Camila Alves spoke only three sentences in English when she arrived in the United States at 15 to live with her aunt in Los Angeles. She worked in restaurants and as a cleaner while she learned the language and saved money. At 19, she traveled to New York looking for a modeling agent.
“I literally went to every agency in town, and they all said no until that I was on the street with my wallet under my arm, crying, thinking it was all over and it wasn't going to happen for me,” Alves, now 35, told Austin Woman magazine. “I thought maybe I should go back to Brazil. The last agency I went to was Major Models. She finally got a yes.
In 2006, she met actor Matthew McConaughey at a bar. Soon after, she moved in with him, and in 2012 the couple married. When they're not there, they make their home in Austin, Texas. Early in their relationship, Alves and McConaughey decided that when they left, they would all leave. At first, that meant the two of them lived in his cozy Airstream trailer in Malibu, California. Today, that sometimes means living cramped in that same beloved Airstream with their three children, Levi, 9, Vida, 7, and Livingston, 4.
Raised in a farming family Brazilians, Alves loves to cook and experiment with fresh foods, so she cooks every day, no matter where they live. When their first child was born, she did her best to prepare baby food for Levi. But the process was difficult and long. She says a light bulb went on in her head:If she was struggling to feed her baby fresh, healthy food, other parents probably were too, and there was potential business there. .
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“I have to work. I've worked all my life,” Alves explains in Austin Woman. “Otherwise I would go crazy. In my mind, I have always been a businesswoman. I love commercializing ideas and developing products. I love hearing stories about how businesses started and how they grew, how they operate and connect.
When she focused her attention on marketing fresh, healthy baby food, Alves knew she needed help learning how to run a food business. After a series of phone calls, she received solid advice to find someone who was already doing something similar and partner with them to learn more about the industry.
Mix it up
In 2014, Alves met Agatha Achindu through a mutual friend. Also growing up in a farming family but originally from Cameroon, Achindu immediately felt a connection to Alves. They bonded over their shared love of cooking and their passion for bringing organic foods to babies and toddlers.
Achindu started making homemade baby food for his son, JZ, because she wanted him to have the same kind of fresh, brightly colored, tasty food that she grew up eating on the farm.
“I saw a lot of organic baby food, widely advertised as having no additives, fillers, hormones, pesticides, added sugar or salt,” Achindu recalls. “These would be slightly different from conventional baby food. However, something was fundamentally wrong with what I saw. ”
Achindu says the food was all brown-gray in color and barely distinguishable from one another. Even though the ingredients for a jar of peas only mentioned peas and water, the long expiration date told a disturbing story. “The food had no vitality or color because it was cooked twice, heated twice and processed twice,” says Achindu. “Parents used to feed their babies food that was 2 years old.”
As her neighbors and friends began to benefit from Achindu's homemade baby food, she founded Yummy Spoonfuls in 2006 to respond to growing demand for its recipes. The products quickly garnered media attention and a loyal celebrity following. But Achindu wanted to bring this fresh food to parents everywhere, and for that kind of expansion, she needed a partner.
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That's where Alves came in. They talked for two hours and immediately knew they were kindred spirits.
YUMMY SPOONS VIA BUSINESS WIRE
“She is from Africa. I come from Brazil. We are the daughters of farmers,” Alves says of their instant bond. They share the experience of growing up around farm equipment, picking fresh fruits and vegetables, and understanding where good food comes from. “And we both had the same mission of not wanting to compromise the quality of the product we offer.”
The new partnership has resulted in a bigger business that now ships to Target stores in the States United and looking to expand further into other product lines.
“I can only describe having a partnership with a friend and someone I look up to as a blessing,” says Achindu about Alves. "We know when we need to get down and focus, but our shared values, like a sense of humor, are always worth the effort."
Make a mess
Alves and Achindu both find great satisfaction to see their homemade baby food in the hands of parents, regardless of income level or time constraints. But the process of creating a new category of baby food, like creating a new recipe, was complicated and difficult.
The partners were determined not to use widely accepted overcooked foods by other companies. Alves says she's shocked at how much attention has been paid to what adults eat and how little attention is paid to what babies and toddlers consume during their most formative years. When she and Achindu went looking for production and packaging facilities, they were again shocked.
The existing practices appalled Alves and Achindu. The partners couldn't find a facility that met the quality standards that no other baby food company required.
“There was no track record,” says Alves.
She remembers the turning point where they thought they might not be able to achieve their vision. She and McConaughey were in Dallas volunteering at a children's charity event. Alves and Achindu had to be on last call with the packing plant to meet their target shipment deadline.
“I sneak down the fire escape to answer that call,” Alves recalled. "Matthew is on stage to deliver his speech. They told us the exact opposite of what they had been telling us for months. We had been to and from the site, we had met everyone, we had a food scientist there, we had done a lot of work. And they turned around on that call and said they couldn't do the job for us.
She joined Matthew as he left the stage, and they got into a golf cart heading to the next scheduled event nearby. Alves was sitting in the back of the golf cart and crying.
Later that day she spoke to Achindu and remembers saying, "Maybe it's God trying to tell us not to do that." Her partner had similar doubts.
Since 2008, Alves had run a successful handbag design company, Muxo, with her mother, Fatima Araujo. When she made the transition to Yummy Spoonfuls, she was no stranger to sacrifice and fighting for a dream.
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In a last ditch effort to see if they could make it work, they reached out to an adult packaging facility they discovered early in the development of the company, but didn't have the right equipment for baby food. But this time they said, “If we buy the equipment and give it to you, can you do it?” Owners of the facility said Yes .
“It was the sign we needed to keep moving forward,” says Alves.
The partners spent several days trying to figure things out as they went along and doing a lot of damage.
“One day we worked from 5 a.m. to 1 a.m. the next day. We walked out of the facility covered in peas from head to toe,” Alves says with a laugh. “Then we come back the next day, and we get a call that our sweet potatoes have been recalled. And we wonder, what else can go wrong? ”
Ready to serve
Alves says that being a business owner is full of scary moments. But she knows that in the end, it's worth it.
“I really am a dreamer and a believer in what the possibilities are,” says Alves. "I'm not a person who likes to hear that it's impossible, or no, it's not going to happen, and we have to settle for this or that. It is not me. ”
Alves remains busy working on Yummy Spoonfuls and her lifestyle website, Women of Today. She and McConaughey also run the Just Keep Living Foundation which provides after-school and fitness programs for underserved high school students in four states and the District of Columbia.
Alves, who became a citizen American in 2015, enjoys chatting with other entrepreneurs about challenges and encouraging them to keep going.
"I'm not a person who likes to hear it's impossible, or no, it's not going to happen, and we have to settle for this or that. It is not me. »
"People are scared," says Alves. "Usually it's the fear of the unknown. She recommends surrounding yourself with people who aren't as scared, people who recognize your passion and believe in your vision. "You're going to hear a lot of no's, and you're going to get a lot of 'That's impossible. "So you need people to help you ask yourself, 'How do you make it impossible? " It's essential. Sometimes failure doesn't mean you're done. We have all experienced it. We still live. »
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This article originally appeared in the December 2017 issue of SUCCESS magazine.
