We ALWAYS get asked about what we feed our kids. The truth is, we have picky eaters 😬 just like a lot of you. Sometimes they can be good with eating their veggies and a variety of what we cook for dinner, but honestly we are busy moms and we were looking for an easy option on school days and even for quick dinners after a long day at work.
We recently connected with the creators Sunnie, a meal service for kids that provides plant-forward, balanced, and nutritious pre-made lunches, and decided to give it a shot for our own kids. What we discovered is our kids love these meals. Paulina’s girls are big fans of the pizza kits. And they’re so easy to order! They are delivered straight to our front door with multiple options like pizza, tacos and sun-butter & jelly, plus have options to buy in bundles and add on fun snacks like smoothies, granola bites and yes, even cookies that we may have stolen a bite of. 😋
We were so impressed with the meals that we reached out to co-founders & moms, Katy Tucker and Lisette Howard, for an interview on what Sunnie is all about.
Our Interview with Sunnie Co-Founders Katy Tucker and Lisette Howard
SUPER MAMAS: Tell us who you are, what you do, and a little bit about your families.
SUNNIE: We’re Katy Tucker and Lisette Howard. We’re both friends who live in the Los Angeles area and we each have three children (Katy has 3 girls and Lisette has 3 boys). We both love food and healthy cooking for our families so we started our own business, Sunnie, to make healthy lunches and snacks for kids. (We named the company after Katy’s grandma Sunnie - who lived to be 100 and we think would be very proud of what we’re doing!).
SUPER MAMAS: How did the idea for Sunnie come about?
SUNNIE: After running around from pickup to pickup, baseball games and doing life in general with too many activities jammed into the day, we realized that the pace of life has not kept up with the pace of kid food. How many times have you found yourself grabbing a shelf-stable, preservative-ridden snack to keep the crew happy? We wanted to change that and create meals and snacks that kids love to eat and parents feel guilt-free about giving their kids!
SUPER MAMAS: Tell us about your ingredients. Why was it so important to you to create fresh, organic, vegetarian meals for kids?
SUNNIE: We spend MANY hours sourcing the freshest organic ingredients for our products. It's important to us that our label contains only clean, easy-to-read ingredients with zero preservatives. These days finding something convenient in the market is difficult and
SUPER MAMAS: What are your top tips for encouraging our picky eaters to try new foods?
SUNNIE: The best thing we ever learned (from our incredible Sunnie Advisor, Jill Castle) is that you should always have one food on the plate you know your kid loves and another that might be new or even something they said in the past they don't like. We can't tell you how many parents have told us that their kids "hate" carrots but eat carrots in their Sunnie Pizza Pack because they're there!
SUPER MAMAS: Besides Sunnie, what are your favorite recipes to feed your kids to guarantee they’re getting a healthy, balanced meal? (But let’s be honest - sometimes we have to give in to chicken nuggets, pizza or Mac and cheese too. 😂)
SUNNIE: A few staples in our houses are DIY taco night as well as spaghetti and meatballs! Kids love to make tacos (their way) with a whole slew of different items to choose from and what kid does not love spaghetti?!
SUPER MAMAS: Where can parents purchase Sunnie?
SUNNIE: You can find us on our website, www.feelsunnie.com or at a handful of local specialty grocers in LA.
SUPER MAMAS: Can we expect new types of meals in the future?
SUNNIE: We have lots of exciting things in our product pipeline including a breakfast option (yay for easy on-the-go breakfast!) and we also have a new snack line that is coming to a grocery store near you this summer.
Want to try Sunnie?
Sunnie offers local delivery to all LA and Orange County zip codes. If you live in other parts of California or in Arizona, Nevada, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah or New Mexico they can ship products to you at a flat rate. Click this link to learn more.
More about Sunnie: Two busy, health-conscious moms, Katy & Lisette, were tired of the lunchtime “battle royale” with their kids- the non-stop daily meal planning, the half-eaten lunches, and "constantly having to compromise between a balanced meal and “just eat something”. In addition to the constant in-home pressure, they were also frustrated about the lack of healthy grab-and-go meals for kids at the grocery store to support active, busy families. They knew it was time to revolutionize the approach to kids’ mid day meals.
Katy & Lisette teamed up with Jill Castle, MS, RN, one of the country's leading pediatric nutrition experts to find out what type of nutrition 3-to-7 year olds actually need in order to support their growing bodies. From there they spent their free time honing and testing plant-forward meal kits using healthy alternative ingredients. The end result was Sunnie (named after Katy’s grandmother and the feeling kids get when eating healthy, filling meals).
Sunnie exists so that parents can feel better about feeding their kids when time is limited or they're on the move. Kid-approved. Nothing but the good stuff, so kids can "shine from the inside out". #feelsunnie
