Crossfit Trainer Starts Meal Prep Service for Hungry Customers

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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Subscription meal services have taken off. You may know this from listening to podcasts. Not just South Coastal School, but other podcasts as well. One of the leading providers of subscription meals is Blue Apron, which has been a sponsor of this show in the past. There are also several other major brands and lots of smaller ones.

Subscription meals, everything in the meal preparation and delivery industry, which is, as I said, a major industry now. These companies have a lot of money. So what if you're a regular person, perhaps a CrossFit trainer, with a partner who does photography and videography, and you'd like to start your own meal prep service? Could you possibly compete in a market with so many companies operating at scale, willing to spend a lot of money, even willing to lose a lot of money to acquire customers? Welcome to South Coastal School, my name is Chris Guillebeau.

Got a great story for you today as we kick off what's gonna be a pretty action-packed week. Even got a bonus episode coming out on Wednesday, I believe. But as for today, this couple in Portland, Oregon have started such a service, a meal subscription service with zero dollars. They took their first orders on Instagram before they spent a dollar. And in their second year, they brought in $700,000 in sales.

And this year, number three, they're gonna cross the million-dollar revenue goalpost. They also have a very healthy profit margin as well. And not only that, this is actually something they originally planned to do on the weekends. It was never intended to grow beyond a side hustle, but they now have 15 employees and work on it full-time. So I guess the lesson there is be careful what you wish for.

Although, of course, it's your life and your goals and your side hustle doesn't need to become a big thing. But I also love highlighting big successes, especially when they are started by busy people without a lot of capital. Now, today's story fits those criteria perfectly. So here's a quick message from our sponsor and then get ready to dig in. [Music]

Megan Benedict had heard all the excuses.

As a personal trainer at a CrossFit gym in Portland, Oregon, Megan knew that nutrition was critical for her client's health and wellbeing. No matter how many pull-ups you do, without the right food, you can only go so far. But it was also true that her clients were literally fed up with the strains of maintaining a healthy lifestyle on top of their full schedules. So instead of shrugging off their concerns, Megan tried a different approach. She listened and took note of them.

Her clients weren't the only ones with challenges. Although she had a full-time job that she loved, Megan felt the need to create something more flexible and forgiving. Because while she was kicking ass in her training sessions, the long hours were kicking hers. As her boyfriend and partner in crime, Lauren Castillo, can confirm, the hours of a CrossFit trainer were brutal. There were plenty of days where she'd be out the door with nothing more than a protein bar at 5 a.m., only returning when it was dark in time for bed.

It was a true labor of love, but even Megan had to admit that the lifestyle of a trainer was rough. It also didn't help that she suffered from chronic migraines that would occasionally force her to cancel or reschedule on clients. Their shared goal was to reach a point where they'd be able to support themselves and start a family. And this lifestyle wasn't conducive to that. So when Megan took note of the healthy eating challenges of her clients, she didn't see them as excuses, she saw them as an opportunity, an opportunity to fill an obvious need.

Megan wrote down all those excuses on a piece of paper. And one night, she and Lauren put their heads together to try to come up with a solution to each. Healthy food is boring and bland, was an easy one. Megan had a black belt in meal prepping and let her taste buds lead the way when it came to putting together delicious meals that were also healthy. I'm too tired to cook after a long day at work, took a bit more consideration.

This was the beginning of 2016 and the market was saturated with meal prep companies. Some were healthy, some not so much, but for the most part, all of them required some effort despite the convenience of having the ingredients delivered to your door. That's when the idea started simmering. What if they could find a way to do people's cooking for them? They were already meal prepping for themselves, so why not take what they'd learned and turn it into a business?

The last excuse, vegetables and fruit end up going bad before I can even use them. Well, Megan and Lauren would make weekly deliveries to each customer with meals that would stand the test of time, or at least the test of a week. And they'd set everything up with a subscription model, which would ensure sustainable income for them. This piece of paper filled with excuses ultimately became the business plan for a meal prep company they called Pit Kitchen Direct. It was a team effort through and through.

While food and nutrition was Megan's specialty, the business logistics fell to Lauren. At the time, he was doing photography and videography in the real estate industry, and he had some business experience. His first venture into entrepreneurship was a T-shirt company he ran out of his dorm room in college. He ended up selling that company, which was awesome, but it also taught him that the business model was flawed. After all, how many times was somebody gonna buy his shirt?

Only once. So while Megan's mind was spinning with recipe ideas, he was occupied with coming up with the best way to do this in multiple batches so that it wasn't a one-off sale. They did a test run of their idea from their house. After posting pictures on social media, mostly Megan's personal Instagram page, they had eight orders that first week. Since this was something that everyone paid for upfront, they didn't need any money at all to get going.

The next week, they posted again, then the next week, and then every week after that. Each week, more and more people subscribed, and for the first eight months, there was no dip in sales with growth every single week. They took their early profits and funneled them back into the company, purchasing more legit kitchen gear. As they got more subscribers, they increased their price a little at a time for new subscribers while keeping the old ones grandfathered in at the original rate. They outgrew their kitchen when they hit around 40 weekly subscribers.

Then they outgrew the shared space they were renting before taking over their own dedicated commercial kitchen. By the end of their eighth month, they had roughly 50 subscribers they could count on every week. They offered a seasonal menu with four different dishes per week. They began with a plan for omnivores, but added a vegan option after getting a lot of requests. Next, they got a license for Whole30 and began offering that option as well.

They now have around 200 weekly subscribers and some one-off sales. These 200 subscribers are all paying hundreds of dollars a month for deliveries, which means that each month's revenue is currently in the $80,000 range with a profit margin of between 30 and 40%. Megan is still working hard, but these days, she works differently. Six months into founding Fit Kitchen Direct by posting a photo on Instagram, she quit her job to go full-time. Six months later, Lauren quit his job.

They both do this full-time now and have 15 employees helping them out. It's not just a business, it's a recipe for a whole new life. [Music]

So is there room for another subscription food service? Well, clearly there is, and this one is local to the Portland, Oregon area. So if you've been thinking about this and you're in a different city, well, perhaps this is a model you should look at.

Now, obviously when they started, they did pay attention to what Blue Apron and some other larger companies were doing, but they found a way to do something different, not just delivering people ingredients in a recipe, but actually delivering them the finished meal each week, along with that guarantee that it's gonna be healthy. And on their website, they go into all the details about what that means, and if you sign up for this package, what kind of meals do you get and so on. But to keep growing week after week after week, it really speaks to the dedication to quality that they have, dedication to quality and customer service. I sometimes use this phrase product first, which is exactly what they've done. They focused on creating this incredible product and then growing the infrastructure week by week, month by month, all in a pretty rapid period of time, which is amazing to go in less than three years to what they're projected to do this year, which is $1.2 million.

So that is pretty cool. And also just a comment, which may sound like a criticism, but it's really not. It's more just an observation. I think their website could use a bit of an overhaul. And I find that strangely inspiring.

And what I mean by that is if you look at their website, it doesn't really look like a company that's doing a million dollars. It doesn't look bad in any way. It just looks like it's more of an early stage kind of thing. So the reason I find it inspiring is because again, they've clearly focused on their product. At some point, I'm pretty sure they will do a redesign and overhaul here, but the fact that they've been able to succeed to the level they have with more of a starter site or let's say a second level site when I think they could be on the third, that is also pretty cool.

So well done, Megan, well done, Lauren. These guys are awesome. I have actually been to the Fit Kitchen direct commercial kitchen in Portland. I don't have any affiliation with them. I don't even get a free meal.

I just think that what they're doing is awesome and a good model to lots of other people. All right, listeners, I hope you enjoyed this one. So many people out there doing remarkable things. I look forward to bringing you another story tomorrow then the next day and then the day after that because there are so many people out there doing remarkable things. I also hope to be able to tell your story at some point.

So be sure to do something for yourself today. Think about what you want. Think about what you're working toward and ask yourself, what's the next thing? What's the next task? What's one step I can take today?

Our show notes for this episode are at sidehustleschool.com/653. That is episode 653. Once again, my name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.