Jennifer Piette, founder of Narrative Food, is telling powerful stories through her curated corporate gift boxes. Each box is a celebration of community, featuring locally sourced products that reflect the people and places behind them. Her business transforms gifting into a meaningful experience that has a positive impact on communities and our environment.

Photos by Savannah Tracy. Q&A as told to CEI by Narrative Food Owner, Jennifer Piette, in her own words.

Tell us a bit about yourself.

My name is Jennifer Piette. I’m the founder and CEO of Narrative Food, which is a certified B Corp. We’ve been certified since 2013. We are also a member of 1% for the Planet, Carbon Neutral certified, and a Woman Business Enterprise, and we curate corporate gifts.

I’m Hallie Lartius, and I’m Narrative Food’s Director of Development. I met Jennifer over two years ago while I was working with a local nonprofit on the island and Narrative Food started donating to us.

What is Narrative Food?

We want to take a company’s gifting budget and make sure it’s being deployed in an impactful way and creating beautiful gifts. We work with the company to see, what’s their budget, how many gifts do they want to give, and within that budget we have a few different options. They can build their own box with this box builder that we have with all the For Good items. There are those eight items and some keepables from local potters. We also sometimes create custom gifts.

When did Narrative Food start?

Narrative Food was founded in 2010 in Los Angeles, and at that time we were a farm-to-table home delivery service, sourcing from small to medium-sized growers and makers all over Southern and Central California. And during the pandemic, suddenly everybody in town wanted our boxes and we grew a lot and our costs went up. And then after the pandemic, when everything opened up again, people wanted to go back out to the markets. Suddenly I had to make some very, very challenging decisions to make. One of those decisions was to cut out the fresh food and stick with the shelf-stable artisan-made products and pivot into corporate gifting, which is an area that we’d been exploring as a sideline up to then and had enough experience to have a handle on it. And then we decided to move to Maine in 2023, as well as joining 1% for the Planet so that our gifts also give back.

What are you most proud of?

Taking people’s food dollars and having those be invested in our local communities with small-scale makers, that’s really been much more impactful, as well as all the donations we give to nonprofits as part of our—through B Corp, we’re actually considered Designed to Give, which means that we give 2% of all of our sales—not just profits, but all of our sales—to nonprofits. I’m just really proud of being able to move, whether it’s our direct-to-consumer customers or companies who have budgets for their teams and being able to move those budgets into small-scale makers who are doing things right for the planet. And it really makes an impact on them.

What types of products do you have in your boxes?

The corporate gift boxes tend to want things that are ready to eat and don’t involve cooking. We’ve just created a new range of products for our gift box. It’s called the For Good range and is working with some of our favorite small-scale vendors but with a sort of unified packaging that leans into the impact and leans into sort of a company’s values. We’re working with 44 N, which is a local coffee roaster here on Deer Isle, and we created a product called Coffee for Community, which is a 44 N coffee. But of course, because we’re B Corp, 1% for the Planet, Climate Neutral company, it enables us to put those products with those kinds of qualifications that are meaningful for some of our buyers—corporate buyers in particular—that want to make sure that they’re investing in companies who are aligned with their ethos.

What challenges have you faced?

The pandemic was an incredible challenge. We had to scale 5X over six weeks. And we had 500 people on our waiting list in the end, and we just couldn’t even take on as much as we tried. So that was challenging. But then after the pandemic, once we’d met that demand, it was very challenging to figure out how to reinvent ourselves. And I would say in this new incarnation, the challenge really is the seasonality of gifting—it tends to be weighted towards the fourth quarter, holiday gifting. And so it’s very hard for me to create those year-long jobs. And so for that reason, we actually applied for and implemented a grant with Hallie’s help to sort of help with our seasonality.

The domestic trade grant that we received was in order to create a new program, which the goal was to have a recurring revenue through the year to support our vendors in a more, you know, less seasonal way by creating basically Coffee Break in a Box subscriptions for companies to send to their remote employees. It’s been a little bit tricky because it launched just in tandem with the change of leadership in this country, who has been much more about going back to the office, and people have been a little bit unstable. So we’re really hoping that that kind of settles, because the reality is there are a lot of companies with remote employees, and for company culture, for employee retention, it’s just a really great thing for showing that you care about your team’s well-being and at the same time supporting small-scale local makers like 44 N coffee and some of the snacks that we have—Caramels for the Climate, which is with a local caramel maker called Virgo Moon out of Mechanic Falls, ME. This is the kind of ways that we can support companies and support our community at the same time.

What advice would you give to aspiring business owners?

You’ve got to be really passionate about what you’re doing. And I think having a purpose beyond just having a business per se, like something that you really love. Because it’s a roller coaster ride, and I think being flexible and keeping your eye on the impact that you want to see through this business and the love that you have for the people that make up your business will help you weather the storms that inevitably come when unexpected things happen. Just hold your values, and hopefully that can help you find solutions. My mantra that I developed when we were doing farm-to-table home delivery was just stay in the solution. There’s always a solution, and the trick and the skill is really finding that solution and working with your team to always stay in that solution.

Is there something you wish you knew before starting?

In some ways, knowing a lot can be helpful, but in other ways I might not have done anything different. It’s long and it’s hard. The normal is slow and steady and just being prepared to hold on, but also accept if something’s just not working and accept that maybe you need to rethink.

What are your long-term goals?

My long-term goal for Narrative Food really is to have a sustainable business as well as sustainable products. Getting to a place where we’re able to have the team that the business requires to be able to function smoothly, because Hallie has been very flexible and can do 100 different things. But really, this business, you know, it needs to have a bit more volume in its new incarnation, which of course we’re working on. But to get to that place I want like a right-sized business for what we do and the small-scale vendors that we work with.

What is one thing you want potential customers to know about Narrative Food?

I think the most important thing is that every single aspect of what we do, we’re really thinking about impact and staying true to, you know, paying people fairly, creating something that we’re proud of that’s healthy for the planet, that people are going to enjoy—that’s a really great experience when you open the box. So I really am sort of putting my money where my mouth is.

How did you hear about CEI? What is your relationship like with them?

When we moved to Maine, I found out about CEI, connected with my advisor Eric Treworgy, who is also a local food business owner. I mean, he’s been just so supportive in so many different ways. I do have my know-how and my experience over the years, but having somebody trusted that I can walk through my cash flow or how I’m raising money or, you know, look over this grant application we’re doing for feedback or whatever it is has been really invaluable.

Would you recommend CEI to other small businesses?

Yeah, totally. And I may have already.

What is the most important trait for running a business?

Running a business is sort of like being a marathon runner. And sometimes things can be really discouraging. I mean, like when we implemented—we spent all last year implementing this Coffee Break in a Box—and full disclosure, full transparency, it has not been selling like hot potatoes like we hoped. And so while we haven’t given up on it and we still have it as a tool in our tool belt, OK, this environment—clearly this isn’t a match. So I thought, OK, let’s really try something different and really lean into our community, since we’re about community. And so that’s why we’ve launched all these new products.