How one neighbor’s pregnancy sparked her search for healthy alternatives to familiar foods
Photography by Kathy Tran.
IIIt’s not uncommon for newborns to be allergic to something their mother eats. To address the problem, pediatricians are asking nursing mothers to remove the most common culprits – dairy, soy, and gluten, to name a few – from their diets. Mothers stop consuming certain items one at a time until the problems subside. That happened to the neighbor Lauren Schwalb and her then newborn Hadley.
“I threw in the towel and brought my daughter to the formula,” says Schwalb. “It just felt impossible. I thought to myself, how do I do that? “
Mother and daughter got well. But the process made Schwalb curious about what was in the food she fed her family. When she searched her pantry, she found that almost everything she had had ingredients that she shouldn’t be eating.
Last year Schwalb and her husband Stephen had dinner with friends and the Whole30 diet came up as an issue. Stephen announced that he would try.
“I’m a competitive person by nature, so there is no way I would let him do it without doing it to him,” says Schwalb.
The acceptable foods in their new diet included fruits, vegetables, and lean proteins. Since gluten was not allowed and in a family that loves Tex-Mex, Schwalb began to look for alternatives to the high-carbohydrate staple foods in this kitchen. She couldn’t find them, so she started experimenting with almond flour and making tortillas out of it. Your staff were the taste testers.
“I want to be authentic and not scary,” says Schwalb. “I want people to know that healthy food can also taste good.”
Eventually people started ordering Schwalbs tortillas. It wasn’t just her friends. She arrived at the Dallas Farmers Market with about 100 packs of eight tortillas for sale. She went without.
“I thought it could become a business from day one,” says Schwalb. “But I knew that I had to do a lot of things to further prove the concept.”
She did market research and wrote a business plan. Then she found a food scientist, ingredient supplier, and a co-packer. The latter was hard to find as Schwalb was selling a new brand of perishable products. She didn’t want to make a big investment and end up wasting food. In addition, the demand from manufacturers was already increased due to bottlenecks caused by the pandemic. Eventually she found a co-packer in New Braunfels.
Oh! Groceries started with tortillas and expanded into chips. The brand is now available in the Central Market, where Schwalb does most of their shopping, sometimes with Hadley and their older daughter Olivia.
“They get into their carts and they get their balloons,” says Schwalb. “And then you see mom’s product on the shelf, and it’s the coolest feeling in the world.”
Oh! is not just a play on words. It also represents her family. The “o” and “h” stand for the names of their daughters. “La” is a nickname that Schwalb’s friends have for her, and the exclamation point is for her husband.
Schwalb made a business out of healthy alternatives and doesn’t crave junk food, but she hasn’t renounced it. When the situation arises, like at birthday parties, the swallows still eat cake.
It develops additional flavors for the chips. At some point she wants to eat other foods like pasta and pizza or even formulate snacks like Cheez-Its.
“My goal is to have things that really taste good,” says Schwalb.
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