Bringing Livin Home: Gather Well, Stress Less

Planning meals is often the hardest part of the week, especially for families juggling work, school, and community life. From the listmaking to preparing to cleaning the kitchen, it seems like a never-ending cycle that often leads to wasted leftovers and expensive delivery fees. The frustration of trying to balance it all led Erica Tuggle to start Livin, a platform designed to connect culinary artists with busy families to make nutritious, home-cooked meals accessible and affordable.

James and Amanda are joined by Erica in their home to record the latest episode of Retire Southern, discussing how reclaiming our time and reconnecting with our loved ones over shared moments around the dinner table leads to a fuller life, all with the ease of a curated experience through the Livin service.

Livin’s Purpose-Driven Mission: Connecting Chefs with Meaningful Work

Erica’s upbringing in Connecticut taught her to consider how she could improve her own family’s experience. After undergrad at NYU and earning her MBA at Harvard Business School, Erica found herself in a busy career with two young children - and very little time to plan family meals. Then, the Covid pandemic created an opportunity for her to pause and reflect on how she could help not just her own family, but others like hers, to prioritize intentional, nutritious meals and rely less on frozen dinners and takeout.

Erica’s background in marketing at General Mills and Coca-Cola as well as her personal connections within the food service industry created an opportunity. What started as a series of local group chats and Google forms became an app backed by TechStars, a global venture capital group that runs an accelerator program for new small businesses. This laid the foundation for tech set up with the client in mind, with Cookconnect hitting the market in 2023. The company eventually rebranded to Livin to better communicate their company ethos after hearing that her customers overwhelmingly wanted to prioritize their health and well-being through shared meals.

A Fresh Take on Dinner: Team Chaos Books with Livin

During the interview, Amanda notes that their blended family of six children creates a hectic schedule balancing sports and school activities, often leading to a knee-jerk Chick-Fil-A UberEats order, which is both expensive and less nutritionally dense than the home-cooked meals she always intends to plan, but often can’t find time for. 

This challenge as a family and some digging on social media led them to Livin and their first meal with Isha, a local chef. With their preferences in mind, Chef Isha prepared three meals for their large family in under two hours: lemon chicken with summer squash and zucchini over cauliflower rice, chili lime salmon with peach salsa and a tricolor slaw, and a much-enjoyed Mexican street corn bowl.

The family’s experience with Livin is consistent with their company mission and indicative of the extensive vetting and care that goes into the chef selection process. Chefs are recruited through a combination of word-of-mouth referrals and applications, but all meet the same rigorous standards, including food safety and problem solving. The company is dedicated to providing a curated, positive experience from start to finish - all at a price per plate that is lower than your typical takeout dinner, and with fresh, healthy ingredients.

Building a Community-First Experience

To book with Livin, customers are prompted to sign up or sign in on their website and start with a survey to get an idea of their general needs for the service. After working directly with the team to make a plan for your family, they’re able to select their frequency, menu, and set the schedule with their selected chef. The menu changes monthly and is fully customizable to accommodate dietary restrictions, allergies, and their own recipe requests to fit their family’s specific needs.

On the scheduled day, the chef will arrive prepared with all of the fresh ingredients and spices required for the meals. The client simply provides the kitchen and storage containers. The client can choose to hang out and talk or learn or take the time to get other things done while Livin takes care of the rest - including cleaning and packaging each meal.

This white-glove approach to service provides busy families with the time and tools they need to enjoy great food while saving time and energy. There is also a generous referral program through a personal link on the platform, offering a $50 credit toward the user’s next service and 25% off for the new customer. Erica notes that some customers use this perk often, majorly cutting the cost down. 

The primary feedback that Livin receives is that the reclaimed time is the most valuable part of the service, allowing busy families to give the stress of planning and preparing meals to a professional and focus instead on what matters most to them. Erica also notes that the ideal situation would be for a family to find their favorite chef so that they can build a rapport and relationship with the right chef for their family’s needs and preferences.

Work-Life Balance in the South

In an era where “busy” has become the default, Erica Tuggle is redefining what it means to live well. Through Livin, she’s giving families back their most valuable commodity: time, all while creating opportunities for passionate local chefs to find meaningful work. 

Livin’s company mission is a reminder that living well isn’t something we wait for - it’s something we choose every day, one dinner table at a time. If you enjoyed Erica’s story, you can listen to this and other episodes of Retire Southern wherever you get your podcasts.