Culture With Us: Experience from afar

When the COVID-19 pandemic started, Alex Schrecengost saw friends who worked in restaurants get hit with furloughs and layoffs. Alex, who worked in the hospitality industry for several years, remembers speaking to a friend who was concerned about paying rent after losing her restaurant job.

A photo of Culture With Us founder, Alex Schrecengost.

So Alex started Culture With Us as a way for laid-off and furloughed hospitality professionals, such as chefs, sommeliers, and mixologists, to offer their expertise remotely through tastings, experiences, and entertainment designed to bring corporate teams together.

From the beginning, inclusion has been at the core of Alex’s mission for the company. Culture With Us works with artisans from underrepresented communities to supply its offerings and elevate other minority-owned small businesses. The company also offers experiences that cover a diverse range of events and holidays, like Black History Month, Latinx Heritage Month, Lunar New Year, Pride Month, and more. This passion for inclusion is also what inspired Alex to apply to this year’s Small Business Grant program. “[FedEx] is all about sustainability and diversity and inclusion in such a huge way,” she says.

It didn’t take long for a multinational company to come calling, asking Alex if they could order hundreds of wine tasting boxes for their employees, and her business began to take off. From the start, Alex saw good savings and service with FedEx.

“I asked ‘Can you help me out with preferential pricing? Is there something we could do to standardize the size of our boxes?’” she says. “Our representative jumped right in and was like, ‘Yes, we can start with three sizes.’”

Her FedEx representative was also able to help her ship to companies with employees around the globe. “Slowly but surely, we built out the infrastructure to be able to work with purveyors, artisans, small businesses and alcohol distributors, all of these underrepresented communities including women, LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, and all these specific countries,” she says. Working with FedEx, Culture With Us also began to tackle challenges related to logistics and varied requirements, such as the customs clearance process, to deliver items like wine, kombucha, tea, and artisanal chocolates across different borders. “[We worked] closely with the international team to understand any customs issues with regard to food and dried goods,” says Alex. “I’ve always had a good experience with FedEx.”

Today, the company offers clients on six continents a wide range of gifts and experiences for their employees to enjoy, all under a unifying banner of inclusion and personal service.

Over the past three years, Culture With Us has fulfilled events in 77 countries. As a 2023 FedEx^® Small Business Grant program winner, they'll use their grant money to create more long-term partnerships, build out their warehouse and fulfillment team, and continue to bring communities together.

Keep dreaming and doing. There’s more ahead.

The FedEx Small Business Grants Program helped entrepreneurs grow for 12 years. It’s retiring,
but our support for small businesses isn’t. Find other ways to compete and win.

The FedEx Small Business Grants Program helped entrepreneurs grow for 12 years. It’s retiring, but our support for small businesses isn’t. Find other ways to compete and win.