This story is part of our March 2026 issue. To read the print version, click here.



Meghan Phillips

CEO and Founder of Honey

Meghan Phillips was meant to be involved with food and wine. She
grew up in Sonoma, surrounded by vineyards, and her father, Shane
Ryan, is a grocer for Safeway. This early exposure led her to
attend Sonoma State University, where she majored in marketing
with a wine concentration.

“Wine has always kind of been in my blood,” she says, adding that
her brother, also named Shane Ryan, is the winemaker at Larson
Family Winery in Sonoma.

But what brought her to Sacramento, partly, was coffee. When her
husband, Christopher, also from Sonoma, moved here in 2002 to
attend University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law, Meghan
went to work for Java City when the craft coffee scene was
exploding in Sacramento. A few years later in 2008, she made a
bold move: She decided to start her own public relations firm
while pregnant with her first child. She named it (the company,
not the child) Honey.

“I wanted to take everything I was learning from a coffee, food
and wine perspective and do it with marketing and design under
one roof,” she says.

Honey is a PR firm whose niche is food, beverage and agriculture.
Her team specializes in building brand loyalty through
storytelling. “I named it Honey because I’m very fascinated by
the science of bees and how they work together to find the best
nectar to bring back to the hive to sort of create the honey that
tells their story. So it was a perfect sort of synergy to what we
do. We tell other people’s stories, and we try to bring out the
best of that in what they do,” she says.

“I feel most proud that I have a place where women feel safe to
be both career creatives and also moms.”

Honey has done the branding for the Tower Bridge Dinner,
Sacramento’s Farm-to-Fork movement, Mi Rancho tortillas and
various wineries. Honey also represents the California Alliance
of Family Farmers and Capitol Corridor rail service.

Phillips, Chef Brad Cecchi of the restaurant Canon, Trish Kelly
at Valley Vision and Kelsey Nederveld of Sacramento City Unified
School District’s Central Kitchen also created Food Frontier,
whose mission is to tell and promote the agriculture story of the
Capital Region. She’s also working with local schools to make
lunches healthier and more exciting.

“One of the big things that we realized over time is that this
region doesn’t really tell its story super well in terms of the
incredible assets that we have,” she says. “We are unmatched in
food and agriculture. We wanted it to also not feel like we were
taking a look back at Sacramento’s history, but more of the
innovation forward. Food Frontier is like the next frontier of
food, and people are doing that across this region, from the
Center for Land-Based Learning to UC Davis to the Community Food
Hub. All of these people are innovating food, and we just need
the united story to tell it.”

Phillips’ mentors include Kelly of Valley Vision, restaurateur
Patrick Mulvaney and Paulo Mancini, a wine industry executive. A
big career moment came in 2022 when she was asked to speak at the
mega-popular SXSW (South by Southwest) conference in Austin. Adam
Davidson, who started Planet Money on NPR, was writing a book
called “The Passion Economy” about people whose passion
transformed to profitability in their careers. Phillips and her
PR firm were featured.

She credits Honey’s success to her female-led team. Some workers
have been with her 10 years or longer. “I feel most proud that I
have a place where women feel safe to be both career creatives
and also moms.”

Phillips lives in a unique adobe home and loves to travel with
her family, which also includes daughter Delaney, 17, and son
Beau, 14. They have a Husky named Vega and Golden Retriever named
Eve. Her mother, Maryann, was a high school counselor, and she
has three brothers.

She also has a little-known skill: For the past 20 years, she’s
been an early-morning cycle instructor at Urban Flex and Flow in
Carmichael. She enjoys doing that before heading to Honey.

“One of the biggest goals I have … is build collaboration and
sort of stitching (together) all the incredible programs that are
happening in food and ag in Sacramento,” she says. “And if we can
do that … we’re going to transform this region. It’s already
there. Like, you and I eat it, we breathe it, but I want to
celebrate all the people that are doing really great work.”

–

View the list of
honorees from 2015 through 2026.

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