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.”
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