163. How Startup Potluck Reimagines Dinner for Moms - Shannon Amspacher

If you market to moms, you already know the real competition for attention isn't always another brand. It's her mental load. What it looks like to actually solve a problem moms live with every single day. The never ending question of what's for dinner.

Oh, I hate that question. I'm talking with Potluck founder Shannon Amspacher, who's building a new kind of community based platform that helps families batch cook and swap meals with people they already trust, like other parents from school, daycare, faith groups, or fitness communities. Potluck isn't a meal kit or delivery service. It's a smarter way to share the work, reducing the mental, emotional, and physical load of feeding a family, while also rebuilding a connection many parents say they're desperately craving.

So it's super interesting. It's a new company. We're going to talk with her as she's building this brand. If you want a real-world example of empathy-driven innovation and what you as a marketer can learn from deeply listening to moms, this conversation is for you.

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Go subscribe. time. Okay, Shannon, let's start with the big question, which is what made you feel and say, yep, I'm going to tackle the dinner dilemma for moms and parents everywhere. Yeah, I honestly, it started with my own experience, as many ventures do.

It especially started after my son was born. And I think for some people, cooking is an act of love. For others, It's a chore. And then there's the rest of us.

We fall somewhere along that spectrum on any given day. And for me, I've always enjoyed cooking, but the caveat being only when I have time for it. Give me a Sunday afternoon or holiday break and I'll happily lose myself in the kitchen. But when my son was born, real life is not handing you Sunday supper energy on a Tuesday night.

You're juggling daycare pickup and bath time and bedtime and trying to remember you have clean lunch containers for tomorrow. So before I was a mom, I experimented a lot more in the kitchen. But afterward, the dinner, it's not about creativity. It was about survival.

All of those pressures of getting everything just right compressed into this evening window, like any new variables felt too risky to introduce. And as my newborn turned into a toddler, routines kept shifting. And that thing that used to bring me joy started to feel like more of a stress point. And so, of course, everybody needs to eat, everybody should be sharing in that load.

But the reality is that the responsibilities still fall more heavily on mothers. 94% of moms report repairing meals for their kids compared to 76% of dads. So even though I believe dinner shouldn't just be a mom only burden, it very much is. And what started to become apparent to me was it wasn't just a hard task.

It was a relentless one. Like I face a lot of challenges daily as a working mom, but meal planning was one that continued to rear its head day after day, three times a day. It drained my time. It depleted my energy, pulled my focus from other work and things that were important to me at the time.

So finally, I started thinking like, what's the cost of all of that lost time, that energy and focus, not just to me, but for women, especially mothers. What could we be building or solving if we weren't mentally consumed every day by trying to solve? What will our family eat for dinner? Like how many hours of problem solving, creative, strategic thinking are we losing?

Rest, all of those self-care moments that we could be having. So that's a core of why I'm building Potluck. Yes, it's about making dinner easier. But beyond that, it's reclaiming our time, our intellectual capacity, our headspace.

Those are our most valuable resources. And talk more about your decision to lead with that invisible load versus just talking about a faster way to cook with potluck. I think any mother knows the what's for dinner question is never just about food. It's about the time, energy and that mental load that it takes to get on the table every single night.

So like many others, I've tried a lot of typical solutions like meal kits or grocery apps, delivery. And yeah, some of them are faster, but I realized that none of them solved the problem in its entirety. Because when I really broke out the problem, it's not just about speed or convenience. It's the cognitive and emotional labor behind the scenes.

We're talking about mental load and visible load. So some listeners may be familiar with Eve Rodsky's framework. She's pretty well known in this field. But the framework is conception planning and execution So if we apply those three areas to dinner Conception is asking what meal should I make this week What did we have last week so I can incorporate some variety What do we still have in the fridge?

Then planning is actually translating that into ingredients, making a grocery list, coordinating around individual and family schedules, factoring in food allergies, preferences, my kid doesn't like this, we're in this picky eater phase, things like that. And then execution is like a multi-step process. You have the grocery store, like going and getting the ingredients, sourcing them. Where are they coming from?

Are they coming from different places? Prepping, cooking, and then cleaning up afterwards. Cleanup is maybe the, I don't want to say the Trojan horse there, but something that I absolutely hate doing. I hate cleanup so much.

I wish I had the sous chef who could just clean up after me. Yeah. So maybe if we looked at it in one of those individual components that wouldn't be so unwieldy to tackle, but because we have all three, it's a lot. And most products really only solve for one part.

You have the meal kits, like sure, you're helping with conception and planning, but you're doing all the cooking and cleaning still. And you're paying a premium at nine to $12 a meal. So it's expensive. You have recipe apps and okay, they help you with conception of what to make, but you're still planning and executing.

And then you have things like meal train or lasagna love. And they're beautiful, generous gestures, but they're really episodic and one directional. They're not built for everyday sustained relief for multiple people. That's why it was critical for me to lead with this invisible load because it's at the root of the problem.

Potluck is really designed to reduce both the mental and the physical load across those three stages every week. And with batch cooking and swapping, we create efficiencies of scale in the home, just like smart businesses do when they're specializing in what they're good at or the processes they've mastered. Instead of doing five different weeknight meals, you're focusing on one or two, but you still get to enjoy the variety of a full week's dinner. It saves you time.

It cuts costs and it lightens that mental load. So it's not just a faster way to cook, although it is, but it's just a reimagining of how we share in this responsibility of feeding ourselves and our families. Yeah. Yeah.

And Potluck, I think your idea with this company is so smart because it makes a big problem feel simple. It's like batch, swap, save time. It's all of that. And to your point, it's hitting on multiple facets to make it easier holistically on each of those phases.

How did you land on that clarity? And as other marketers are listening, clarity is always so key and solving a customer's pain points and problems is so key. And so what do you think others marketers can learn from that simplifying complex ideas process? Give us any insight that got you to that sort of batch swap save time model?

So the clarity actually ironically came from like the foggiest chapters of my life, four or five months postpartum. Those early months for many moms are intense, but the more I started thinking about the daily stress of dinner, I realized that there was a real opportunity kind of hiding in plain sight there. Before our son was born, one of the best pieces of advice that we got was to batch cook and freeze freezer meals ahead of time. So we started doing that.

We doubled recipes here and there. We build up like a nice little freezer stash. And when he arrived, we were lucky to have that meal train and friends and family support us. And it was such a gift to be cared for in that way.

But eventually that support tapers off and then you're really left in the thick of it. The dinner problem returns, but also like kind of a side of loneliness. I know that so many new parents report feeling this way. The U.

S. Search in General's report on the epidemic of loneliness and isolation. 51% of mothers with young children feel serious loneliness. It's not a problem that is new and we're not solving it in any meaningful way.

I started looking for connection in apps like Peanut where there's local moms that you can meet up and start friendships with. Society Working Moms, that was another one. But these virtual connections, it was like, okay, why is it easier for me to connect online to build a closer relationship with people living 20 feet away from me. So when the weather was nice, we would go outside, do some light socialization with our neighbors and try and get a walk in around the neighborhood.

Kids would be running outside for a few fleeting minutes, but then one by one, each family would start to excuse ourselves to go inside and make dinner. Different houses, different recipes, but like the exact same labor happening in parallel. So I'm thinking we're duplicating the effort. What if we could just share?

We're also press for time. But if we created this efficiency during that dinnertime scramble, we already knew that dinner was ready. Could the kids stay outside a little longer? Could we build some stronger friendships before we retreated into the four walls of our house?

The clarity came from that moment of we're creating space for something else to happen in that margin. We're getting practical relief and emotional connection. And the more I thought about this model developing in my head, it's okay, I can solve more than one pain point that I'm experiencing. It's a win-win.

So that's the clarity of vision that really propelled me forward. And I think as far as what other marketers can learn from that journey, I would say start with the human need, not just the feature of what your product or service does. If I had tried to pitch this as, oh, I can help you manage your dinner logistics, I would bore people to tears. I'm saying, oh, it can be easier and a little less lonely and you can maybe make some friends out of this.

So that hits differently. Yeah, absolutely. And you haven't been building this business in a bubble either. You keep tapping into what real moms need based on your own experience and other moms that you've talked to.

And you've shared many of those examples already. Is there anything else that we should know about how talking to your audience really helped shape what Potluck became? Every part of it has really been shaped by conversations with other moms, pilot participants, and even just anybody living this dinner dilemma that will talk to me. I say anybody who wants to wax poetic to me about the dinner challenge, I'll talk to.

So early on two things really became clear People are desperate for a time back and they also craving connection One of the more unexpected insights and honestly this is one of my favorites came from a mom who said that my kids were more willing to try the food because they knew it wasn't coming from me. It's funny, but it's also revealing like these small shifts, even who cooked the meal can ease other stress and pain points that are still arising at dinnertime. I didn't even go out to solve the picky eater dilemma, but perhaps there's something there.

But I think the biggest insight that I could point to that I can't ignore as I'm building potluck is the erosion of trust in our society will be the biggest barrier. A lot of people tell me this is amazing, but I don't know if I'm ready to feed my kids food from a stranger's kitchen. Yeah. And I get that's a real concern.

I think our society has really done a disservice by foicing us into this individualistic mindset where we have to do everything on our own. And that has bred skepticism of others outside of our bubble. But when I started to really look at that concern from all of these different angles, this community-based food sharing, it's actually happening all the time. Like, we just don't think of it as radical.

But it hurts potlucks, like PTA bake sales, trick-or-treating. You know, granted, we still check the candy for peace of mind, but Potluck isn't inventing this food sharing behavior. It's just making it easier, safer and more reliable. So that's really influenced how I've built the platform.

We're not matching random people from opposite ends of town. Instead, we're anchoring Potluck in place based trust networks. So think of your schools, your daycares, gyms, faith groups or PTA circles. And you build out a food profile, but you're also linking to your community affiliation.

So we'll match within those trusted spaces first. And what's really influenced my thinking on here is thinking of Seth Kaplan, who writes about how repairing social fabric starts not with grand scale interventions, but with local institutions that already hold shared routines and relationships. That's the kind of connective tissue that potluck is designed to strengthen. if people are interested in signing if they're like yeah this sounds really interesting I don't want to be cooking all the time I would love to share the cooking load with others how does it work so you go online you sign up do you have to sign up for your whole group then like talk to us through the logistics of how that part works sure so as we're building our MVP we do have a wait list so I would encourage folks to get on the wait list first but okay the the first step would be you would get on and you would fill out a food profile.

And like I mentioned, you would start filling out your household size, your dietary needs, your preferences, essentially just a little snapshot about who you are and what kind of food you like to eat, as well as your community affiliation. Hey, I'm a part of this fitness group and this synagogue, and my kid goes to this daycare. So then you would get matches in your area based off of your food profile overlap as well as your connection capabilities. There's no immediate expectation that you're going to start swapping with these folks.

There's a social element. You would start by saying hello. You would start to build a little bit of a rapport. Maybe you already know them.

Hopefully you already know them because they're in your synagogue or in your fitness group, but it just allows for that friendship icebreaker if you don't already know them. You can get to know them a little bit better. And then once you have that rapport, and maybe even before you start matching, maybe you go out for a cup of coffee, or you meet up at the fitness group and do a challenge together. And you start to build that trust with that person.

And you say, hey, like, how about we swap this this week, I have this really great recipe that I've been meaning to try, or I, I have this family recipe that everybody raised about, would you be open to swapping this week. So there's a swap proposal module. So that allows them to coordinate the mental load piece of it. So it's not just about the physical labor of cooking the meal.

Potluck will help with the mental labor of quantifying ingredients, calibrating to how many people you're cooking for and helping arrange where you're going to swap that. Is that going to be at the fitness center that you're meeting up with at anyway, your natural routine? Okay. So you join the wait list, complete the family food profile and you'll list any community affiliations.

And then your tool is connecting the dots for people. And then you'll get matched with others in your area. You can reach out and say, Hey, and then you decide if you want to swap and the swap request all happens through potluck is what you're saying. Is that right?

Yeah. So all communications, everything like that can all happen through the potluck platform. Exactly. Okay.

Okay. And then you would say, okay, I'm going to make this, you make that. Is that the swap? The goal is to have everything very, very streamlined and say, okay, even if you're lacking on the conception, like you're not, I don't even want to think about what to make.

I just want something to be suggested to me based off of my likes and this person that I've matched with their likes. The idea would be that we could bubble up some AI recommendations on what are both food profiles most likely to enjoy and give them a suggestion. Or if you have that family recipe and you say, hey, my mom's Swedish meatballs are the best and let me make them for you. Let me have you try them out.

And you get a little bit of different cultural exposure then too. Maybe you have a very diverse neighborhood and you're looking to expand your palates or your food horizons and you can get to try different cuisines. So you would both agree, that sounds great. Let's lock in this swap.

And then it would give you a reminder, hey, you're swapping tomorrow. Make sure that your food's ready. Yeah. And I'm in Minnesota, so I know in the winter, so often I've never done one of these, but I've heard about soup swaps where different people will make different soups and then they'll meet at someone's house and then they'll swap it all out and then you can freeze soup.

So it's like an easy thing to have And so all of a sudden you have all these homemade soups that you can eat Definitely Yeah that exactly the spirit and truly just the model that I like why can we do that Why is that just a event based or a one time thing Why can't that be just a little bit more sustainable? So and I think really technology is a large part of the problem of why we are so isolated. We've retreated into our homes. We're on our devices all the time.

But I do think that we can reverse engineer some of the technology to allow for that community connection. And I think this is one of those great examples where we can leverage technology to make it more sustainable. Let's make it weekly or every other week if that's more your style. Yeah, it's super interesting.

It feels to me like the whole family model and the food coming together, that feels very like how it used to be or feels very European or like in South American country. You have these families and gatherings and there's a lot of food sharing going on. Yeah, I think it's like the literal boiling point for so many of these like political, economic, social issues affecting the U.S.

Everything collapses under that one weight of what's for dinner, but we have the care economy is at a tipping point. People are demanding better support and not just convenience. Mental load and burnout are at all time high. We've talked about, especially for moms, we know why.

Community trust is eroded. I think with AI, we have the option now to build personalization and reduce that mental load at scale. and in terms of the U.S.

I actually think we're really uniquely right for it because it might seem counterintuitive but because we don't have those traditional European intergenerational support where other countries have meal sharing practices are more commonplace so many people are cooking alone in the U.S. so like we have this freeing social fabric so what better way than food to bring us back together. And I also think Americans culturally were hungry for both connection and convenience, but you rarely find both of them in the same product.

So that's what makes potlucks so unique. We're turning that daily burden into an opportunity to build community without asking anyone to become a hero or a host. So I, yeah, I think it's exactly the right time and place to reimagine how we're feeding each other. Okay.

As we come to a close here, any other advice that would help listeners better sell and connect with mom customers that we haven't already mentioned? Or do you think we've covered everything? I guess I'll say two core messages I think I could offer here. The obvious one is just to talk to moms, but I think equally important to talking to your demographic is to be listening to the answers even when you're not asking questions.

Yes, user research matters, but so does paying attention to the broader rallying cries that we're hearing and seeing across society. Moms are telling us they need more support. They need ways to lessen the mental load and solutions that actually reflect the realities of modern caregiving. So I think if you're tuned into both the individual conversations that you're having and those cultural signals, you'll gather the insights that really lead to resonance and clarity.

The last thing I would offer is respect the complexity of motherhood. And I think this goes for any demographic, but moms are not a monolith. Their needs, cognitively, emotionally, practically, they shift across time. You can reference the incredible research that has come out of Elixir, Science of Modern Motherhood Studies, for insights on this.

I know we mentioned Society of Working Moms, but Elixir is also affiliated with them. But it really maps the journey of motherhood across five distinct phases, and each was requiring their own needs and support. So I think when marketers understand those shifts, they can offer solutions that feel personalized and meaningful without it feeling like, once it fits all, this is for moms. So it's a full experience.

There's so many different elements to being a mom and all the different purchasing power decisions that she has. And so that's why we're here. We're here to talk on this podcast about how to better reach moms and connect with them and ultimately sell to them as companies that are having incredible services and products that we want to get into the hands of more moms that need them. So thank you so much, Shannon, for coming on.

As we close, tell us how people can connect with you personally, but then also, of course, Potluck and how do they get on that wait list? Where should we look? Yeah, of course. So I'm active on LinkedIn.

My name is Shannon Amspacher, A-M as in Mary, S-P-A-C-H-E-R. I love connecting with other folks, building for the care economy and exploring ways to reduce the mental load. But the best way to connect through Potluck is through our website. It's joinpotluck.

app. You can learn more about Potluck there, sign up for the waitlist. We've got upcoming pilots, research studies, or if you want to bring Potluck to your workplace, that's another angle that we haven't discussed here today, but would love to chat with anybody interested in that. And then we're also on social potluck on LinkedIn and join the potluck on Instagram, blue sky and Facebook.

And finally, if you're in the parenting care economy or like food access space and you want to collaborate, please reach out potluck. It's designed to grow through communities and that includes partnerships. So we'd love to chat with anybody interested. Thanks for coming on and sharing more about this new business.

I think it's so interesting because a lot of times on this show, we're usually talking to brands that are established and growing and beyond. And so I loved your perspective of coming on and sharing as a new business that's launching. It's great exercise for all of us, right? Because we're always starting some new campaign or new initiative or whatever it is, right?

But that fresh thinking of how do you solve your customers' pain points in a creative way? And so I like the creativity that you thought of with Potluck and how you tackle this food dilemma, the dinner dilemma, and the mental load that moms are carrying. So really creative. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing more about this.

Until next week, God bless.