The importance of helping families lead a healthier lifestyle

Community members can order their meals through the partner organizations each week and then pick them up during the designated time-slot for each location. The current prices are $5 for an individual meal and $15 for a four-person meal. "They're fresh prepared meals, they're delicious, ready to eat, very healthy and people can put them in their refrigerator and heat them up any time they want during the week, so it's a really convenient option," Doshi says.Working with these organizations, Doshi and Katz noticed that the staff members could also benefit from the service, so they are gearing their business to fit their lifestyle as well. "A lot of the organizations we're working with are non-profits, and their staff members are also very budget-constrained and time-constrained and are spending most of their day focused on helping other people be healthy," Katz says. "And at the end of the day they're potentially having to stop at a McDonald's because they're in a rush and don't have time to actually cook a meal for themselves. So we're really trying to build that side of what we're doing as well."
Healthy food is not just a business opportunity, but a passion for Doshi and Katz. They understand the importance of helping families lead a healthier lifestyle because, as they were growing up, they say, their families sometimes struggled to find the time and money for balanced meals."Every issue that my family worked through, we did at the dinner table and we did so around an Indian dinner. To me, that was one of the points of stability of my childhood," Doshi says. "So I think all my life food has been really important in terms of bringing people together around a dinner table." But her mother, who was raising two children by herself and working as a nurse, didn't always have the time to cook. So Doshi understands how much their business could help other families in similar situations.
While in business school, they heard the general misconception that many families not only can't afford healthier food, but don't really want it. "I think, for various reasons personally and emotionally, we had a gut reaction that that's just wrong and that's a terrible thing for our society to believe in," Katz says.Doshi and Saloni are now looking to partner with more organizations. Their goal is to reach about 750 households with ten partners by the end of the year.