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In this episode of The Wynn's Kitchen podcast, Wynn Austin shares her journey of starting a natural Asian sauce business from scratch. She discusses her initial dreams of working with food, the health challenges she faced that led her to explore healthier eating, and how she created a delicious, healthy version of her favorite Vietnamese sauce- The Sate Chili sauce - that resonated with her community.

Wynn reflects on the overwhelming yet exciting transition from a home kitchen to the idea of a business, emphasizing the importance of taking the first step in entrepreneurship.

If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to share and subscribe to the podcast on apple podcast, spotify, or i heart radio. Please leave us a review on apple to help others like you, find our podcast.

For healthy recipes, please feel free to check out our website - www.wynnskitchen.com

You can also connect with me on Instagram at Wynn’s Kitchen, that’s my social media of choice. I’m on there daily, sharing what I’m up to and what I’m cooking up!

Thank you again for listening and until next time, keep cooking up your dreams. You’ll never know when it turns into reality.

xoxo,
Wynn

Transcript:

Wynn Austin (00:01.838)
Hi everyone, welcome back to the Wynn's Kitchens podcast, where I share my journey of starting a natural Asian sauce business and the people that are helping me along the way. I'm your host, Wynn Austin, and I'm also the founder and CEO of Wynn's Kitchen. In today's episode, I wanna share how I came up with the idea of starting Wynn's Kitchen. I get asked this question all the time.

And the truth is, I've always dreamt of working with food, but I knew I never wanted to have a restaurant. And originally I dreamt of opening a cooking class out of my house, like Sam the Cooking Guy, which if you're in San Diego and beyond, I'm sure you've heard of him. But of course the idea didn't work out. At the time, my oldest daughter, Brielle, was just a baby, and it would have been way too disruptive to my family life.

So I scratched the idea and I was at peace with it and I figured, you know what, I love food and cooking, but it's just gonna be my hobby. Until 10 years later, after I had my second child, Audrina, I started experiencing some health issues. It wasn't anything specific that I could really pinpoint. I remember telling the doctors and my friends, I felt really anxious. I felt...

Like I had a difficult time handling stress, which I've never had that problem before. And I just feel, it didn't feel like myself. one of the other symptoms is that my throat felt like it was really tight. It honestly felt like someone had their hands on my throat and it was so uncomfortable to talk on the phone. I just sounded so stressed and you know, it's not really good when you're in sales.

At the time, I also didn't realize that those were symptoms of an anxiety attack. And to make matters worse, my doctor told me that my blood pressure was high and if it didn't improve in the next month, I'm going to have to go on prescription medication. This news was so devastating to me because I was in my mid thirties. I was an avid tennis player and a regular at Orange Theory and we mostly ate at home.

Wynn Austin (02:15.734)
I took pride in making dinners for my family and I thought we ate fairly healthy. We never really eat fast food unless we're on a road trip. And I started sharing my frustrations and some of my symptoms with my girlfriend, Natalie. And she mentioned to me that she went to a holistic doctor that got her on the Whole30 diet to help reset her gut health and hormones. And of course, you know, it actually helps you lose weight as well. So,

You know, I was so desperate. I even went to the ear, throat, nose specialist and they came back and all they told me was that I have allergies and I knew that wasn't the case. So when my friend Natalie told me about Whole30, I didn't really know anything about it. I didn't know about the keto or paleo, but I was desperate. So I started looking into it. And the biggest takeaways are, you know, on those diets, you have to eat real food.

you have to cut out alcohol, sugar, soy, and gluten. And I really wanted to feel better, so I decided to give it a try, you know, for 30 days. Before this journey, I never looked at labels. I thought, you know, I cook with a lot of fresh vegetables that that's eating healthy, and that was enough. So I started having to look at the labels and I was shocked when I noticed that all the sauces and condiments in my fridge, that I can no longer eat any of them. So for the first week, I kept our meals really simple. We had protein, a side of salad, squeeze of lime juice, olive oil, balsamic vinegar. And after a week, I was struggling. I mean, my background's Vietnamese. I mostly cook Asian food, all kinds of Asian food like Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean dishes. That's my jam.

And I couldn't have any of it because all the Asian sauces are mostly sugar, soy, they have gluten, they're made with bad oils, tons of artificial preservatives. Heck, I even saw warning labels on some of the jars that said this may cause cancer. I couldn't even believe I never paid attention to those labels before and never saw it. But you know what, it started to all make sense.

Wynn Austin (04:41.388)
My family has high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, but is it only genetics when this is the stuff we're eating every day, which we think is healthy because we doused our vegetables and protein in all these sauces? I really needed to figure out how to come up with a healthy Asian sauce so I can eat ASAP, because I was dying from not having Asian food.

So after two weeks of dousing my stir fry with only garlic and coconut aminos, I knew that wasn't going to cut it. So I started to think about what is the sauce that I love that have a lot of flavor? And my mind went back to my old days when I was a branch manager at Bank of America. And I was so busy that most of my lunch was five minutes of eating rice with a big spoonful of satay chili sauce, which is a Vietnamese sauce.

The sate sauce that I used to buy was out of the question, of course. It has soybean oil, it's sugar, preservatives, a lot of ingredients I couldn't even pronounce. So I started researching how to make satay sauce at home and I was able to swap out ingredients. For example, I replaced soy sauce with coconut aminos. I did not add any sugar and coconut aminos has a natural sweetness to it.

already. I also swapped out the bad oils and I bought fresh lemongrass, garlic, shallots, fresh peppers. Those are all the flavors that I love. Like in Vietnamese cooking, we eat a lot of lemongrass. So in my kitchen, I put all the ingredients in a food processor. I cooked up my very first jar of satay sauce. And the first batch was this tiny two quart pot, which I store the sauce in a mason jar and I popped it in the fridge.

and I started putting the saute sauce on everything. It tasted way better than the unhealthy stuff I used to buy and it was my lifeline on this Whole30 journey. I literally put on everything. I ate it with my salmon, my steak, I made cauliflower rice and the saute sauce actually made it taste good because on Whole30 you can't really eat processed carbs. So no rice or pasta.

Wynn Austin (07:06.414)
I was so excited about it. I would share and post pictures on Facebook and to not only share what I'm cooking, but I was sharing my whole 30 journey to help keep myself accountable, right? To stay on track. And I just have a natural love of sharing food. So to my surprise, after three weeks, my brain fog started to clear.

I've suffered from eczema my whole life and my eczema had just disappeared. The pressure on my throat disappeared and at my checkup at the four week mark, my blood test came back normal and my blood pressure was in normal range. So I never had to go on prescription medications. Thank goodness. This really was the first time in my life.

that I discovered the power of food as medicine and how our gut health impacts our body and mental health. It was such a big shock to me when I started getting messages and texts from friends, my tennis team members, my neighbors, they were all asking me for a jar of wind sauce. They would say, when I saw your post on your chili sauce,

And I just learned that I'm allergic to soy now or when I'm going gluten free. saw the chili sauce you've you're making and you said it's gluten free or when I'm trying to cut back on sugar. Next time. Can you when you make some sauce? Can I get a jar? my gosh, I was so excited. I mean, I love cooking and I love sharing food. It's my love language. So I was so excited to share my sauce and

feel like, wow, I'm giving them something that they couldn't buy from the grocery store because I couldn't find any sauce at the grocery store that I could buy that was healthy and didn't have sugar, salt, gluten, and all that stuff. So the craziest part was, you know, people kept coming back and reordering for more. I mean, it was one thing if, you know, I just thought, okay, you know, they just want to try something new.

Wynn Austin (09:29.826)
But for three years, those original people kept coming back and asking for more wind sauce. And the list kept getting longer and longer and longer. And I started having people I didn't even know tracking me down for my wind sauce. And they told me, you know, I had so many people tell me like, wow, you really should turn this into a business. Like you have something special here. But how you guys?

I mean, I had no background on food manufacturing. I didn't know where to start or what the first step was. How do I make a shelf life stable? how do you know that it's food safe? And how do I sell it outside of porch pickup? Like, I mean, I had no idea how to get my food, like how, you know, the grocery stores sell product. I have no idea how to get it on the shelf to the grocery stores. And

I can't tell you how many times I wanted to scratch the idea of turning it into a real business. Like every time I started researching, it was so overwhelming and I just didn't think I could do it. So in the next episode, I'll share with you what changed my mind and the very first baby steps I took in turning Wynn's Kitchen into a real business and building it into a household brand.

But for now, this brings us to the end of today's episode for Wynn's Kitchen. And I hope you've enjoyed the story of how I got the idea for Wynn's Kitchen's first product, the Sate Chili Sauce. And remember, every great business starts with a small idea and the courage to take the very first step. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to share and subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or iHeartRadio.

Wynn Austin (11:50.562)
Thank you again for listening and until next time, keep cooking up your dreams. You'll never know when it turns into a reality.