A DC soup company’s already gone national; helping home cooks is next

Several products from Cookstix. (Courtesy Prescription Chicken)
Valerie Zweig and Taryn Pellicone
Cousins Valerie Zweig (right) and Taryn Pellicone started Prescription Chicken in 2016 in D.C.’s Shaw neighborhood. (Courtesy Prescription Chicken)
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Valerie Zweig and Taryn Pellicone

Two cousins have grown what started as a small home delivery soup idea in Northwest D.C. almost a decade ago into a national retail business. Now, Prescription Chicken is expanding its product line, this time to help home cooks simmer up some high-quality, homemade chicken stock at home.

Prescription Chicken started with a really sore throat.

“It was about 10 years ago and I got laryngitis, and we couldn’t find good chicken soup to be delivered,” said Valerie Zweig, who recruited cousin Taryn Pellicone into starting the business in 2016. “So I said to my cousin, ‘Hey, I have this idea for a matzo ball soup delivery business.’”

That became Chix Soup Co., which is now Prescription Chicken’s retail line. The company’s soups are sold in more than 1,000 grocery stores nationwide, including Whole Foods, Sprouts, Streets, Costco and more. The selection includes choices like Grandma Style chicken soup, Bi-Partisan chicken soup (with both matzah balls and egg noodles), Spicy Hangover chicken noodle, Pho-in-One, and chicken bone broth.

Zweig and Pellicone are now marketing a new product, called Cookstix, a line of dehydrated, instant stock sticks made from their stock. One stick with water makes at least three cups of stock. They are starting with three initial flavors classic roasted chicken, chili cumin lime and coconut ginger.

Zweig does not want Cookstix to be confused with bouillon cubes.

“Bouillon cubes are chock full of sodium, palm oil and preservatives, and all sorts of things. Our product is truly just dehydrated chicken stock,” she said.

Without going too deeply into the process, dehydrating their broth involves reducing liquid and using a centrifuge system.

Cookstix are debuting in stores in the D.C. area, including Whole Foods.

Shaw site still delivers

Zweig and Pellicone still run Prescription Chicken’s delivery business out of its small takeout location in Shaw, but production for its retail line is now done at a USDA-approved facility in Minneapolis, using their own recipes.

Prescription Chicken’s early days found Zweig and Pellicone moving from borrowed kitchen to borrowed kitchen, initially at food incubator Mess Hall in D.C.’s Edgewood neighborhood, and briefly at Union Market. The pandemic actually opened the doors for the cousins to more shared space opportunities to cook.

Zweig’s background includes a degree from the Institute of Culinary Education. Pellicone has a career history in the hotel-restaurant management business.

Prescription Chicken is profitable, Zweig said. She prefers not to disclose revenues or investment backers, though in addition to their own seed money and funding from friends and family, the business has attracted outside investors and continues to look for them.

“We have tried to grow with our funding from here. We are still in a growth phase and so we are constantly looking for how we can continue to grow and be sustainable,” she said. Her top priority is trying to focus on consumer awareness and impact “so people can see what we’re doing.”

Home cooks all have an opinion about how to make chicken stock. Zweig was happy to answer one question. Can you make homemade chicken stock using leftover chicken?

“Yes, 100%,” she said. Her advice?

Save a rotisserie chicken carcass. I keep bags of carrot peals and onion skins in my freezer. And, always use the chicken skin,”  she said.

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Jeff Clabaugh

Jeff Clabaugh has spent 20 years covering the Washington region's economy and financial markets for WTOP as part of a partnership with the Washington Business Journal, and officially joined the WTOP newsroom staff in January 2016.

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