➡️🔎 Find joy + make this lentil leek pasta.

And making rosemary oil a pantry staple.

Author

Hawnuh Lee
January 23, 2025

Hi friends,

I am pointedly reveling in small farmer’s market wonders, keeping my eyes on bright chicory palettes and weighty Brussel sprouts on stalk. I am decidedly taking time in preparing meals, lingering in the rote focus of vegetable prep. I am shifting attention away from an onslaught of political chaos and inanity amidst devastating ecological legislation and the fuckery of it all. I urge you, in this moment, to not comply in advance, and most importantly, to not acquiesce your joy. 

Your hope in existence, in focusing on the critical work at hand, is vital. Do not give up your joy or steadfastness in this moment of tumult. Make it a daily task to find wonder and appreciation, and make it a point to share with those around you. Do not let this shift in authority move you away from the deep work of cultivating resilience. Our power is in finding focus for environmental justice–starting at a local level and building solutions in tandem.

Committing to a cause with the added pressure of public transparency is no small feat. I’m excited to share an interview with Sizzle app cofounder, Alexa DaFonte on finding purpose, passion, and community in an uncertain future. Scroll on for more!

And, I ask y’all to please reply back with ways you’re finding joy today, we need all the inspiration we can get.

Stay hungry,
Hawnuh Lee | Founder, Closed Loop Cooking

Leek + lentil pasta.

The dish >>

Building in public, reducing food waste, and teddy graham lattes with Alexa DaFonte

interview by Maia Welbel

This week I chatted with Alexa DaFonte, a marketing whiz and content creator turned startup founder making meal planning as easy as scrolling a social media feed (without the accompanying sensations of dread). Alexa and her cofounder Dilan Mehta just launched Sizzle, an app that lets you discover and shop for your next favorite recipe all in one place. Read on for a peek into the world of tech entrepreneurship, realness on healing relationships with food, and a trending latte recipe that Alexa deemed her morning raison d'etre. 

To start off, in just a few sentences, who are you and what are you working on right now?

My name is Alexa, I'm 27, and I live in New York City. I've lived here for about —wow, five years now — which is crazy. I'm from a very small town in Massachusetts, and I actually started out as a pre med in college. I really wanted to be a neurosurgeon, like the whole Grey's Anatomy route, and I ended up getting my undergrad degree in nutrition. COVID hit around the time that I graduated, and I was feeling a little bit lost. I got a position in marketing on a whim, through a friend of a friend. And from there things spiraled out in the best way possible. I got my foot in the door with some other marketing companies, and that's how I found myself launching Sizzle, which is a food tech app I’m building with my cofounder Dilan that connects recipes to groceries. 

Tell me more about what you were up to before, and how it led you to starting Sizzle.

I was working at a public health nonprofit and a few different marketing agencies. I also got started on TikTok in 2020 during COVID, and my niche was cooking, baking, and healthy recipes. Working in marketing while simultaneously working on growth for my own account I think is what started my interest specifically in marketing with food, recipes, and content creation. It was a great way to meet creators in the city and just make so many connections.

How did the idea for Sizzle come to you?

I met Dilan last year through YC matching, which is basically a networking platform for people who have an idea for a startup and want to find a cofounder. I had a marketing agency that I was trying to dissolve at the time, and a bunch of clients that I was trying to pass on, so I joined that platform specifically for that reason. But Dilan came to me and was like, “I have this idea,” and I was like, “Wait, that's amazing.” So it kind of just went from there. We collaborated to craft this ecosystem of what is now Sizzle. Not to be so cliche, but the universe works in such mysterious, amazing ways — I feel like my life has kind of come together in this way that is both a passion project and a business, and honestly the opportunity just fell into my lap and it couldn't have been more perfect. 

Wow, what a gift! And it sounds like though it did fall into your lap, you also had been preparing and setting yourself up for opportunities like that in so many different ways. What were the beginning phases like, and how has it been working with a cofounder you didn’t know previously?

It has been great so far. I think the cofounder match is one of the most important things about building a startup. Dilan and I didn't have any history, but we hit it off and crafted a really nice business relationship from the get go. One thing that works well for us is that I am more growth marketing CMO level, and he is kind of a tech genius. So it's nice that we both have our individual spheres and strengths. We have a team of developers that he heads up; but since he has a technical background, when something happens on the app he can usually have it fixed in three minutes, and from the startup perspective that is a great working situation. And at the same time our passions for the business itself are very aligned.

You’ve taken a “building in public” approach with Sizzle — what exactly does that mean to you and why did you choose that path?

I've seen the importance of building in public time and time again for so many different businesses, small and large. Coming from a content creator background, when we started Sizzle I was immediately impassioned by what we were building. There is so much passion and story behind it that I just knew that I needed to build something like this transparently. I'm not super technical, and I think showing how I’m learning along the way could be valuable to other founders and small businesses. Even though we're building a technology, I want people to connect with me as a person, and with my story.

When you look at Uber Eats and DoorDash and the way they profit off of this overconsumption and this need for convenience... I wanted to bring an alternative approach to that. I'm a 27 year old girl, I have a relationship with food that I've worked on for years, I love cooking and baking, I've been a content creator, and so I have a very personal perspective on it. Building in public also gives people a point of access to me. I get so many DMS from people just like, “Hey, how does this work?” or “Can you help me with this?” I know we're still growing, but I hope that no matter what happens with our growth I can keep this open pipeline for people to reach me. 

That must take a lot of your time!

Yeah I posted a video about our affiliate program recently, and at least like two thousand people responded to it. I went through every single one of those DMs and it took forever, but it was so nice to be able to connect and hear people's stories. I got messages like, “I'm a stay at home mom and I love cooking, and I would love a place to share my content.” And I'm like, “Oh my god yes, please come join.” Though it does take time, it feels very worthwhile.

You mentioned that working on your relationship with food influences your perspective as a founder. Can you share more about that?

It’s funny, even though I share so much personal stuff on my page as a founder, I’m always a little skeptical to share a lot about my relationship with food just because I don't want that to define Sizzle as a whole, and I also don't want to people to think I’m saying I have a blanket solution, because of course it's not that simple. But I was in the modeling industry for about seven years, and during that time I developed a super unhealthy relationship with food — just always looking at what I was eating as a number, and nothing to be enjoyed. I grew up in a very Italian and Portuguese family, and food was everything to me as a kid. And it wasn't something that was ever over-thought. Like we had “Sunday sauce” every Sunday. I was born into a family where you ate, and you enjoyed it, and that was it. So then being in an environment where the ideology behind food was so different was really hard for me to cope with. It took so much undoing to get me back to a healthier place. That process came at a time when I was forced to be back at home because of COVID. Through baking and cooking, and having meals with my parents at home like I did when I was seven really did bring me full circle. And obviously the path is not linear, there were always ups and downs. But finding and reestablishing that connection with food is really what allowed me to be in a place that felt so much healthier when the opportunity of Sizzle was presented to me. So the two experiences went hand in hand in a very cool way.

What role has sustainability played in the way you’ve built your business so far?

Sizzle’s approach to strategic grocery shopping helps people not only save money on their groceries, but also reduce the amount of food waste they create in their home. And we’re trying to do that by optimizing the way that ecommerce works, which right now is largely focused on short form content. Recipes make up close to 30% of the world's content on social media in general, which is just a crazy statistic. So knowing that, we want to make it more functional for grocery shopping and actually putting meals on the table at the end of the day. On the Sizzle app, every single recipe video has the recipe written out — the ingredients, the quantity, step by step instructions, and all you have to do is add it to your cart, the same way you would on Uber Eats. 

It's a very streamlined, efficient way to meal plan, but in a way that’s not so burdening. I think people view meal planning as this inaccessible thing, like, “I just don't have time for that.” And that leads people to — no matter how much money they have in their pockets — go to the grocery store and buy a bunch of stuff they don’t end up using. U.S. households throw away literally billions of tons of food every single year, and a lot of that comes from people going to the grocery store without having a realistic idea of how they will prepare and eat what they buy. And if you think about it, how burdening does it sound to have to figure out your meals every day of the week before you go to the grocery store? Who has time for that? So our goal is to make that process as easy as scrolling. We unfortunately are living with all these systems that make groceries so expensive and time so limited, so we’re trying to meet people where they are, which is often consuming content, and make it a super accessible household technology that also prevents waste. 

What has been one particularly challenging part of building the business so far, and what has been a particularly fun or exciting part?

I think the most difficult thing is staying focused on our own goals. I see so much growth opportunity with Sizzle, and seeing all these other founders and apps out there, it's easy to get engulfed in what other people are doing. Like, are we behind? Should we be doing that? Especially from a marketing angle, it can become incredibly overwhelming. It is important to study what other people are doing and stay up to date on the trends, so it’s hard, but we have to strike a balance.  

There are so many elements I could say are my favorite. I’ve become part of this amazing community of founders, and my DMs are always filled with people asking interesting questions and sharing about their projects. I love that I have this window into what other people are doing in such a positive way. I also genuinely have learned more through building Sizzle than I have in my entire life. About tech, marketing, growth, food, business acumen in general... And that is a very rewarding thing that I think about every day. 

What’s one recipe you’re loving lately?

There's this brown butter chocolate chip cookie recipe that my boyfriend and I are obsessed with. So almost every single week we add the ingredients to our Sizzle cart, because we're like, “We need this as a sweet treat for winter hibernation season.”

Any must-have kitchen tools?

Ooh, yes, I love my NutriBullet. I used to be a smoothie girl and I’m not so much anymore, but I use it for random things like chocolate mousse. I also recently got a fancy barista-style espresso machine and that might have to be my favorite kitchen appliance at the moment. I’m making Teddy Graham lattes and all these amazing drinks. 

Wait, what’s a Teddy Graham latte?

Oh my god, it's so good. You take espresso, cinnamon and brown sugar, and you kind of mix that together; and I like it iced so I do ice and oat milk, and pour in the espresso mixture, and then add a cold foam of some sort. 

Wow, that sounds delightful.

Yeah, so that's the thing that gets me out of bed in the morning.

What do you make at the end of a long day when you don’t have much energy for cooking?

Pasta is one thing that's very easy to make for me. So sometimes I freeze gravies (I call them gravies, I don't know why, my family is from Boston and we say gravy instead of sauce). And I just defrost it and then boil some pasta. I am such a sucker for comfort food — I love a grilled cheese or a panini, so those are easy go-tos as well.

I will say, I’m someone who enjoys the process of cooking. It's a relief for me to listen to music or watch a show while I do it, and the time just kind of passes. But I know that’s not the case for everybody. 

Now I have to ask — what music or shows have you been enjoying lately while you cook?

Well I just finished all of Severance in like, two days. My boyfriend was like, “Okay, it's back. You need to watch it.” So I busted through it this weekend and it was so good. And then another show is Maid on Netflix with Margaret Qualley. That’s one I’d already seen before and rewatched and had forgotten how much I loved it. For music, right now I've been listening to Taylor Swift on repeat and Charlie XCX. I feel like they’re getting me through the winter blues.

Are there any recipe creators you want to shout out?

I love @organicallyaddison — her baked goods are literally to die for, and she's just like an OG creator, and she's on Sizzle. Another creator who we actually just got on Sizzle too is @traceoats. He’s “the oatmeal guy” on Tiktok. He's so sweet. We actually connected back in 2020 because we were both making these oatmeal desserts, and we just did a paid collab with him! So absolutely shout out. Oh, and the girl who turned me on to the Teddy Graham latte is @_gloyoyo_. She’s become my comfort creator lately. I’m a huge fan. 

Thanks, Alexa! We are so psyched to see Sizzle continue to grow and help people grocery shop smarter.

If you want to stop condemning your favorite recipes to the screenshots folder and actually get cooking, you can download Sizzle on an app store near you. Be sure to follow Alexa on TikTok for the latest #startuplife updates and insider tips.

Feed me universe pasta please.

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Have an idea we should feature in the newsletter? Want to work with us? Drop a line at [email protected]. We can’t wait to see what y’all cook up next! #closedloopcooking