No-nonsense eating

Seattle Sutton's out to create a healthier America, one stomach at a time

By Melissa Westphal

BusinessRockford.com

Seattle Sutton, 76, is the founder of Seattle Sutton’s Healthy Eating, a healthy meal-replacement plan based in Ottawa. Sutton (yes, it’s her real name) started the business in 1985, and she regularly tours the country talking about entrepreneurship and eating right.

She spoke during the Smart Women Smart Money seminar last week in Rockford and sat down with Business Rockford to talk about her business. Read more at seattlesutton.com; call corporate, 800-442-3438; or call the local distributor in Rockford, 815-332-2438, or in Roscoe, 815-623-1699.

How did you get started?
I helped my husband when he owned a medical practice, and a patient with Type 2 diabetes came in with questions and concerns. My husband always understood that nutrition was very important in the medical field, and this man told me, “Seattle, I’m going to be honest with you. I’m not going to do all that work (to eat healthy), but if you did it for me, I could stay on it.” It was a like a light bulb going off. I could help people by doing the work for them. A lot of people don’t want to cook or learn about calorie-counting. It wasn’t just patients, either. Other communities started hearing about it and wanted to get the meals, too. Now we have 120 distributors who order meals from us prepared in Ottawa and shipped nationwide. Some weeks, we’ve done as many as 180,000 meals. It just keeps expanding.

When I started, I invested $1,000 that I earned, that I made my husband pay me. I started small, renting space from a local caterer in Marseilles. As we grew, we moved to another location until we built a state-of-the-art building along Interstate 80. Our gross income last year was more than $25 million. We have six franchisees in different states, and we’re available nationwide through DHL shipping. We do wellness-incentive programs with companies and have more than 100 companies registered through our Web site.

If you have an interest in starting a business, it can be done even if you don’t know a lot about it. Surround yourself with honest, ambitious people who can help you.

Do you feel the competition in the multibillion-dollar diet industry?
No one else in the world is doing what we’re doing. People ask about competition, but there really isn’t any. No one is serving fresh meals, healthy meals and portion-control for the entire week with such variety. People only repeat a meal 10 times a year. Most people tell me that they couldn’t do better than that on their own.

How do you develop the meals?
I base them on what I would serve my own family. If I couldn’t do that, I wouldn’t do anything. It’s so important ... to learn to eat what you will eat for the rest of your life. A fad diet doesn’t work because once you go back to your old eating habits, you’re going to gain weight because you haven’t learned anything.

People have a choice of being on the 1,200- or 2,000-calories-a-day plan. We don’t use hydrogenated oils, no high-fructose corn syrup, no artificial sweeteners, no food dyes. We don’t use them because you don’t need them.

It’s a family-owned business. I have one daughter who is very involved. She loves to study all the cookbooks, and she’ll experiment with the recipes at home. She’ll bring them to headquarters, and we’ll make the decisions there. We have the latest food-analysis software, and we have a registered dietitian who does all the final checking of all the meals. We also have on every meal a nutritional fact and ingredient label so people know what they’re eating in every single meal.

A lot of elderly people use the service because they still want to stay in their homes. Sometimes, the children will order maybe one of the 2,000-calorie portions for them, and that still leaves room for dining out with their elderly friends. So there are options.

Did you ever expect your business to grow and become this big?
Yes. Because I’m an optimist. I knew I could help people, and I knew people would be interested because a lot of people don’t want to do their own shopping, measuring, analysis, portion-control. They don’t want to cook and clean up, and they shouldn’t have to. If they want to do other things, they can — let us do the work for them. We include the salad, the fresh fruit, everything. I include it all so you don’t have to go to the grocery store.

How do you stay motivated?
I’m as excited about what I do as I have been since Day 1. The media have really helped us grow, and they’re really on target. It’s all about learning to eat right to lose weight. It’s calories in vs. calories out. This is the healthiest eating possible. People ask, “What happens if I don’t like something?” And I’m so glad they ask. I don’t care what you like and what you don’t like. I’m going to serve you what you should eat. We need to get that message across to our children — make sure we serve them what they should eat, not fast food.

My mission is to improve people’s eating habits, and I know that to have the results, which is what I want, I have to do every meal for the week. Fad diets don’t work. If it’s a diet that you know you wouldn’t want to be on for the rest of your life because it’s not healthy, you’re wasting your money.

The greatest asset you have in life is your good health. Without good health, it’s virtually impossible to be happy, so take good care of yourself.

Reach staff writer Melissa Westphal at 815-987-1341 or mwestpha@rrstar.com.