How I went from café owner to running my own business empire
The Healthy Chef, Teresa Cutter, shares her journey from small business owner to social media star and entrepreneur.
When I started my healthy café, The Healthy Chef, years ago up on the Northern Beaches, healthy baking was the heart and soul of the café, where people would gather, socialise and be happy.
I guess the inspiration behind it, like most of what I do now at The Healthy Chef, is my great Polish Aunt’s cooking. I grew up with her meals made from pure honest wholefoods and I’m passionate about sharing this healthy, beautiful and nutritious way of cooking and baking.
Long before gluten-free foods or eating kale for breakfast became popular, I had already created various plant-based meals for the Avalon Beach locals, models Elle Macpherson, Megan Gale and surfers Tom Caroll, Kelly Slater and Layne Beachley, who you would often see at the café.
After a few years of running the café, the 18-hour days and no holidays started taking its toll. I needed a way to share my healthy food and message of living a healthy lifestyle to a much larger audience. I decided to sell the café and create my Healthy Chef functional food range.
I designed pure, wholefood supplements using organic and quality ingredients that don’t bloat and are good for you. I started with my Organic Pea Protein powder and Whey Protein Isolate and, from there, I created a whole line of different products – without any fillers, artificial ingredients or added sugars – to help support health and wellbeing.
Today Healthy Chef is also a boutique publishing house producing our own bestselling healthy cookbooks and eBooks. We also hold events and masterclasses and collaborate with other brands to do campaigns that spread the message of a healthy lifestyle.
There are many different aspects of our business, which appeals to different segments of the market. For instance, I find many young mums love our superfood powders to get optimal nutrition during their busy months of taking care of their baby, while my older audience who have been following me for years love baking my recipes I’ve published in my cookbooks Purely Delicious and Healthy Baking and often come to my cooking masterclasses.
When it comes down to it, our brand’s success has heavily relied on the ability to be innovative and ahead of the game, and to stay true to the core values with every product, collaboration, event or cookbook: supporting health through nutrition so that people can all live better lives filled with health and happiness.
When I started my healthy café, The Healthy Chef, years ago up on the Northern Beaches, healthy baking was the heart and soul of the café, where people would gather, socialise and be happy.
I guess the inspiration behind it, like most of what I do now at The Healthy Chef, is my great Polish Aunt’s cooking. I grew up with her meals made from pure honest wholefoods and I’m passionate about sharing this healthy, beautiful and nutritious way of cooking and baking.
Long before gluten-free foods or eating kale for breakfast became popular, I had already created various plant-based meals for the Avalon Beach locals, models Elle Macpherson, Megan Gale and surfers Tom Caroll, Kelly Slater and Layne Beachley, who you would often see at the café.
After a few years of running the café, the 18-hour days and no holidays started taking its toll. I needed a way to share my healthy food and message of living a healthy lifestyle to a much larger audience. I decided to sell the café and create my Healthy Chef functional food range.
I designed pure, wholefood supplements using organic and quality ingredients that don’t bloat and are good for you. I started with my Organic Pea Protein powder and Whey Protein Isolate and, from there, I created a whole line of different products – without any fillers, artificial ingredients or added sugars – to help support health and wellbeing.
Today Healthy Chef is also a boutique publishing house producing our own bestselling healthy cookbooks and eBooks. We also hold events and masterclasses and collaborate with other brands to do campaigns that spread the message of a healthy lifestyle.
There are many different aspects of our business, which appeals to different segments of the market. For instance, I find many young mums love our superfood powders to get optimal nutrition during their busy months of taking care of their baby, while my older audience who have been following me for years love baking my recipes I’ve published in my cookbooks Purely Delicious and Healthy Baking and often come to my cooking masterclasses.
When it comes down to it, our brand’s success has heavily relied on the ability to be innovative and ahead of the game, and to stay true to the core values with every product, collaboration, event or cookbook: supporting health through nutrition so that people can all live better lives filled with health and happiness.