Southbay Moms Create Baby Delivery Service Amidst Pandemic

Starting a business is always a challenge. Starting it when a pandemic hits, takes the challenge to the next level. But that didn’t deter these two moms entrepreneurs Christine Elfalan and Dana Ark of helping other moms to feed their babies.

Tell us about the story behind Joju, how both of you met and when was that you decided to start the business?

My partner Dana and I are friends first. She was pregnant with her second baby at the same time I was pregnant with my first — in fact we were due one month apart.

Once we had our babies and they started to eat solids, Dana and I got to talking about how we didn’t love the baby food options out there. Being Asian-Americans who grew up in diverse environments, we wanted more diversity in our foods and most of all we wanted it to be fresh and healthy.

In Jan 2020, I was laid off from my executive role at a tech start-up and Dana and I decided to forge ahead. She was building fun recipes everyday while I was trying to get all our logistics in place. Our plan was to launch in April.

Then in March 2020, as the pandemic hit full-force, we had to decide whether to move forward or not. Seeing how difficult it was to grocery shop, home-school and work from home, we decided that we needed to do this for all the hard-working parents out there despite how challenging it would be.

You launched at the beginning of the pandemic. How was that?

We feel very fortunate that despite the craziness of the pandemic and the economic shift, that we are able to still start this business. But it has NOT been as smooth as we hoped.

I’d say our biggest struggle is getting the distribution we originally hoped for. We had plans of working with farmer’s markets, daycares, pediatricians and other partners, but these businesses themselves were struggling to figure out how to pivot with the pandemic so it was and still has been so hard to get our foot in the door.

Why is it so important not just to give your baby organic meals but also as close to home made as possible?

Food that is store-bought is highly processed, even if it’s organic.. In order for the food to sit on a shelf unrefrigerated, they use extreme-heat to process the food, which ultimately kills off everything including the nutrients! What is left is a sugary syrup.. We make our baby food the way you would at home. Over a normal stove, we cook it to the proper temperature and puree it the way you would at home. This way, the food is nutrient-dense and the texture is actually like food and not watery or syrupy.

What sets Joju different from other baby food services?

I’d say there are three main things that sets us apart.

Joju is a local service. We make our food in small batches, in a local commercial kitchen and deliver it to your door.
We believe in palate-development at an early age. From our Baby Burrito Bowl to our Moroccan Tagine, our menu is inspired by flavors from around the world. Our menu changes weekly, so our babies are always exposed to variety.
In an effort to reduce waste, we’ve revived the milkman model. Our customers leave their finished glass jars at their door and we’ll pick it up when we drop off their next order. Good-bye single use plastic!

What type of menu options do you offer?

We offer food super smooth purees for solid-newbies to more textured purees with added spices, herbs and superfoods (like chia, quinoa and hemp seed to name a few) for the more adventurous eaters. We also offer diced foods and pastas for babies moving on from purees. A few examples of what’s on our menu:

Pea Pesto
Blueberry Haupia
Moroccan Tagine
Baby Burrito Bowl