MScN ’17 alumni duo combine clinical training and culinary craft to improve clients’ dietary habits.

When Mimi Saine and Linda Ingaldson McNally first met as students during a yoga session at the National University of Natural Medicine (NUNM), they never imagined their friendship would grow into a successful business partnership.

Drawn to the Master of Science in Nutrition (MScN) program at NUNM, the two soon found their lives intersect in ways that went beyond the classroom. 

Today, as co-founders of Sage Home Chef, Saine and Ingaldson McNally provide in-house cooking services and nutritional guidance to clients throughout the Portland Metro Area and Vancouver, Washington. 

Sage Home Chef offers an elevated meal preparation service, matching clients with nutrition-focused chefs based on their dietary needs and food preferences.

Across their two-year MScN program, Saine and Ingaldson McNally said they became close friends. They studied together, attended yoga classes, and frequently discussed their professional aspirations.

Both shared a deep connection to food—Ingaldson McNally, raised in an Italian family where meals were a central part of social life, and Saine, the daughter of two naturopathic doctors, who grew up on a fruit orchard.  

Each had faced distinct health challenges and frustrations with conventional medical care. This ultimately inspired them both to pursue careers in an effort to improve clients’ mental and physical health through food-based coaching and personalized nutrition counseling. 

After graduating in 2017, the two crossed paths yet again—as neighbors, living just four houses apart.

One day, while sharing their mutual disappointment over separate personal chef jobs that had not panned out, they were struck by a novel idea: “We should just start it ourselves!” 

Recognizing their complementary skills, they began building what would become Sage Home Chef, a full-fledged food service venture.

They now have a team of designated personal chefs that shop for ingredients to prepare meals in clients’ kitchens—cleaning the space and stocking their refrigerators with fresh, ready-to-enjoy dishes. 

Since 2017, their business has been recognized with several local awards, including a Best of Portland Award for Personal Chef Services and an AI Business Excellence Award for Oregon’s Best Healthy Cuisine Personal Chef Services. 

Saine and Ingaldson McNally confess that despite the recognition, there were times when they questioned whether their vision would succeed. 

“There were plenty of moments we thought about giving up,” they said. “We both took side jobs to stay afloat and had to learn to say ‘no’ to work that didn’t align with our values.” 

Ultimately, they said their perseverance paid off.

While Sage Home Chef has grown significantly from its humble beginnings, the duo credits this success to a shared belief in “food as medicine” and their commitment to promote long-term health through customized nutrition. 

“Find a niche and stick with it. Perseverance is the number one rule in business, with the best businesses focused on doing one thing really well.”

^{– Sage Home Chef}

Sage Home Chef’s Mimi Saine and Linda Ingaldson McNally discussed with NUNM how their passion for personalized nutrition opened new avenues in their careers and led them to start a business.

NUNM: How did the MScN program lead to your decision to launch Sage Home Chef? 

Sage Home Chef: We both ran into health issues and were dissatisfied with how conventional medicine was addressing them. We both found relief in a food-as-medicine approach and felt compelled to share this discovery with others by becoming nutritionists. Originally, we wanted to practice nutritional counseling (Mimi) and food relationship coaching (Linda) but post-graduation noticed a big demand for nutritionally focused personal chefs, so we shifted our energy there.   

Sage Home Chef was not in our original plan at all—we both had other jobs lined up that fell through shortly after graduation. After discussing our conundrum, we came up with the idea and just decided to go for it. Of course, we had a lot more to learn along the way, but we had the confidence to take those first steps. Little did we know that eight years later we would have a team of almost 20 chefs, as well as a growing waitlist of clients. 

What makes your services and business stand out? 

Sage Home Chef is for busy individuals and families who want to eat healthier, individuals who have specific nutritional needs such as therapeutic diets or multiple allergies. We also offer services for clients who are expecting or postpartum families who need extra nutritional support.  

I think the biggest misconception people have about the home chef business is thinking we provide private chef services with plated dinners—where chefs come every day to cook two or three meals at a time. We provide meal prep services where your chef cooks a bunch of meals at once that our clients can then reheat at their leisure. Additionally, we don’t deliver meals, we exclusively cook in clients’ homes. 

Each of our chefs has their own niche and client favorite dishes—for example, our Energy Balls and famous Thai Turkey Meatballs. We’ve been making those for clients for almost eight years now! 

How did it evolve over time and what motivated you to continue? 

There were many times that we had dwindling clients and felt like giving up. We both had to take other jobs to pay the bills, and at many moments we questioned if we were doing the right thing. We found a couple of mentors who really helped us figure out our niche and gave us a better understanding of what it means to charge our worth—even when we were afraid that we wouldn’t end up making any money.  

As a new business owner, there can be a tendency to just take any work you can get when you feel desperate to stay afloat. However, we gained a lot of confidence in saying “no” to work outside our scope and sticking to our guns. Slowly, we began to achieve a great reputation for the specialized services we initially set out to offer. Once that happened, a stream of clients started pouring in.  

Our advice to those interested in following a similar path is just to believe in yourself! Find a niche and stick with it. Perseverance is the number one rule in business, with the best businesses focused on doing one thing really well. 

What do you find most rewarding about being in this line of work? 

Seeing how our business can really change people’s lives for the better—for both clients and our chefs. Our clients are better able to manage debilitating health conditions and diagnoses, and their children can explore new foods and learn to enjoy vegetables. This work helps to de-stress dinner time for people, and we’ve been told by some of our clients that they feel the best they’ve ever felt after working with us. Additionally, it’s been incredibly fulfilling to be a home base for employing folks who feel burnt out from traditional restaurant environments and providing them with a healthy and impactful work atmosphere. 

We want to hire chefs with a fundamental understanding of the importance of cooking foods from single, whole ingredients—locally, whenever possible—and the value of making everything from scratch. This is our entire mission at Sage: to provide our clients with delicious, home cooked meals from real food so they can live healthier, more peaceful, and less stressful lives. 

Written by Ashley Villarreal, Marketing Content Specialist