Meet Marianne Lacko | Co-Owner & Co-Founder

We had the good fortune of connecting with Marianne Lacko and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Marianne, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
We both started off with careers that had nothing to do with nutrition, health, or veganism. Annette has a degree in marketing and I have one in IT – both from University of North Texas. We both had 20+-year careers in those fields. I spent 20 years at Goldman Sachs, and Annette spent over 25 years in running business process outsourcing centers. Those careers provided for our families, but the older we got, the more we knew we wanted to make a difference instead of just continuing to climb the corporate ladder. We had been meal prepping for ourselves and each other (we always traded food to keep it interesting) for a number of years. Some people at my office would participate periodically. A friend at work told me she wanted to participate but she didn’t want to cook — she wanted to pay me. I had just had my daughter, so I said no, but I told Annette. She thought it sounded intriguing. That is really how it all started. Several people at my office started “ordering.” Annette cooked all the food on Sundays, and I hauled it all to work on Mondays. As interest grew, we continued to educate ourselves about nutrition and commercial cooking. Nature’s Plate became an official business in 2012…expanding beyond friends, family, and co-workers at the beginning of 2014. With a lot of help from our husbands and children, we opened our own kitchen and the first storefront in August 2015. The second storefront at Preston/Forest opened in May 2018, followed by the Plano storefront in January of 2019. We founded Nature’s Plate based on our beliefs that 1) the standard American diet is the biggest cause of our current health crisis and that a diet based on whole, plant foods can help most people avoid pharmaceutical solutions and chronic disease including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and many forms of cancer and 2) factory farming and large-scale consumption of animal products are major contributors to climate change.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
We are most proud of our mission and excited about the strides we’ve made to “make plant-based food accessible and convenient, as well as tasty and satisfying.” People are often very surprised that we chose to build a business around plant-based, whole food in Dallas. But we knew there was a need and that we could help. Even when it’s been more expensive and challenging, Annette and I have stayed true to our core values around ingredient quality, nutrition standards, sustainability, and work environment for our employees. We are thrilled when we think about the health and environmental impact of the hundreds of thousands of meals and snacks we’ve produced over the years! We hear stories on a weekly basis about people who have improved their health situation by lowering LDL cholesterol, losing weight, or improving a wide variety of other symptoms by eating our meals and more plant-based food in general. This keeps us going and makes it all worthwhile!! It has definitely not been easy – and 2020 has added entirely new layers to that. We’ve really shifted our business model this year and have to adapt to survive just like so many other small businesses. We are grateful that we’ve been able to do that and that our team has adapted so well. We truly just want to help people EAT MORE PLANTS, and we’ll keep overcoming the challenges to make that happen!

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
White Rock Lake – run around or just walk. It’s so nice! Annette and I love to run and White Rock is the best — especially in the winter when it’s not hot. Spiral Diner – we have been going here since they were in the Rail Market in Fort Worth. It’s so good! Camp Gladiator – Watermark. Best workout (aside from running) that we have ever done. It’s challenging, and it’s fun so you forget that it’s hard. Bishop Arts District – just to walk around. Hiking at Cedar Ridge Nature Preserve – there are actual hills which is awesome for this area! Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum — it’s world class and so incredibly informative (and there is a picture of our dad and a recording of him so really personal too).

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Lots of people deserve credit and recognition in our story, but if we had to name one person…our dad! He is the strongest, most resilient person either of us has ever met. He will be 83 this year and is still working full time as a professor at UNT Health Science Center, teaching and researching new, much less invasive ways to treat cancer. He emigrated to Canada with literally nothing except a briefcase and his desire to get the education he needed to become a scientist — he was denied access to the schooling he needed in USSR-run Hungary. I have never heard him complain about his circumstances. He lost close relatives and endured severe hardships as a small child during the Holocaust, but he just kept on going. That has been the theme of his life: Work hard and keep working hard. He never told us that, and it wasn’t until I was probably in my 30s that I realized just how amazing he is and how his work ethic has influenced me. My admiration for him continues to grow. Annette and I were both single moms for a good portion of our lives — and I actually had my son when I was 16 — so we have faced a lot of challenges, too. But looking to our dad’s example makes our challenges seem small. Starting and growing Nature’s Plate has been extremely challenging, more so than either of us imagined, but it’s also extremely rewarding. We particularly love making healthy meals easier for busy professionals, moms, and even kids who want to do this for their health, the animals, or the planet. We also want to acknowledge our team — a diverse group of people who work extremely hard to help fulfill our mission — helping our community eat more plants.

Website: naturesplate.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/naturesplate/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/NaturesPlate1
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/naturesplate
Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/natures-plate-dallas