When Angela Vranich was in college, she founded her first business: a marketing company for organic food brands. “It started as a fun project during the semester and then flourished into what was a real business that I began running out of my dorm room,” she said.
After graduating, Ms. Vranich, 36, briefly worked in television production but discovered that she preferred to be her own boss. She and her now-husband, Ben Lewis, realized there was a gap in the baby-food space, and in 2017 they founded the direct-to-consumer brand Little Spoon. “We saw an opportunity, as two people who did not have kids, as a way to reinvent this antiquated space that hadn’t been touched in decades,” said Ms. Vranich.
The brand has grown to include refrigerated purées for babies, snacks for toddlers and meals for older children. In October, Little Spoon began selling its products in Target. Ms. Vranich is also the chief product officer, and the company calls its employees “Spooners.”
Ms. Vranich and Mr. Lewis moved to TriBeCa from San Francisco in 2017 and have stayed put since. “There are a lot of young kids, great restaurants,” she said. “It just feels very relaxed.” The couple share a three-bedroom condo with their dog, Gus, a sheepadoodle who goes to the office with them every day.
Ms. Vranich recently spent a Tuesday with The New York Times as she taste-tested new foods and unwound with her friends.
This interview has been condensed and lightly edited.
QUIET TIME Ben and I wake up around 6:30 in the morning. We pull a double shot of espresso and enjoy it on the couch, and go over what we have going on that day. It’s also my personal time to do any other little errand-type things that I need to check off my list. For the past several years, we’ve been renovating a home remotely in Miami, so in that precious time in the morning, I’ve gotten a lot of work done in relation to the renovation.
FROZEN Everyone who knows me knows I’m a big ice-roller girl. I have a whole bag of ice rollers and I love ice rolling my face. You put them in the freezer and they have a little roller ball on them, and you can roll them over your face when you wake up. It’s like a little shock to the system for your face.
SWEAT SESH I live next door to Barry’s, and I’m probably there three times a week for the 7:20 a.m. class. I’ve gone there since I lived in San Francisco, and I’m about to hit my 400th class. I love the way that it makes me feel.
MORNING RESET After Barry’s, I take time to get ready for work. It’s important to me to have my moments before work to really make sure that I am not feeling rushed and that I can put an outfit on and do my makeup and make sure I have everything that I need to get out the door. Then, we always have a stop-and-chat with our doorman. His name is Bill. He’s been there since we moved into the building. He knows everything, and we always talk to each other about what happened over the weekend, or upcoming plans. He’s a main character that I see every single day.
IN STRIDE I will prioritize walking to work over anything. It could be pouring rain, and I will grab an umbrella because I just love the walk. I enjoy getting steps in, seeing the city, taking Gus for a walk and enjoy that 15-minute commute with Ben. We’ll stop at Lucia Alimentari, which is on the corner of West Broadway and Canal Street, for coffee.
HUDDLE UP Every Tuesday, we have our all-hands meeting. It’s basically a chance for every team to stand up and say what their biggest wins of the week are and their priorities for the upcoming week. We have 109 employees now — I’d say about half of them are in New York, half of them are remote — so everything is over Zoom, but our office is typically the busiest on Tuesdays. We have some nice traditions in the presentation, like the Boss Award. We have a physical plaque that says “Boss,” so someone is the boss for the week, and then they’ll nominate a new boss for the upcoming week.
SUPER BOWL After the all-hands meeting, I’ll take a walk with Gus to pick something up for lunch. I love ThisBowl, an Asian-inspired Australian poke and salad bowl place. My favorite is the miso salmon bowl, with rice, salad and umami-glazed salmon. It’s always a good excuse to get fresh air and walk out of the office and go for a lap around the block if it’s a nice day.
TASTE TEST We are constantly doing development work in the office. We have a variety of projects that we’re working on and lots of tastings happening in the research and development kitchen. We’re working on a new breakfast product — I think we’re on version 39 of this product — so we’re doing tastings of that, and going over packaging for a kids’ multivitamin. We’re already working on a pumpkin spice smoothie, which we will be launching, hopefully, in Target next fall.
Our office always smells really good, and I think a lot of people are jealous that they’re not on the product team. They always linger around the test kitchen when we’re doing tastings, because they love to try everything that we’re working on. Gus is always in the R&D kitchen when there’s a tasting happening, waiting for something to fall.
GIRLS’ NIGHT After dropping Gus off at home, I’m heading to Zimmi’s in the West Village to meet two friends, and fellow founders, for dinner. We’re having a little girls’ holiday dinner get together. It’s really nice having female friends who are fellow founders you can trust to bounce ideas off of and get advice. Zimmi’s is a southern French bistro and the kind of place where we get table fries and a great bottle of wine.
CIRCLE BACK Lately, I’ve been a two-shower-a-day kind of girl. I love rinsing off the day, then I’ll do my skin care and wind down for the evening. That usually involves a little bit of red-light therapy and getting ready for the next day. Ben and I debrief on the day and then we get through about 20 minutes of a TV show before we fall asleep. We’re always rewinding the 10 minutes that we fell asleep during the night prior.
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