QD Foodie: Making Cooking Inclusive and Fun for All ~ 614

Marci Heit: Hi, I’m Marci Heit, and you’re listening to the Think Inclusive Podcast.

Tim Villegas: Serious question. Do you like to play with your food? Tell the truth. Of course you do. I don’t know how many of you like to cook, but it is one of my favorite things to do. I didn’t always know how to cook, though. When I was 10 or 11, I remember my parents letting me cook dinner, but that was mostly from the microwave.

It wasn’t until my wife, who is a nurse, started working evenings that I became proficient at cooking. Because I was the one at home with our one-year-old daughter. Fast forward 10 years, and now cooking is oftentimes a family affair with my youngest of three, who is now six years old, asking if I need help every time I step in the kitchen. What an easy way to get the family involved with making food—using kitchen tools—and what a great way to make memories with your family.

And that is what our podcast is going to be about today. We have Marci Heit, the founder of QD Foodie, an innovative company that produces a set of kitchen tools created for people with all abilities in mind.

But first, let’s take care of some announcements. This will be the last episode of 2018 and will officially bring Season Six of the Think Inclusive Podcast to an end. That means we’ll be taking some time off from publishing new episodes so that we can record interviews and produce Season Seven. You can expect maybe one or two episodes in the new year—a “Best of the Podcast” episode, which will feature clips from our last six seasons, and a trailer for Season Seven.

If you haven’t heard me say this already, 2018 was a big year for the podcast. You will not believe what we have in store for 2019. Also, if you like the podcast, please help other people find us by giving us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to the Think Inclusive Podcast. Tell your closest friends during the holidays. We really appreciate it.

Okay, enough about us. Let’s get back to the interview with Marci Heit.

Marci, thanks for being on the Think Inclusive Podcast. How are you doing today?

Marci Heit: I’m great, Tim. Thank you so much for asking. And thank you so much for having me here.

Tim Villegas: Of course. So the reason why I wanted to have you on the podcast was to talk about QD Foodie. I’m so intrigued by this product. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about who is QD Foodie?

Marci Heit: Sure, I’d love to. QD Foodie—or Quinn Daisy—is a fictional character that I created. She’s a young girl who’s blind and loves to make things with food in her watermelon-shaped treehouse, along with her friends.

I’ll give you a little bit of background. I’m a voiceover artist and had been with a large talent agency. It was amazing to be on their roster, and I was thrilled that they liked my work, but their focus was on celebrity talent, and I just wanted to be working. I didn’t have my own recording studio at the time, so all I could really do was wait for them to call me.

At the same time, I was a volunteer puppeteer for a puppet show called Kids on the Block, which is a disability awareness puppet show program for elementary school students. School districts nationwide—possibly internationally too, I’m not sure—would buy a subject matter and get the puppets and curriculum associated with it for their students.

I had an awesome time voicing the puppets. They were big and colorful, and there were skits and songs. A rotation of disabled speakers would speak to the children after the performances. I got to know one of them very well, since I was often asked to drive her when it was her turn in the rotation. Her name was Elda. Elda was 90 years old when I met her. She lost her sight at age 72 due to retinitis pigmentosa. Even though she lived alone—her husband had passed away and her sons were grown—she basically continued to do all the things she had done before, other than drive. She even taught people who were losing their sight how to function.

The amazing message of the puppet show—that kids are different, but inside they’re the same—was really well received by the students. Everyone loved it. They’d ask amazing questions afterwards and were very engaged.

So I thought it would be great if it could be brought to a bigger audience while I created some voiceover work for myself. I contacted the Kids on the Block people to see if they wanted to make something for TV. I’d never written a show before, but I was living in Los Angeles and knew plenty of people who did, and I knew I could get some guidance.

It turned out that the Kids on the Block people just wanted to keep it simple—exactly the way it was—which was totally fine because it was great that way. But my head was already thinking about what it would be like to create my own content. So I wrote a show inspired by the theme of the puppet show—that kids are different but inside they’re the same. The show was called The Smarticles, and it was about kid journalists in Washington, D.C.

That show took me about a year to write. There was a big learning curve, of course, but it was a great experience. A friend who liked what I had written introduced me to someone who had just left Disney and was looking for content. She liked The Smarticles, taught me how to pitch, and we went out to sell it together. It went pretty well. At the end of the day, even though it didn’t get sold, I was encouraged to continue to write.

After that, when ideas would come, it took me a lot less time to get them out and organized since I had learned what I needed about characters and story from writing The Smarticles. I was also discovering—surprisingly—that I enjoyed the writing process in and of itself, in addition to the voice work.

I also really enjoy cooking. So one of the properties that I created was QD Foodie. It was originally called Foodie. It’s about a group of kids who love to make things with food. One of the many things Elda loved—and always continued after she lost her sight—was to bake. She never really learned Braille, but she did learn enough to label her spices, and she marked her oven at 350 degrees and continued to bake. That definitely made an impression on me.

Despite Elda’s challenges, she always used her ingenuity and positive outlook to reach her goals. This was the inspiration for the main character in the show, Q.D.—Quinn Daisy.

When we created the artwork for the property, we designed some kitchen tools for the characters to use. We wanted them to be super fun. As an animated show, you have a lot of creativity in that way, and the designs were really appealing. But something about them just made me want to have them in my own kitchen. And so that is how it all began.

Tim Villegas: With these kitchen tools that you’ve created, how are you seeing that those have increased access for people with disabilities?

Marci Heit: I like to say that QD Foodie kitchen tools make making food more fun for everyone. So how do they do that? These utensils have Braille on the measuring cups and spoons. They have sensory-friendly, easy-grip handles, and they have vibrant colors—just like real fruits and vegetables—which engage kids with and without special needs in the food prep process.

A picky eater, for example, is going to be more adventurous with food if they’re involved in making it. So I see the tools as functionally far-reaching. But more than that, they bring about the concept of inclusiveness, which is a theme that can be taken in even bigger ways—in the kitchen and beyond.

Something as small as people thinking a recipe should be made in different ways, to someone with low vision being able to measure perfectly, to someone who has difficulty in social situations—QD Foodie kitchen tools inspire people to work together and have fun together while making lasting memories.

Tim Villegas: Earlier this year, you used a Kickstarter to promote your product. What was the response like to your Kickstarter, and now that you have the products available, what has the response been?

Marci Heit: The response has been incredibly positive and, quite honestly, more impactful than I imagined. Like I said, I’m a content creator. I’m not an activist, I’m not a medical professional, and at the time I came up with this, I wasn’t even a parent.

My goal was to be inclusive, yes, but when I created this project, I was basically looking to develop a great character for the show and write engaging stories that were entertaining too—and to produce merchandise that worked within that content. I didn’t have a good understanding of the needs of particular groups of people with disabilities.

But when I started to tell people I’d meet about the utensils I was making, so many shared their stories of how and why one element or another would be so great for themselves or for someone else they know. And then when I began putting QD Foodie tools out there on social media, that’s when people I didn’t know—and wasn’t even really meeting—started contacting me about their needs and how QD Foodie kitchen tools and the QD Foodie story would be so useful for them in their homes and elsewhere.

Some of these people have even inquired about becoming distributors in their region. In addition to special needs groups, even places like Montessori schools are planning to include them in some of their rooms. More traditional classrooms are interested too, and cooking schools.

So really, all of this has been an amazing journey for me, both personally and professionally, and I am overwhelmed by the response.

Tim Villegas: It sounds to me like you’ve learned a lot from the people who have contacted you about how they are going to use this product and just how inclusive the kitchen tools can be when you intentionally design so that everyone can use them.

Marci Heit: Exactly. Exactly.

Tim Villegas: What is your dream for the future of QD Foodie?

Marci Heit: My dream for QD Foodie is that it becomes a household name for both fun and inclusion. We plan to add many more pieces to the line—they’re already designed. But of course, for me as a content creator, my dream also involves seeing the QD Foodie show become a reality. So I plan to pitch it in the very near future.

Tim Villegas: You must have learned a lot from creating these inclusive kitchen tools. What do you think is the biggest barrier to inclusion for people with disabilities?

Marci Heit: Hmm, I think that’s a really hard question. There’s no one “biggest” because disabilities vary so greatly from issue to issue and from person to person. I think a big barrier is that the gap between accessibility and inclusion is often large. When accessibility is the goal, it’s often missing the next piece, and the potential is left unmet.

As far as QD Foodie goes, we hope that people will come together in the kitchen to enjoy them—each being able to contribute in their own way—and collectively make great things. You kind of go with it when your heart is really in the project, and my heart is truly in the project. So I believe in it.

I think the tools are really fun for everybody. They’re not created as a special needs product in any way. They happen to be accessible and inclusive, but we are seeing it as something that everybody can enjoy together. And I guess that is what we’re talking about when we talk about inclusiveness in the first place.

Tim Villegas: Marci, tell us how people can find out more about your product and where they can purchase it.

Marci Heit: Our website is qdfoodie.com—that’s the letter Q, the letter D, foodie.com. That’s the best place to purchase the product. It’s sold as a seven-piece set. You can also find us on social media at QD Foodie.

Tim Villegas: There are so many parallels to what you just said to everything about inclusion. And since I’m an educator, I immediately am drawn to curriculum. The curriculum is there because it’s there for everyone. And we can tailor and specialize parts of that curriculum so that it’s more accessible to people with disabilities—whatever it is, learning differences or however you’d like to say it.

The curriculum is the curriculum. It’s available and it’s for everyone. There’s nothing—or there shouldn’t be—something that’s just special for this particular group. Something else we say a lot is: there isn’t any special education grocery store or special education gas station—or at least there shouldn’t be. It’s part of our world, and we want people with and without disabilities to live, work, and play in an integrated environment.

That is why we love the message that QD Foodie has. And we wish you all the best with your product launch, and we hope you sell millions of them.

Marci Heit: Thank you. Me too.

Tim Villegas: We would like to thank Marci Heit of QD Foodie for being a guest on the Think Inclusive Podcast. You can find QD Foodie products at qdfoodie.com. Follow Think Inclusive on the web at thinkinclusive.us. Tell us what you thought of the show via Twitter at @inclusive_pod, or on Facebook or Instagram.

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