We recently connected with Josephine Giesen and have shared our conversation below.
Josephine , so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?
I found my purpose by recognizing the value of family gatherings at the dinner table, along with the importance of mindful and healthy eating. To me, eating mindfully means caring for the food and understanding its journey from the field to our table. This realization has deeply influenced my purpose.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
Josephine is originally from Lebanon, right on the Mediterranean, which is known for its food and great hospitality.
After moving to Highland Park from London 7 years ago with her husband Jonathan & son CJ, Josephine noticed that family is at the heart of this community. However, hectic schedules prevented families from sitting down to dinner together. When this time is sacrificed, so is the opportunity to listen to your children and spouse and hear about their days. Also commonly sacrificed is the quality of the meal – meals on the go tend to lack the nutrients and vitamins that feed not just the body, but the mind as well.
By alleviating the task of meal preparation, à table aims to give the community perhaps the most precious resource of all… time. Time that would have been spent planning, shopping, and preparing meals can now be spent focused on who those meals are actually serving.
À table keeps its promise of offering wholesome, home-cooked & healthy dishes to our community, cooked with love with the aim to bring back families to the dinner table.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
1- The ability to identify and meet customer preferences is crucial.
2- Never compromising on the quality of the product and the service and keep innovating on the brand offerings
3- The ability to persist in the face of challenges, setbacks, and uncertainties
The advice would be to really understand what it takes to be an entrepreneur. Have a solid understanding of business fundamentals, including financial management, marketing strategies, and supply chain logistics.
Any entrepreneur should be adept at market research, trend analysis, and customer feedback to create products and experiences that resonate with their target audience and their brand.
Before we go, maybe you can tell us a bit about your parents and what you feel was the most impactful thing they did for you?
When we were kids, we often underestimated the long hours mom spent getting the ingredients, prepping them, cooking them, following from memory recipes that were handed to her by the generations of women that came before her. We also took for granted that we always gathered, we all lived in the same house, we had each other and our stories to share. We thought these moments were eternal….And from those moments came the idea of À table. It’s how I was brought up, the values of family, respect and love that gave me the strength to build a company that offers the same to its customers.
Contact Info:
- Website: Www.atable.kitchen
- Instagram: Atable.kitchen
- Facebook: À table.Kitchen
