When Zalmi Duchman and Yosef Schwartz, a Le Cordon Bleu trained chef, founded The Fresh Diet in 2005, they wanted to combine the three important pillars of taste, convenience and results. Now 10 years later, the Fresh Diet has evolved into the nation’s premier gourmet diet delivery service, preparing and hand-delivering three fresh meals and two gourmet snacks to upwards of 3,000 customers daily.
“The brilliance behind a product such as The Fresh Diet is how easily it integrates and supports someone’s lifestyle,” Director of Strategic Initiatives Arley Betteridge Hunt says. “Our customers are not just dieters. We support a vast range of lifestyles and cater to different careers, needs and dietary preferences.”
Providing Choice
The Fresh Diet is not just the leader in the industry; it is also the largest player. The company’s volume and the magnitude to which it delivers each night is impressive, especially because the company has a sigma level of quality in operations.
The Fresh Diet also has a system designed to allow for customers to manage their accounts from start to finish. With an entirely proprietary back-end system as well as a fully staffed call center, the company’s customers can have as much independence or support as they would like.
In looking at the team the company has built, The Fresh Diet has a staff of customer service representatives it refers to as personal concierges. In addition, an in-house nutritionist can advise customers on how to achieve the best results.
Beyond that, the company has gone to great lengths to ensure a high level of customization that customers can receive with any of The Fresh Diet’s meal plans. The company says it tailors meals for customers to an incomparable degree, which it feels is part of what makes The Fresh Diet a favorite choice in the industry of diet meal delivery service.
“Our meal plans offer four caloric ranges, which vary based on gender, exercise level and dietary need,” Hunt says. “We offer five different meal plans and four diets.”
The company says the Fresh Premium meal plan is the most customizable diet on the market, allowing for up to 50 ingredient dislikes and the customer selection of meals based on a rotating daily menu.
Each night, The Fresh Diet’s drivers travel 16,000 miles around the country to deliver to its customers. Despite this distance and the sheer volume of bags delivered each night, the company takes great pride in operating at a 99.79 percent success rate while offering free doorstep delivery.
Constantly pushing the envelope in terms of food innovation, The Fresh Diet works to consistently deliver on its promises. This is what catapulted The Fresh Diet from a small start-up to the leaders in the industry.
Reaching for More
As a food technology company, The Fresh Diet does a lot of work on the digital side. It also reaches out to the market via direct mail. This work helps the company to find prospective customers, which it then focuses on turning into satisfied customers.
“We are constantly refining and streamlining processes to ensure our upward trend of success so we can continue to deliver a white glove level of service,” Hunt says.
The Fresh Diet is making a number of key investments into the organization. Operations, marketing and technology are some of the most fundamental pieces of the company. Their symbiotic relationship is what drives this business forward.
Currently, The Fresh Diet is working on several initiatives that should help the company achieve its growth goals. Hunt says some challenges exist for the company because it operates in what is an extremely hot market sector at the moment.
The Fresh Diet’s priorities are focused on reaching different markets. In the last year, the company has introduced three new lifestyle plans, and that has set the pace for 2015. The Fresh Diet feels that it already fits seamlessly into many lives, offering customers the convenience of fresh, gourmet meals delivered right to their door. However, the company feels it can achieve much more.
This is why focus areas for the next year include programs such as corporate lunches, a la carte, juices, affiliate programs and even wellness programs in schools and corporations. The company is confident that it can make these programs work, and it believes that the entire industry will follow with each of its strides.
“Although the potential is vast, it does create a lot of small competition on a local level,” Hunt says. “Our reason for being the big fish comes down to our deliverability and our reach. Although we may meet the challenge of local competition, we always pull out ahead.”