When it comes to popular frozen food trends, as well as America’s love of easily available frozen food, one woman stands at the center of it all – Gail Becker.
Becker’s frozen food business has, in just a few years, become wildly successful. But perhaps even more impressive than the company itself is Gail Becker, the woman behind it all. For Becker, when she looks back on her life, she can see all the little breadcrumbs that have led her to where she is today.
Tracing it Back to Her Roots
Born to two Holocaust survivors, Becker learned some important lessons from a very young age. Her mother had been placed on the Kindertransport as a young girl, and her father had been sent to Auschwitz when he was nine years old. Her parents later met in California, and married, only to divorce a few short years later when Becker was a year old.
Having divorced parents, as well as parents who survived untold horrors, Becker explained that she learned to be independent at a young age, as well as how to have a sort of ownership over her own destiny. She said, “I knew that whatever I wanted in life, I would need to do it, I would need to make it happen, I would need to be independent.”
Becker’s maternal grandfather, her only grandparent to survive the Holocaust, had been a dairy farmer in Germany, so when he came to America he continued that line of work with a small dairy farm in Orange County, California. She used to love going there as a child, and remembers the farm bringing her so much joy. Milk and dairy was such an integral part of that time in her life, and of her grandfather’s livelihood, so it seems like fate that now cheese is a part of her own work with frozen pizzas! It’s come full circle, like so many things in her life.
Food was so central to everything Becker’s family did. Besides the dairy farm, her parents also had strong relationships with food, particularly as Holocaust survivors who remembered the feeling of being hungry when they were young.
“My mother showed people she loved them by cooking for them. And even if we couldn’t afford anything else, we would always have an abundance of food. And the BEST food! The best cut of meat, the best vegetables. That would be the one thing that both of my parents spent their money on. Because they were hungry growing up.”
While Becker’s mother never wanted to speak much about her experiences as a child, her father did share some of his memories:
“My father said to me that the torture was horrible, the cold was horrible, living in the barracks was horrible…but the hunger that he experienced was unbearable.”
That feeling of being hungry is something that carried through in the sense that not only do you make sure you never go hungry again, but you make sure that others don’t go hungry as well. This was something that was essential to Becker’s family, and something that many Jewish families can connect and relate to. After all, what’s more Jewish than feeding those you love?
“You place a value on food, and you show people that you love them through food. And you NEVER ever waste food. Ever.”
This was a particular lesson that Becker remembers from her mother, of the abundance of food and the strong message to never waste it. But when you prepare tons of food, how do you preserve it so it doesn’t go to waste? You stick it in the freezer, of course! And now, decades later, Becker owns a frozen food company. Just one more little breadcrumb for her to trace back to her roots.
But the connections don’t stop there. Becker’s father used to have a salvage business, and the one thing she remembers him selling? Canned tomatoes, and his garage would be filled with them. So between her dairy farmer grandfather, a mother who cooked and froze tons of food, and a father who sold canned tomatoes, Becker has now channeled all of this into building an empire with unique frozen pizzas.
Building the Business
Becker feels she is finally doing what she should have always been doing: feeding people and nourishing them. She realized her dreams a little later in life, in her 50s, “But not too late!”
Becker had spent her previous professional life working in various fields, and working in corporate America, but had never felt truly satisfied. When her father passed away, something inside of her just snapped. This was the jolt she needed to choose to make a change in her life.
Her father had been an entrepreneur who arrived in the United States with virtually nothing, having survived the Holocaust, and this was something that inspired her to want to do something with a business of her own. She ultimately sold her father’s house in San Francisco and put every penny into starting her business. Becker had no idea if she’d be successful or not, but she knew she had to try, and felt that the money from her father was “blessed.”
And now, her father’s hard work helped pave the way for her successful business, and his spirit lives on within it. As Becker said, “His blood, sweat, and tears is really the reason these products exist.” Her only regret throughout this journey is that her father never lived to see the business he inadvertently helped her build.
Why cauliflower crust pizza and frozen sweet potato toast?
So, how did Becker end up making cauliflower crust pizzas and sweet potato toasts for a living? At first, she didn’t know what her business would be, only that she wanted to do something different.
With two sons that have celiac disease, Becker was often trying to make healthier foods for them, but she struggled to find healthy gluten-free products, most of which she felt frequently lacked nutrients. She stumbled across cauliflower pizza crust recipes on the internet, but was unimpressed. It took over 90 minutes to make one after coming home from a long day of work, and even after that, it was just mediocre. Surely, there had to be something better out there! Becker realized this could be it, this could be the idea she was looking for.
In May 2016, she officially left corporate America, and in February 2017, officially launched her products. Roughly six years later, her products have had enormous success, and Forbes Magazine even named Becker one of “America’s Richest Self-Made Women” in 2021. Note, not all of the products have kosher certification.
For Becker, she feels it’s important to remember that, “It’s never too late to bet on yourself.” Starting this company was a labor of love, infused with inspiration from her family, and was a risk that ultimately paid off in a big way.
“It’s better to have tried and failed, than to have never tried at all. There is real honor and pride in trying, and you owe that to yourself. I never knew CauliPower would be successful, not in a million years. But I’d kick myself if I didn’t try.”
