Today we’d like to introduce you to Joe Carr.
Hi Joe, I’m so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work life, how can you bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My wife and Serenity Kids’ co-founder, Serenity Carr, and I both had a lot of health problems as children that were related to diet, so food is critical to us. We wanted our future children to grow up without those issues and didn’t want to have to make all of our baby food. We figured other parents wanted the same thing, and we were right. We launched Serenity Kids while discussing having a baby and started looking around for different baby foods that met our nutrition values, but we have yet to find anything. We were shocked not to find anything. So we created this company to make other parents like us lives easier, help them feed their kids healthier, and create a new, healthier generation of babies and children and eventually adults.
Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned? Looking back, has it been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Starting any business has its fair share of issues and challenges; we are the same. When we first launched the company, we were so thrilled! It was a new adventure for us and something we truly believed in and knew wasn’t available for parents. Between my creativity and Serenity’s operations background, we created a great team, leading to many disagreements. We had to learn how to create boundaries, prioritize our relationship and marriage first, and be business partners second. Initially, our launch was delayed as we dealt with many significant manufacturing issues trying to make high-fat meat purees on equipment designed for fruit purees. We had already collected pre-orders from customers, so we had to communicate with them and deal with refunds and tons of customer service inquiries before shipping out a single product. We ran into significant growing pains once we got the products out the door. We had to ramp it up and start searching for more investors, bring in new team members, and have deep hiring and culture discussions to ensure a successful future. Every hurdle and lesson has taught us more and more, and we’re so excited to have worked together through them.
Let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Serenity Kids’ premium baby and toddler food products are made from pasture-raised, high-quality organic vegetables and healthy fats from olive oil. Serenity Kids’ purees, puffs, and toddler formula are balanced blended savory meals and snacks with the most nutrition per bite for your little one. Serenity Kids’ goal is to provide premium, health-packed, delicious, low sugar, high fat, ethically sourced, and convenient food that babies and toddlers enjoy and parents feel good about feeding them. Serenity Kids is the only high-fat, low-sugar baby food made to mimic the nutrients of breast milk using ethically sourced meats and organic vegetables. We care not just about what you feed your baby but also how that food impacts the world. Our meats come from animals raised on pastures of American family farms that practice regenerative techniques that improve the soil, reduce runoff, and sequester carbon. These animals live similarly to how they would have lived in the wild and are never given GMO feed, antibiotics, added hormones, or pesticides.
Additionally, our products are savory versus sweet because babies are developing their palate preferences that will determine how they eat later in life. Getting babies to enjoy delicious flavors at a young age helps reduce their risk of early sugar addictions. We want to set them up for success by using ingredients that are naturally low in sugar and high in easily digestible protein. We add fats like organic avocado oil and olive oil to improve their brain development and vitamin absorption.
We aim to make the world healthier, one child at a time. Almost every word in it is significant to us. We’re making the world more nutritious and not compromising on any aspect of the business. We’re committed to the environment, our farmers, and animals. We’re committed to our suppliers, employees, and families. Health is not just a physical state. There is health from food, but there’s also emotional, social, spiritual, etc. We want to create this environment with our staff and community.
We’re so proud to say that since launching in 2018, Serenity Kids has quickly become the fastest-selling shelf-stable baby food pouch brand in all grocery channels. Serenity Kids offers nutrient-dense products that contain the highest quality proteins and healthy fats across pouches, puffs, and toddler formula with national distribution in over 18,000 stores, including Whole Foods Market, Sprouts, Walmart, Target, Kroger, Publix, Amazon, Thrive Market, and more.
What do you think about happiness?
I enjoy tapping into my creative side by speaking and performing on stage because it’s a way to bring a group of people together. Similarly, I love seeing the team that we’ve been able to assemble work in a way that genuinely shows love and respect towards one another. Our mission to make babies healthier is even more satisfying, knowing that we can do it in a way full of integrity and makes the lives of everyone involved better.
Pricing:
- Baby & Toddle Food Pouches – $4.00
- Grain Free Puffs – $4.99
Contact Info:
- Website: https://myserenitykids.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/myserenitykids/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/myserenitykids
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-carr-0a511624/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMBgRm2M7vnw-eMJl3uY9rQ
Image Credits
Serenity Kids
