Our Story
Ten years ago, when I quit my job to work on Universal Yums full-time, a coworker made me a blanket with the words 'MONIQUE'S DREAM' stitched above the Universal Yums logo.
I've often been seen as the one behind "the dream" of Universal Yums because of this life-altering study abroad experience I had in Shanghai during college. There's a lot I could write about my time in China, but the only real way to synthesize it is that for the first time in my life, when I was being forced to live and learn from a culture so different from mine, I liked who I was. Learning from the wisdom of cultures past and present became a tenant of how I decided I would shape my morals and live the rest of my life. And of course, that cascaded into the original premise for Universal Yums, but this company was never just my idea.
Universal Yums was and always has been something that Eli and I did together. Equally.
When we took this photo on the night we left our jobs, Eli and I were 22 and 26, respectively. We’d been juggling Universal Yums alongside our full-time jobs for over 10 months. We were proud of what we had achieved: turning our idea of a snack box that parents could use to teach their kids about the world into a real little company. We had gotten through many fights and fears and frustrations to launch Universal Yums with $8,000 from our savings. We had 900 monthly subscribers and were making just enough to cover our $465/month rent in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Because Eli answered every single customer support ticket in the beginning, he saw what was happening before I did. The dream we had—that families would subscribe to Universal Yums and enjoy it each month with their kids—was coming true. But to keep that dream going, we had to re-up with new ones: we dreamed of growing the customer base to a size where we could import products directly, we dreamed of building a team to lead, and we dreamed of cementing the bond we formed with marriage.
At the beginning of 2016, we decided to move to New Jersey to be close to a major port and set up the importing arm of the business. We knew no one in New Jersey and got the “Jersey” treatment right away. We got tough, we got discouraged, and we got through a lot of ups and downs until one day, we imported our first product: spicy sesame coated peanuts from Thailand. Yum!
We tried and failed many times to expand the company - with new products, new websites, even a new brand, Almost Tea (launched in 2022 and sunsetted a year later). We learned many, many painful lessons about ourselves through managing people and building our company culture. Even getting married wasn’t simple, with our original wedding planned in Jamaica on May 23, 2020! (Five months later we married in Oregon surrounded by our immediate family).
On July 13, 2021, when our first child, Malcolm, was born, a new dream emerged - one that sometimes feels at odds with owning Universal Yums: being good, present parents to him. Two years and five days later, when our daughter Camille was born, that dream re-started.
If you take anything from our story over the first 10 years in business, let it be: “DREAMS COME TRUE!” because it’s true! Many, many dreams of ours have come true, and still do - every time someone gets a box from us.