Terra's Kitchen is a meal delivery service that prides itself on being eco-friendly, fresh and perfect for meat lovers and vegetarians alike. The meal prep service comes to your door in a unique recyclable vessel, full of pre-cut fresh produce and meats. This ensures that all meals have a cook time of 30 minutes. Meals range from $9.99 to $17.99 to serve 2 people. To get a more in-depth scoop, we interviewed CEO Mike McDevitt about how it works.
Q: Tell me a little about your background and how you got involved with Terra's Kitchen.
A: I come from the world of health and wellness in which I was CEO of a weight loss and health and wellness company for about 10 years. Over that 10 year time frame we focused largely on the weight loss process of individuals and helping them achieve better health. I left that business back in 2012 and about a year and half later I came across this new world of fresh food delivery. I became aware of the local contenders around and was very intrigued by it. In my past world we had great ways of helping people get to a point of optimal weight, but there was never a way back in these days with logistics and technology, never really a way to continue on with real food, being able to offer that to the consumer base. When I became aware of what was happening in the world of logistics that would allow us to ship real food, I was hooked on it. I spent the last year refining and really getting into the details of how to make this the optimal experience for the consumer base. Now we have the ability to help consumers create a healthy environment in their kitchen with real food on an everyday basis. So that's a little bit about my background. I'm still in the world of health and wellness, but I'm out of the world of weight loss and into the world of healthy eating.
Q: How does Terra's Kitchen work?
A: It's the classic e-commerce subscription model. So you're gonna come across our advertisements or hear about us from a friend. Once you're on our website, you've got the ability to shop and see up to 25-30 additional meals that are available to purchase, which is very different from a lot of our competitors. All of our competitors usually have about five to seven different options. So variety is a very big differentiator for us that we are very proud about. Then you choose three to five of those meals that you want to have delivered to you. Every week you'll receive at your front door what is the Terra's Kitchen vessel. This is a reusable, eco-friendly vessel that allows us to ship to you all the ingredients to prepare your fresh meal. It also allows us to do this in a prepared manner. All of our vegetables and fruits come to you already pre-cut which allows us to cut our cook time in half. So you go on the website, shop around and order what you like. It comes to your door in a reusable vessel, you unpack all your ingredients, cook your meals in 30 minutes, put the vessel back out on your front door and it gets picked up the next day. Then every week you pick your meals to go inside that vessel.
Q: Pretty convenient.
A: We try to take out all the challenges. We live by the 80/20 rule of efficiency. I mean if you look at the actual cooking dinner process, 80 percent of the time is spent going to grocery store, coming back from the grocery store and preparing with chopping and slicing. So we've taken out all that 80 percent out so you just spend that 20 percent of the time cooking the meal and 80 percent of the time around the dinner table connecting with your family and friends and loved ones.
Q: What is the process of creating the menu? How often do you update it?
A: So we put on about five new meals every other week. We always want to have a base of about 25-30 meals to be available up on the website. With the meals, you're gonna have a good variety of vegetarian, paleo, meat lovers, fish, beef, lamb, anything out there. We like to keep our 10 staples, kind of our top sellers, always available for some consistency and then have about 20 meals rotating every two weeks. We always want to have a very large variety. Our culinary director Libbie Summers, who is the mastermind behind what it is we put out there as our options, how she does it is through her expertise as well as listening to our clientele. So based on what our clientele have given us back as feedback, what they're liking and what they would like to see more or less of, we try to marry what our next menu releases. So we have the option of being very agile and give back to our customers what they are saying that they want.
Q: How do you source the ingredients for the meals?
A: It sort of varies. It's a combination of national produce and protein providers, as well as local protein and produce providers. So we try to get a mix of everything. Because we live by a high level of safety and regulation, we do require all of our partners to meet a certain level of FDA requirement to be able to ship directly to the consumer. So a lot of our local providers are not yet there from a maturity standpoint. So we like to work with them and help them get their operations up and running to allow them to become a partner with us. But the majority of the time we go to the best guy. We know who provides the produce and protein to our favorite stores, the Whole Foods of the world. Those same providers for those stores are who we utilize for our meals. Since we have the ability to cut out the middle man of the distributor, the grocery store, you're gonna get that same tomato that's being sold in Whole Foods but get it four days faster than you're gonna see it on their shelves. We're utilizing some of our consumers' favorite protein and produce providers but doing it at a more efficient manner.
Q: What makes you stand out among competitors?
A: We come from the world of health and wellness. While this is not a weight loss process, this is a business that appreciates healthy eating. We live by making sure what you're getting and feeding to your family is healthy. The time to cook is another huge differentiator for us. We are appreciative of the fact that people are extremely busy. I mean I'm a very busy person. That's part of the reason when we started making this organization, keeping our cook time under 30 minutes was something we could always ensure our consumer base. Because we are the only company out there that can ship our produce already pre-cut, we're the only ones that can make that 30 minutes or less promise. So for those busy Tuesday and Thursday nights when you have soccer practice or PTA meetings, you always know you're going to be able to cook in a very time effective manner. Then there is the eco-friendly aspect of what we do. We're here for creating a better environment and a better community both around the table as well as in your surroundings. Because we have a vessel that is reusable up to 100 times, we don't have near as much the waste as shipping a cardboard box and frozen ice packs. At the end of the day, everything we ship to you is returned to us and used again or to be recycled at your home.
Q: Where do you see Terra's Kitchen's future?
A: Right now we are very much honed in on offering the best dinner opportunity possible for our consumer base. What we're doing is we're pulling from our consumer base. They allow us into their kitchens. It's the most intimate part of their day at the dinner table and they provide us feedback about what it is they want to see next. That's most likely what you're gonna see us leaning towards.
Q: What are some of your favorite meals?
A: Surprisingly, the Toasted Edamame Stir-Fry, which is a vegetarian dish. I'm not a vegetarian, but I do like to go meatless one to two days a week and this stir-fry is my favorite meal by far. I love the flavor in it. Sometimes I even add a little extra chicken to the meal to put a little extra protein in there. The Southwestern Steak Bowl is absolutely delicious and filling. Our chicken tacos have a goat cheese/avocado spread, and I find myself licking my plate every time.
