Cooksimple founder goes back to his roots

Healthy-food entrepreneur Keith Lauver capped a nine-week national tour of grocery stores with a stop at the Good Earth Market in Billings on Tuesday—the store that helped launch his business five years ago.

“This is where the magic was,” he said Tuesday morning while setting up a sample table just inside the main entrance to the downtown co-op.

He was also handing out free boxes of his Cranberry Wild Rice mix and promoting his nine other natural, gluten-free meals, including Tibetan Dal and All American Sloppy Joe.

Lauver, a native of Billings who has lived in Red Lodge for 10 years, started what would become Cooksimple after going in for a life insurance exam in 2002, when he was in his early 30s. As he explains on the Cooksimple website, he walked out of the exam with “three numbers that changed his life: Cholesterol=260, Triglycerides=586, Weight=194.”

Over the next year, he began cooking for himself, eating simple, healthful foods and working with a personal trainer. He lost 40 pounds, and he knew he was onto something. Working with chef Tony Sobiech, he developed a line of natural foods under the name The Healthy Pantry.

He was catering private dinners and selling his ingredients as a sideline when, in 2008, he decided to start selling box dinners. He was still selling them one at a time, though, until Margaret Beeson pitched an idea to him.

Beeson, the medical director of the Yellowstone Naturopathic Clinic, had Lauver cater dinner for many of her patients, and she loved his food. She suggested he make the leap to retail, and that he talk to the Good Earth Market about carrying his products.

Accordingly, he went in and spoke with Perry McNeese, then the general manager of the Good Earth. McNeese, who had 40 years’ experience in the grocery business, took him to the store’s second-floor dining area, Lauver said, and in 45 minutes gave him a “101 course in retail.”

“And he also said, we’d love to bring your product in,” Lauver said.

It was exhilarating when the Good Earth put his Healthy Pantry products on shelves that were “in the prime position in the entire store,” Lauver said. In retrospect, it was also embarrassing.

Lauver said his packages came in various sizes, with various prices, and the labels were laser-printed and applied by hand.

“We were set up to fail,” he said. “But the amazing thing was, we did it.” Good Earth customers loved his products and spread the word, and slowly he expanded his retail reach.

By 2010, though, he and his wife, Theresa, had had enough. There was too much work and too little income, and way too much uncertainty. Lauver went back to his career as a computer consultant. But in 2011, opportunity knocked again. His old distributor, Quality Foods Distributing, of Bozeman, had dropped off a brochure at a Safeway store in Bozeman.

Somehow the information, and some of his food, got to corporate headquarters in California. Safeway wanted to sell three of his boxed meals at 900 of its stores. Though he had already gone through a bankruptcy, Lauver said, the Bank of Red Lodge was willing to give him the line of credit that made it possible to re-launch the business.

He hasn’t looked back since. He now has his boxed meals in 5,700 stores. “I think we’re in every state at this point,” he said, and he is also selling his products in Australia and Canada.

Cooksimple meals now come in uniform packaging, and all of them sell for $4.99. For some of the meals, like the chili and the sloppy joes, the recipes call for adding a pound of ground turkey and diced tomatoes or tomato paste. Other meals call only for adding water. They all serve four.

Sales, marketing and support take place in Red Lodge, with the manufacturing in Seattle. As good as things have been going, Lauver said, he sometimes lamented his increasing separation from his customers.

He wanted to reconnect, and he wanted to start developing some new products.

“The only way to do that,” he said, referring to both goals, “was to hit the road.”

An uncle in Mississippi had an old 37-foot RV “parked in the weeds,” Lauver said, so he went to Mississippi and drove it to Atlanta to have it “graphic-wrapped” with promotions for Cooksimple products. And on Sept. 21, he and Theresa and their three boys, ages 12, 10 and 7, hit the road.

Lauver said they drove through 32 states, visited 24 stores and mingled with an estimated 5,000 customers. They have been home-schooling their boys since last February, Lauver said, so for the road trip, Theresa worked out a whole American history course, bolstered by visits along the route.

Lauver admitted it wasn’t until a week ago that he thought of the Good Earth Market. Rather than just going home to Red Lodge, he said, they decided to end their tour with a five-hour stop at the Good Earth. He also decided to donate 1,000 boxes of the Cranberry Wild Rice, just in time for Thanksgiving, something he didn’t do at any other store. It is available on a first-come, first-served basis, one box per customer.

“My heart went right back to the people where I got my start,” he said.

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