Meet Megumi Endo

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Megumi Endo a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Megumi, thanks for taking the time to share your lessons with our community today. So, let’s jump right in – one of the most essential skills for unlocking our potential is self-discipline. Where does your self-discipline come from?

My self discipline comes from my sense of purpose, specifically setting my self goals in providing a quality product. They are goals that set for myself and i continually strive to offer a great product rather than just a good product.

My vision for the future is to offer a variety of options to provide more & more gluten free products, without the use of chemicals and preservatives whenever possible. I want gluten free products to taste better and to show customers that gluten free products can taste as great as gluten products, if not better.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

Although gluten free products have come a long way in the past 10 years, reading the ingredients used, I saw a lot of preservatives & chemicals being used to cut corners and make these foods taste better.

Before I knew it, I challenged myself and started to experiment over the past few years, testing products & creating recipes.

I had friends and family who were gluten free and those who could eat gluten and really became excited with lots of the feedback I received. Fast forward 2 years…

In late 2023, I decided to invest some money and try out some Artisan Farmer’s Markets starting with my GF vegan sourdough loaves- no yeast, naturally fermented. I started to add some GF cookies using premium products such as Callebaut Belgian chocolate with French Maldon salt. One of our most popular cookies using this chocolate is a GF, dairy free, egg free, oatmeal choco chip cookie.

One of the biggest hits at the farmer’s markets is my vegan GF mochi churro…. Customers cannot tell that it is dairy free, egg free & gluten free.

I am blessed to have close to 1/2 a dozen stores wishing to carry our product but before expanding too quickly I want to continue menu development while maintaining product quality.

In a market and times that ingredient costs & payroll costs keep climbing, gluten free ingredients are sky rocketing along with other key products to create my goods.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I was lucky enough to go to a well established culinary arts school and focused on French cuisine and pastries.
I was also blessed to work with a few prestigious Chefs before taking some time to raise a family.

I feel as though I have matured as a person and although I worked hard while raising a family, I am now ready to challenge myself professionally. I am self motivated and am my own worst critic – which can obviously work against me.

Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?

With todays real estate market, brick & mortar seems like a very high risk.
Increased cost of goods, labour shortages and labour costs while trying to create products without the chemicals and preservatives with the potential of food spoilage.

I currently work through a commissary kitchen to avoid the high cost/risk of having a brick & mortar storefront but as business increases, this also becomes more and more challenging.

I am lucky to have a husband and friends who spend time to help me grow my business at the markets with set up & tear down so I have more time to focus on the end products that the customers try.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @sayonaragluten