My story

Kathleen Dobecki

Founder & Creator of Sweet Pea’s

In 2012, while my father was in the hospital recovering from a stroke, doctors discovered cancer in his lungs. This was an especially difficult time as heart disease and cancer had already affected my father’s family.

In January of 2013, we learned that the cancer had spread to his brain. He spent 33 days in the hospital before he passed away.

During those weeks, I watched the documentary Forks Over Knives, and it opened my eyes to something I had never considered before. I was surprised by how much I had never learned about the connection between food, heart disease, and overall health. I began learning everything I could about plant-based eating and changed the way I ate almost immediately.

At first, though, I was still cooking the way I always had for my husband and our four children.

Over the years, plant-based cooking became a passion. I followed doctors, chefs, and food bloggers, watched countless cooking videos, and filled my bookshelves with plant-based cookbooks. I experimented, learned, made plenty of mistakes, and discovered just how satisfying and delicious food made from plants could be.

My family began eating more and more of what I was making, even though I wouldn’t have necessarily called us a “plant-based family.”

Then I started making big, colorful salads and hearty soups to take to work—often simply using whatever I had in the refrigerator. Leftover grains, roasted vegetables and potatoes, fresh vegetables, lentils, beans…nothing fancy. Just real food put together in a way that was nourishing, filling, and delicious.

Friends and coworkers would comment on how good my lunches looked and smelled. Eventually, I began making meals for family, friends, and coworkers—for lunches, dinners, gatherings, and parties.

And somewhere along the way, I realized that this was something I wanted to share.

A good friend of our family once shared advice they had given their children: you don’t have to have the whole path planned out. You just have to take the next step.

In 2025, completely outside of my comfort zone, I decided to take that next step.

I started this business because I want people to experience just how good plant-based food can be.

Not food that feels like you’re missing something. Not food that is complicated or intimidating. Just delicious, colorful, satisfying food made from whole plant-based ingredients—and food that leaves you feeling good.

I know how busy life can be. I know what it’s like to work, raise a family, manage a household, and still want to put something nourishing on the table. Not everyone has the time—or the desire—to spend hours in the kitchen.

That’s where I come in.

After years of cooking this way for myself, my family and the people around me, I want to make it easier for you to enjoy the same kind of food. Maybe it’s a lunch you take to work, a dinner you share with your family, or a meal you bring home at the end of a long day when you simply do not feel like cooking.

Food has always been about more than what is on the plate. Some of the greatest moments of my life have happened around the table with my family—sharing a meal, talking, laughing, and simply being together.

These are the moments I want to help make possible for other families.

I may not have known exactly where this path would lead when I first changed the way I ate all those years ago. But one step led to another, and eventually led me here.

And I am so glad it did.

Good food. Made with plants. Made to bring people together.