Beehive Meals feted for solving 'What's for dinner?'

LAYTON — When Allyse Jackson started her freezer meal business, the plan did not include a trip to Washington, D.C., to be honored as one of "America's Top 100 Small Businesses," let alone being named No. 1 in the Champions of Adaptability category.

But last month, five years since Jackson started Beehive Meals as a short-term way to help the family pay its bills, there the Jacksons were, making their way to the stage in the historic U.S. Chamber of Commerce building across from the White House — to a rousing ovation.

Who could have guessed that her husband losing his job would lead to this?

How it started

It was the fall of 2019 and the company Adam Jackson worked for was going out of business. With a solid resume and an MBA from the University of Utah, Adam was not particularly worried about finding new employment, but both he and Allyse knew job searches can take time, and if she found a way to bring in a little extra income he wouldn't have to take the first thing that came along.

So she made a list.

"I wrote down things I was good at that might make money," Allyse said. "I had things on there like crocheting and baking — and freezer meals was on that list."

She'd discovered she was good at freezer meals when she and Adam were attending BYU and she was pregnant with their first child. Planning ahead for when the baby was born, she prepped food for 80 meals that she froze for easy access.

Then she realized she'd overestimated.

"It was just Adam and I, we didn't need 80 meals," she remembered, "so the (Latter-day Saint) ward found out and they were like, 'Oh, we're going to put you in compassionate service.' Being in Provo, there were babies born every other week in our ward. Somebody would have a baby so I'd cook one of the meals to take to them and then I'd take two or three of the frozen ones they could cook at a later time.

"I got responses all the time, like, 'Oh my gosh, that was such a life-saver.'" she says. "That was my first inkling into the power of food."

With Adam Jackson out job hunting, she posted to friends in her Facebook group an offer to prepare and deliver 10 frozen meals, with a varying menu, to anyone who signed up. The cost was $175. She decided she could do a maximum of 16 orders (160 meals) a week.

Almost immediately, the first week sold out. Then the second week, then the third week, then all of September.

"Adam," Allyse told her husband, "I think I just started a business."

She named her enterprise Beehive Meals and for the next six months she was essentially a one-woman show, doing all the shopping, prepping, freezing and delivering.

Then, in March 2020, along came the pandemic, an unwanted development to be sure, but one that, much like Adam's employment, proved to be, as far as Beehive Meals was concerned, a blessing in disguise.

The world was shutting down, people were keeping their distance, but they still needed to eat. And you couldn't get much more contact-free than Beehive Meals.

To keep up with increasing demand, Allyse brought on 20 employees. A year later, as the pandemic wound down but popularity didn't, she asked Adam to quit his marketing job — the one he'd searched for that started the ball rolling — so he could help her full time. The husband-and-wife team has been running the company together ever since.

From those original Facebook friends, Beehive Meals now counts over 100 employees and thousands of customers in a dozen states. Every month they deliver some 17,000 orders (that's 170,000 meals), with plans to expand to more parts of the country.

The business world has taken notice. This year Utah Business ranked Beehive Meals as the third fastest-growing business in the state and named Allyse CEO of the Year, while Inc., the national business magazine, ranked Beehive Meals No. 399 on its list of America's 5,000 fastest-growing private companies.

All that preceded the notification in September from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, informing the Jacksons that out of more than 14,000 nominees, their company would be honored at its annual awards dinner on Oct. 8 as one of America's Top 100 Small Businesses.

At first Allyse and Adam declined the invitation to attend the event in person. The newest addition to their family, Cache, was just 3 months old. Plus, they had a business to run.

But they had to come, the chamber begged — because they'd won their category, and the winners of each of the contest's 10 categories were going to be brought to the stage to take a bow and tell their story.

"So we got sitters and made it work," Allyse said.

Thus it was that the young Utah couple — she's 31, he's 39 — found themselves in our nation's capital mingling with the country's business elite — being feted for, in essence, providing a solution to the age-old dilemma of "What's for dinner?"

"We get comments all the time, mostly from women — they're the ones who worry," she added. "Saying things like, 'You make me feel like a better mom, I don't feel like I have to worry about dinner.'"

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