My Own Meals Expands Leadership Team to Support Continued Growth and Innovation

June 19, 2026 / Maureen Capobianco / No Comments

Kathleen Dumler Named Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice President of My Own Meals, Inc. and President & CEO of J&M Food Products Company.

My Own Meals announced the appointment of Kathleen Dumler as Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice President of My Own Meals, Inc. and President & CEO of J&M Food Products Company, strengthening the company’s leadership team as it continues to invest in future growth, operational excellence, and customer-focused innovation.

In her new role, Dumler will steer the strategic direction of the company, focusing on organic growth, market expansion, operational excellence, business systems modernization, and organizational development. She plans to expand My Own Meals’ role as an industry leader providing nutritious, great-tasting, shelf-stable meals to customers with a variety of dietary needs.

“This is an exciting moment for the future of My Own Meals,” said Mary Anne Jackson, Founder and CEO of My Own Meals. “Katie opens a next chapter, bringing new tools and a unique perspective necessary to successfully grow and expand what we started.”

Dumler brings 20 years of experience in finance, operations, business transformation, and commercial strategy. Most recently, she served as Chief Financial Officer of Smart Care, a national provider of repair and maintenance services for commercial foodservice equipment. She previously held executive leadership positions with Envoy Solutions, Anixter, and Wesco, where she led financial, operational, and commercial initiatives for multi-billion-dollar businesses.

“It’s an incredible opportunity to step in and build on the strong foundation established by Mary Anne and the rest of the team,” said Dumler. “I look forward to continuing to serve our existing customers, while also exploring new opportunities for growth.”

Dumler has been a member of the My Own Meals Board of Directors for the past six years. She also previously worked at the company within various departments while earning her bachelor’s degree from DePaul University. She brings a wealth of knowledge to the team with a unique combination of strategic leadership, operational expertise, and a longstanding connection to the organization.

About My Own Meals

For four decades, My Own Meals, Inc. has been manufacturing fully cooked shelf-stable meals that support a variety of dietary and food allergen needs. Since pioneering the shelf-stable meals category in 1986 with all-natural meals for children, the company has grown into a trusted provider of Kosher, Halal, and Dual-Certified ready-to-eat meals. My Own Meals remains committed to delivering wholesome, convenient shelf-stable meals whenever and wherever they are needed.

For more information, visit www.myownmeals.com

Media Contact:

Maureen Capobianco

J&M Advertising, on behalf of My Own Meals, Inc.

847-948-1118

connect@myownmeals.com

Building a Food Startup Company

Thank you for joining us at our new blog location and please share our stories with friends through Twitter, Facebook and other social media. You can also email us with comments or article ideas. During our next few blogs, we’ll share some of our stories about building My Own Meals, facing challenges, surviving business ups and downs, and implementing strategies leading us to become recognized leaders in several product areas.

Jumping In: Food Entrepreneurship

Like many other entrepreneurs, we discovered that our first market entry into the food start-up business was not the perfect business model we had hoped it would become, proving to be more costly than we had planned. Logic suggested that using all the business experience we built over a decade should have prepared us for the rigors of daily food company entrepreneurship! Yet with the tenacity derived from being both a mother and entrepreneur, I pressed on.

Building Food Startup Experience

After all, didn’t I bring relevant experience from Beatrice Foods Co as both a corporate executive and an operations executive from Beatrice’s Swift-Eckrich subsidiary? And it wasn’t just me; we had a tested team from Beatrice and big CPA firms, and sales and marketing executives; we even set up our own advertising agency. Wasn’t that the best way to start-up a food business?

Not All Food Company Planning Is the Same

Maybe, but Corporate and Operations Planning at one of the, then, largest international consumer products companies in the world is very much different from planning for how to survive and then grow as a small business, especially as a food start-up. Worrying about the competition at Beatrice meant having meetings to discuss strategies financed by a corporate budget, whereas at a food start-up, it meant meeting competitors in the stores and finding investors to believe in us.

Seizing New Opportunities

As we would learn over the subsequent years, sometimes planning for a food start-up company simply means recognizing an opportunity when it comes along, and then knowing how to capitalize on it. That is where all of our experience provided the most benefit. Pursuing these potential opportunities is risky, sure, but if an entrepreneur developed a foundation of business and contacts, that new opportunity can, instead, become part of the building process.

In our future blogs, we intend to share more experiences as a food company start-up innovator and some of the reasons we shifted directions along the way. To thrive, we had to maneuver forward while keeping our vision toward the possibilities. And we found that it was indeed tough to endure in those early years where, as incredulous as it may seem, big company brand-name competitors felt threatened by our little fledgling food business.

My Own Meal®