After a devastating diagnosis of celiac disease at age 20, Vanessa Phillips had to rewrite the menu in a city that runs on bagels and carbs.
Phillips, now 42, wanted nothing more than to be able to eat her go-to comfort foods without spending her days in pain. After the success of her first venture into the gluten-free market, opening the beloved restaurant Friedman’s in Chelsea Market, she set out to recreate her favorite nostalgic dishes in a way that felt good for everyone — hence the name of her company, Feel Good Foods.
Now, nearly 15 years after sending a blind sample to someone at Whole Foods, Phillips has made her mark as the queen of gluten-free in nearly 25,000 grocery stores.
“And it all began with an idea off of our restaurant menu that we put in a Ziploc bag and sent off to one buyer,” Phillips told The Post.
Born and raised in New York City to a family of restaurateurs, Phillips spent her early years immersed in what she dubbed the “restaurant mecca of the country.”
Her dad owned Chinese restaurants and bagel stores across the city — people used to affectionately call him the “Bagel King,” she said — so she pretty much only ate bagels, dumplings, and egg rolls growing up.
“Like a true New Yorker in the ’90s,” she quipped.
Phillips started to experience different symptoms when she was in her teens, and she couldn’t pinpoint what the culprit was — though she knew it was something that she was eating on a daily basis.
“I used to joke with my mom and say, ‘As long as I can keep eating dumplings and egg rolls for the rest of my life, I’m good, I don’t even care,’ ” she laughed.
It wasn’t until she was in college that she was officially diagnosed with celiac disease, which afflicts about 1% of the US population, and quickly learned that she needed to go on a strict gluten-free diet. When she moved back to NYC after graduating, it became increasingly obvious that she had to change the way she interacted with food, particularly at restaurants.
“I figured from an early age I was probably going to go into the restaurant industry just because that is what was so familiar to me, and I loved food so much,” Phillips shared with The Post. “But after going gluten-free, I needed to figure out how to continue my passion of eating and cooking and being this epicurean, but in a way where my body doesn’t hate me the next day.”
When Friedman’s first opened in 2009, it was still a time when the concept of gluten-free food was fringe — today, around 25% of Americans eat gluten-free products — but Phillips was adamant on making sure the spot was a “gluten-free safe haven” for those with celiac.
To this day, Phillips herself doesn’t typically go to exclusively gluten-free restaurants, but rather she has her favorite restaurants where she can find something gluten-free, such as a bagel at Sadelle’s, fried chicken at COQODAQ, the highly-acclaimed chicken parm at Rubirosa, doughnuts at Doughnut Plant, or a slice of pizza at Sag Pizza in Sag Harbor.
Phillips recalled that when she was first diagnosed, one thing that really bothered her was going to a restaurant and getting a special menu for gluten-free items.
“I felt like I was a kid getting a kid’s menu,” she lamented.
She wanted Friedman’s to be inclusive without a separate menu for those with the dietary restriction; there would be only one menu for everyone, and it would be entirely gluten-free. Shockingly, the restaurant very quickly developed a cult following because of it.
“We got people from all over the world that were, like, ‘Wow, this is exactly what I’m looking for in the city I live in,’ ” Phillips shared. “That was kind of like that lightbulb moment where I was, like, how do I reach more people with food that really bridges the gap between people who are looking for gluten-free exclusively and people who just want delicious, convenient food that is very familiar and nostalgic?”
Phillips saw a huge gap in the market. After going gluten-free, every time she grocery-shopped, she found that the frozen food section was “uninspiring.”
“Why is it that if I buy something in the frozen section, it’s not real food? Why is the quality not there?” she wondered, adding that it sparked her idea to bring restaurant-quality food to the frozen aisle. “I wanted people to feel like they were getting takeout at home.”
Even though she had no background in CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods), Phillips was determined to make her dreams a reality, so she tested gluten-free dumplings as Feel Good Food’s flagship product, selling them in Ziploc bags at the restaurant and sending blind samples to a contact at Whole Foods — with no connection and no meeting.
Two weeks after sending those samples, she received a positive email telling her that the idea of gluten-free dumplings was incredibly innovative since it didn’t exist at the time — but most importantly, it didn’t taste gluten-free. It was different in texture because it’s made of rice flour, but it was still “incredibly delicious.”
One of the hardest parts of making gluten-free foods, Phillips told The Post, is doing it well.
“We don’t think it’s enough to just be gluten-free. We test everything against products with gluten in them,” she added. “We want the texture and the crunch and the crisp to all be so that you don’t even notice the difference. And if we feel it misses the mark on taste, we don’t launch it.”
And Phillips loves watching people eat her food for the time time — because people are either expecting it to be good or they’re pleasantly surprised.
“Obviously, if you’re living from that place of deprivation where you’re gluten-free and you’ve been gluten-free for many years, and you have these food memories of missing it and you eat it today and it’s so nostalgic for you, that’s the best,” she said.
Phillips shared that when she was younger, before she was gluten-free, she’d go to a restaurant called Jackson Hole on the Upper West Side every day after school with her friends, and they would sit around a table eating mozzarella sticks — and that memory of the cheesy treats is what has stuck with her all these years later.
Today, mozzarella sticks are Feel Good Foods’ No. 1 snack product, and Phillips believes it’s so beloved because it tends to bring back happy memories.
“Some of my best food memories are less about the actual food that I was eating and more about where I was and who I was with,” Phillips said. “Whether it was a holiday or I was having a party, we were all together, snacking and sharing.”
With frozen foods, a lot of the categories tend to be focused on single-serve entrées, which is, as Phillips described it, a very “singular experience” — taking a tray, popping it in the microwave, and eating alone. But with Feel Good Foods, Phillips made sure a big pillar of the brand was to focus on the gathering, which is why she chose to focus on snacks and appetizers.
“Yes, its focus is about the food, but it’s also the eating occasion. You’re not alone, you’re together, you’re laughing, and you’re sharing, and it’s incredibly fun,” she explained. “Obviously, the food is a really big part of that, but it’s so much more than that.”
Even though Feel Good Foods is a gluten-free brand, Phillips noted that over 85% of their current consumers actually have no issues with gluten. Similar to her vision with Friedman’s, she’s found that maybe one person in a household is gluten-free, but the whole house is buying the brand so everyone can enjoy together.
“It’s all about creating food that if it’s good enough and it tastes good enough, it’s going to be inclusive for everyone to enjoy,” she noted.
“We’re really speaking to a much broader consumer base that’s not just living gluten-free, but rather looking for convenient foods, great for kids, great for snacking — the ultimate mom hack,” Phillips said. “It’s really this brand that’s very fun because it kind of gives you permission to indulge.”
