Registered nurse-turned-weight-loss guru Seattle Sutton celebrated her 87th birthday in January with a big surprise.
It was Aug. 26, 2015, when her multimillion national franchise, Seattle Sutton’s Healthy Eating, marked its 30th anniversary. This successful company she founded, with its headquarters and production plant facility in Ottawa, Ill., has remained a landmark fixture near her hometown of Marseilles.
In January, she announced after three decades of feeding countless calorie-counting customers around the country that she has sold the family business. There has yet to be much mention of the company’s selling price or details. Even the company website doesn’t refer to any announcement or change of ownership. I’m told family members will stay with the company during the months of transition.
Sutton, a natural celebrity spokeswoman who truly believed in her brand, became famous from her TV and radio commercials, newspaper advertisements, billboards and frequent promotions. Often, her children, who also were involved in the business, would be at her side, including daughter Ruth Egofske, who lives in Crown Point, and sisters Sarah Borgstrom and Paula Heaton. They helped Sutton operate the delivered-to-home dining empire billed as the Seattle Sutton’s Healthy Eating program. In later years, granddaughters Anna Egofske and Erin Borgstrom also joined the company.
The company’s new owner is an employee, Rene Ficek, who also has a longtime connection to Seattle Sutton’s Healthy Eating as the brand’s registered dietitian who assisted Sutton with the development of meals and menus. She joined the company six years ago as a consultant and told WGN Radio’s John Williams in a January broadcast she was approached by Sutton in May about interest in buying the company. Not only is Ficek a new business owner, she is also a new mother, with her 2-month-old baby daughter born in January.
It was in 1985, while Sutton was working at her husband’s medical practice, that she developed the idea for launching a new career providing clients with healthy prepared meals. When Type 2 diabetes patient Rodney Juergensen was handed a list of “foods to eat and not to eat,” his reply was: “I will follow your plan if you cook the meals for me,” Sutton has told me in interviews, the result becoming today’s Seattle Sutton’s Healthy Eating empire.
Seattle Sutton’s Healthy Eating is marketed as a “healthy meal replacement company,” offering “a no-gimmick approach to convenient, healthy eating with a meal program scientifically designed and taste-tested.” Each day, the company prepares thousands of meals as part of her national franchise, eliminating the need for customers to have to plan, shop or cook for themselves.
In 2010, Seattle Sutton partnered for a promotional campaign with the Chicago Tribune and WGN Radio and TV, and I agreed to be a participant in a three-month program dining on the Seattle Sutton’s Healthy Eating Meal program. As a result, I lost 48 pounds in three months.
For decades, Seattle Sutton’s Healthy Eating had storefront franchises throughout Northwest Indiana, including Highland, Merrillville, Valparaiso and Chesterton, where clients would pick up their freshly prepared and packaged meals twice a week. Today, most clients have meals directly delivered to their doorstep.
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