Web enabled eating is here and a Miami upstart is taking the industry by storm.
Fresh Diet Inc. is a gourmet meal delivery company founded on the fair shores of the 305 by a dude named Zalmi Duchman. The company currently operates kitchens and deliveries in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, and South Florida.
Clients use TheFreshDiet.com to do their menu planning, add/remove delivery days, enter their dislikes, and interact with the company, which uses software developed in- house by Chief Technology Officer Ray Willig to monitor routing and delivery, kitchen production, and sales.
Zalmi describes the business model as "click and mortar," an amalgamation of digital infrastructure and physical output. Their total revenue last year was $7 million. A nice step up for a company started with $500, with Zalmi's wife doing the cooking, and him driving deliveries all night then falling asleep at his desk where he sold condos on the beach.
The Fresh Diet's company headquarters is a non-descript warehouse bordering the Allapattah neighborhood in the city of Miami. This is where the never frozen or vaccuum sealed, up to 3 meals and 2 snacks a day are cooked and assembled before lunchbox fresh delivery by a team of independently contracted drivers.
All menu choices are designed by Yosef Schwartz, a Le Cordon Bleu graduate who serves as Chief Culinary Officer. All food is made according to his precise instruction by a kitchen team in every city that the company operates in. Chief Operating Officer Judah Schlass also works to ensure quality control.
"Nobody else is doing what we're doing. If you look at the Nutri System, and the Jenny Craig and all that, there's nobody like us that's offering fresh made gourmet meals with our level of meal planning for people on diets who want to lose weight or just lifestyle clients who this is just the way they eat."
