Everytable
Is food as medicine ready for neighborhood quick-serve?
What’s happening: Everytable, a multi-channel food company focused on equitable access to food as medicine, closed $25M in a Series C-2 round.
After raising $52M last summer, the mission-driven company has scaled up its effort to prevent and reduce diet-related illnesses through healthy food. Tripling its retail footprint to 50 locations in 2022, the startup has another 25 planned to open across Southern California, the Bay Area, and New York City in 2023.
How it works: Everytable sets the prices at its better-for-you quick-service restaurants based on a zip code’s median income, and it’s actively scaling a network of SmartFridges that put clinically backed, ready-to-eat meals on college campuses and in supermarkets. Both divisions receive food from a central commissary kitchen.
Leveraging its low-overhead model, Everytable also offers subscription delivery and commercial food service operations.
Why it matters: Most areas that need access to healthy food the most don’t have it — and as medically tailored meals gain traction, not enough attention is being paid to these UPF-laden food deserts.
With the majority of food stamps going to soda and calorie-dense snack foods, it’s clear convenience needs to be part of the equation in making food-as-medicine programs feasible.
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It’s hard to do quick-service with the types of ingredients that promote optimal well-being, but as numerous established restaurants and upstarts are proving, it’s not impossible to make the economics work.
- Sweetgreen is scaling up its automated salad-making restaurant concept in order to keep its prices affordable while expanding to non-urban locations.
- Whole Foods founder John Mackey’s Love.Life Cafe launched with a plant-based menu curated to only include nutrient-dense food with functional benefits.
- Chipotle is piloting a healthy bowls restaurant in California called Farmesa, while Mediterranean-inspired bowls maker CAVA has aggressive expansion plans post IPO.
Big picture: Everytable’s model is also not unlike the community kitchen initiative from food-as-medicine startup Season Health and meal delivery service Territory Foods — and with the mission being to keep more people healthier, longer, this sort of healthcare-approved program should be pursued in all areas.
