{"id":223752,"date":"2026-03-17T14:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T14:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/223752\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T14:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T14:26:09","slug":"meghan-phillips-is-helping-sacramento-tell-its-food-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/223752\/","title":{"rendered":"Meghan Phillips Is Helping Sacramento Tell Its Food Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

This story is part of our March 2026 issue. To read the print version, click here.<\/a><\/p>\n


\n
\n <\/p>\n

Meghan Phillips<\/p>\n

\n CEO and Founder of Honey\n<\/p>\n

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

\n \u201cWine has always kind of been in my blood,\u201d she says, adding that
\n her brother, also named Shane Ryan, is the winemaker at Larson
\n Family Winery in Sonoma.\n<\/p>\n

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

\n \u201cI wanted to take everything I was learning from a coffee, food
\n and wine perspective and do it with marketing and design under
\n one roof,\u201d she says.\n<\/p>\n

\n Honey is a PR firm whose niche is food, beverage and agriculture.
\n Her team specializes in building brand loyalty through
\n storytelling. \u201cI named it Honey because I\u2019m very fascinated by
\n the science of bees and how they work together to find the best
\n nectar to bring back to the hive to sort of create the honey that
\n tells their story. So it was a perfect sort of synergy to what we
\n do. We tell other people\u2019s stories, and we try to bring out the
\n best of that in what they do,\u201d she says.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cI feel most proud that I have a place where women feel safe to
\n be both career creatives and also moms.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Honey has done the branding for the Tower Bridge Dinner,
\n Sacramento\u2019s Farm-to-Fork movement, Mi Rancho tortillas and
\n various wineries. Honey also represents the California Alliance
\n of Family Farmers and Capitol Corridor rail service.\n<\/p>\n

\n Phillips, Chef Brad Cecchi of the restaurant Canon, Trish Kelly
\n at Valley Vision and Kelsey Nederveld of Sacramento City Unified
\n School District\u2019s Central Kitchen also created Food Frontier,
\n whose mission is to tell and promote the agriculture story of the
\n Capital Region. She\u2019s also working with local schools to make
\n lunches healthier and more exciting.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cOne of the big things that we realized over time is that this
\n region doesn\u2019t really tell its story super well in terms of the
\n incredible assets that we have,\u201d she says. \u201cWe are unmatched in
\n food and agriculture. We wanted it to also not feel like we were
\n taking a look back at Sacramento\u2019s history, but more of the
\n innovation forward. Food Frontier is like the next frontier of
\n food, and people are doing that across this region, from the
\n Center for Land-Based Learning to UC Davis to the Community Food
\n Hub. All of these people are innovating food, and we just need
\n the united story to tell it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n Phillips\u2019 mentors include Kelly of Valley Vision, restaurateur
\n Patrick Mulvaney and Paulo Mancini, a wine industry executive. A
\n big career moment came in 2022 when she was asked to speak at the
\n mega-popular SXSW (South by Southwest) conference in Austin. Adam
\n Davidson, who started Planet Money on NPR, was writing a book
\n called \u201cThe Passion Economy\u201d about people whose passion
\n transformed to profitability in their careers. Phillips and her
\n PR firm were featured.\n<\/p>\n

\n She credits Honey\u2019s success to her female-led team. Some workers
\n have been with her 10 years or longer. \u201cI feel most proud that I
\n have a place where women feel safe to be both career creatives
\n and also moms.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

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

\n She also has a little-known skill: For the past 20 years, she\u2019s
\n been an early-morning cycle instructor at Urban Flex and Flow in
\n Carmichael. She enjoys doing that before heading to Honey.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cOne of the biggest goals I have \u2026 is build collaboration and
\n sort of stitching (together) all the incredible programs that are
\n happening in food and ag in Sacramento,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd if we can
\n do that \u2026 we\u2019re going to transform this region. It\u2019s already
\n there. Like, you and I eat it, we breathe it, but I want to
\n celebrate all the people that are doing really great work.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n \u2013\n<\/p>\n

\n View the\u00a0list of
\n honorees<\/a>\u00a0from 2015 through 2026.\n<\/p>\n

\n Get all the stories in our annual salute to women in
\n leadership delivered to your inbox: Subscribe to the Comstock\u2019s newsletter
\n today.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story is part of our March 2026 issue. To read the print version, click here. …\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223753,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122],"class_list":["post-223752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}