Jenny Carenco knows a thing or two about the pressures of motherhood. The 34-year-old former management consultant used to come home after a long day's work to turn her kitchen into a small baby food factory. Preparing tasty, nutritious meals for her young daughter after the rest of the family was fast asleep was a choice that eventually led to a business.
"As a new mother, I was faced with the choice of giving Maya jarred baby food or cooking for her myself," says Jenny. "But when I read the list of ingredients on industrial baby food, I was shocked by how much starch and other additives there were and how little actual food they contained."
When Jenny's friends started regularly dropping by to pick up her frozen homemade dishes for their own children, she realized that there was a real market for her products. "Many health-conscious mothers want the very best for their children, but lack the skills or the time to create nutritious, varied menus for their babies," explains Jenny. That's when the idea for Les Menus Bébé was born.
Healthy meals, healthy kids
With a wide range of recipes, Les Menus Bébé offers infants a satisfying, home-style meal while giving parents peace of mind about nutrition. The natural ingredients not only mean that Les Menus Bébé puts the "food" back in baby food, they're also the first step in encouraging healthy eating habits that will last a lifetime.
Perseverance in a delicate market
Swedish-born Jenny is no stranger to hard work. She is a graduate of the University of Lund in Sweden and also of the prestigious MBA program at HEC, France's premier business school. She has previously worked as a strategy consultant for Bain & Company, and as an Internet business consultant at Swedish start-up Icon Medialab.
However, when she left her most recent consultancy post to found Les Menus Bébé, she didn't count on the obstacles she would soon face. " had no idea how highly regulated and complex the baby food market was in France," Jenny says. "It's taken 18 months of planning, research, and development to get my project from the drawing board to a concrete reality."
Credibility: a key to expansion
Jenny entered the Cartier Women's Initiative Awards having first heard about it through her work for Bain & Company on the Women's Forum for the Economy and Society in 2005. "I was helping set-up a think-tank that was to facilitate the progression of women in the workplace," says Jenny. "When the idea for Les Menus Bébé was born, I realized how I could benefit from the Cartier Women's Initiative Awards."
"Effectively, the future of my business rests on two key elements: securing sales to major French supermarkets and extending our product range to serve older babies. In such a sensitive market, endorsement from a name such as Cartier could really help provide credibility in the eyes of retailers, consumers and potential investors. This is crucial since we'll need to raise capital to finance our growth," she notes. "Now I've got to this stage of the competition, I really hope I can go all the way!"
