It wasn't my intention to start a salad dressing company, I'm a film-maker by trade. But after accepting my brother's dare, I began sharing Dress It Up Dressing with friends, who encouraged me by sharing it with their friends. Soon, I was taking orders.
In those early days, I would deliver Dress It Up Dressing in recycled Clementine boxes I picked up each week from Mark, an employee at my local Whole Foods. One day, due to curiosity, or a benevolent force, Mark asked me what I used the boxes for. I told him and he then asked, “If you make salad dressing, why haven’t you shared it with us?”
And so, I did.
He then shared it with Whole Foods HQ and the verdict came back:
“We don’t sell anything like this and we should!”
That is when “Mom’s salad dressing” officially became “Dress It Up Dressing.”
A deeper dive into the salad dressing market revealed what I suppose I already knew: the reason I never bought salad dressing was that I didn’t like the ingredients - Canola oil, water, Xanthan gum, sugar. My mother had started making her own dressing when my father was told he was pre-diabetic and my mother couldn’t find any at the store that didn’t contain sugar.
Forty years later, the same held true. Salad dressing has been the least healthy part of your salad, and it doesn’t have to be.
With Dress It Up Dressing, we want to offer a dressing that is as healthy as your salad.
With Whole Foods as my first customer, I pulled in the most talented artists I know and started designing bottles.