when they’re peckish. Through its app, users can customize their meal plans, ban their allergens, pause deliveries, and see what they’ll eat next.

A sample of Thistle 8 meal plans

“The unit economics problem most heavily plagued the early on-demand food companies. Food / labor waste and inefficient deliveries were likely the biggest reasons why the economics were unsustainable without venture life support. We know this personally as Thistle started our delivery service as an on-demand company before quickly realizing that the unit economics couldn’t sustain a healthy business” Cheriyan explains, regarding companies like Sprig, DoorDash, and Grubhub. Beyond unsold food, “the margins very likely did not support ordering a $12-$15 single meal for immediate delivery when average hourly driver wages reached $18-20.”

Meal kits were supposed to make dining healtheir and cheaper, but they proved too much of a chore and led customers to boxes of ingredients piling up unused. Munchery and Nomiku went out of business while giants like Blue Apron have incinerated hundreds of millions of dollars and seen their share prices sink.

“The meal kit companies fared a little better from a gross margin perspective (due to preorders and more efficient deliveries) but suffer most from an easy-to-copy business model. This led to a rise in copycats, and, as a result, heavily rising customer acquisition costs, low switching costs and poor retention” Cheriyan tells me. “Fundamentally the meal kit companies face another challenge, which is that people have less and less time to cook and are increasingly looking for ready-to-eat options.”

Push-Button Health

A slower, steadier approach with less overhead, more convenience, and fewer direct competitors has helped Thistle grow to 400 employees from culinary to engineering to logistics.

Still, it’s vulnerable. It may still be too expensive for some markets and demographics. Logistics experts like Amazon and Whole Foods could try to barge into the market. Cloud kitchens without dining rooms are making restaurant food more affordable for delivery. And another startup could always take the gamble on raising a ton of cash and subsidizing prices to steal market share, especially where Thistle doesn’t operate yet.

Thistle could counter these threats would be further eliminating delivery costs by selling through partners like office smart fridges where employees pay on the spot, or equipping gym lobbies with more than just Muscle Milk.

“One opportunity we’re excited to test is attended and unattended retail – it would be great to be able to pick up Thistle products at your local grocery store, gym, or coffee shop” Cheriyan says. As for offices, “Today’s corporate lunchtime solutions often require a tradeoff between health and convenience: either wait in line for 30+ minutes at your favorite salad spot for a healthy option, or opt into catered restaurant meals that leave you feeling sluggish and unproductive.” Thistle could help employers prevent the 3pm energy lull.

The startup’s focus on plant-forward meals also centers it in the path of another megatrend: the shift to environmentally-conscious diets. Almost 60% of of Americans are trying to eat less meat and 50% are eating meat-alternatives like Impossible Burgers. That stems both from interest in the humane treatment of animals and how 15% of green house emissions come from livestock. But 45% of Americans say they hate to cook. That’s why Thistle makes pre-made meals where meat and egg are optional, but the food is healthy and delicious without them.

In the age of Uber, we’ve acclimated to an effortless life. The new wave of ‘push-button health’ startups like Thistle could finally take the hassle out of aligning your actions in the gym or kitchen with you intentions.

#Miscellaneous

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sheminecrafts · 5 years

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Diet autopilot Thistle raises $5M for health food subscriptions

Thistle COO Shiri Avneri and CEO Ashwin Cheriyan with their daughter

The idea of button you can push to make you healthier has attracted a new $5.65 million Series A round for Thistle led by its first institutional investor, PowerPlant Ventures . Bringing the startup to $15 million in funding, the cash will expand Thistle’s delivery domain. Dan Gluck of PowerPlant, which has also funded food break-outs like Beyond Meat, Thrive Market, and Rebbl, will join the board.

Cheriyan tells me “We wanted the better-for-you and better-for-planet choice to be the default choice.”

Growing Out Of On-Demand

A sample of Thistle 8 meal plans

Push-Button Health

A slower, steadier approach with less overhead, more convenience, and fewer direct competitors has helped Thistle grow to 400 employees from culinary to engineering to logistics.

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