The Issue: Diet-Related Health Disparities
The nation’s current health challenges are well documented, but still staggering:
- 60% of Americans are overweight and 80% have diets below the USDA’s nutritional guidelines.
- Poor diets led to an incremental $147B in annual US healthcare-related costs and $73B in absenteeism-driven lost productivity costs in 2011 alone.
- If we don’t change the trajectory, poor eating will drive 50% of total healthcare costs by 2020.
Emerging health and wellness initiatives fail to address the unique constraints and needs of working class communities, those with limited resources and disproportionately poor health outcomes. Though many of these Americans seek healthier lifestyles, they lack the resources to cook regularly and rely heavily on convenient and affordable prepared dinner options. Unfortunately, most healthy convenient meal options are expensive and only in reach for higher income Americans, resulting in a large market gap.
Our Mission: Fresh for All
Fresh Takes Kitchen puts healthy eating within reach of all Americans by providing a quality, nutritious alternative to fast food and promoting broader healthy lifestyle changes.
We achieve this mission in three ways:
- Our dinners enable heads of households to model healthier eating behaviors for their families, equip individuals to improve their own quality of life, and help people reclaim the power and togetherness of dinnertime.
- Through our marketing, fun and educational nutrition information on our packaging, and cooking class partnerships, we will help empower customers to eat healthier beyond our meals and inspire them to cook wholesome dinners when feasible.
- As a for-profit social venture, our success can serve as a powerful proof point that there is increasing demand for affordable healthy options, thereby spurring greater nationwide innovation to make real, fresh food more accessible to all.
Our Values
Respect: We respect our customers in everything we do. We’ve designed a high quality service specifically to fit within the budgets and lifestyles of our customers. We seek constant customer feedback on our meals, and aim to develop a menu that respects and celebrates their cultures. Finally, we respect the vision, efforts and time constraints of our partner organizations.
Collaboration: We are just one of many organizations working towards a vision of improved health across the nation – and we believe that it will take our combined, diverse efforts to effectively drive this change. We therefore constantly look for opportunities for strategic collaboration, and have developed a unique business model embeds ourselves within local initiatives to help amplify the impact of these existing efforts.
Scale: The complexity and depth of the country’s health challenges requires large scale, nationwide solutions. We therefore consider scalability in all of our decisions, prioritizing those that will allow for swift, efficient expansion across the country.