After piloting its “healthy eating ecosystem” in Dallas over the past few months, a local startup is launching to the public.

Already having amassed about 5,000 subscribers, bitewell—a personalized food health app helping users make healthy eating —is officially launching this month after closing on fresh new funding.

The company says its mission is to “improve your health through food.”

Restaurants and recipes, personalized

Photo: Bitewell

Bitewell’s platform targets businesses to offer the app as a benefit for their employees, to give them healthier eating options. The app onboards users with a quick survey on things like allergies, dietary restrictions, food preferences, and goals. From there, it connects them with restaurants and recipes that fit their needs.

“Food in the office has always been tricky, but with the last decade’s rise in dietary restrictions it’s more challenging than ever to feed our teams well,” Citro Alexander said in a statement. “That’s why we’ve decided to partner with companies to offer the bitewell solution to their employees as part of a comprehensive preventative health program.”

Supporting ‘every food decision’

Bitewell founders Samantha Citro Alexander (left) and Chris Fanucchi [Photo: Bitewell]

Using algorithms, dieticians, and nutritionists, the company vets establishments on three tiers. The lowest tier uses publicly available menu data. The highest tier establishes a formal partnership with a restaurant to share recipe books with the company under non-disclosure agreements.

Already, the company has data on thousands of restaurants and offers more than 10,000 curated recipes on its app. It’s also signed up local businesses like Unleavened Fresh Kitchen and Bread Zeppelin to its third-tier partnership.

“Our goal is to really support every food decision you make in a day,” Citro Alexander told Dallas Innovates during beta testing in March. “We want to be able to not just provide transparency on all of those things, but we also want to be able to help you track, over time, how those food choices impact how your body feels.”

Dallas’ Access Capital backs bitewell

The co-founders Citro Alexander and Chris Fanucchi, who serves as CEO, developed the idea behind the company after discovering they experienced similar issues trying to find meals that fit their dietary needs while traveling. Fanucchi sold his previous sparkling water brand Limitless to Plano-based Keurig Dr Pepper in 2020, while Citro Alexander previously served as the director of North America consumer engagement and integrated marketing at the Estée Lauder Companies brand Smashbox.

With seed funding secured from backers including Antler Global, Dallas firm Access Capital, and MGV Capital, among others, bitewell is launching initially only in Dallas. Moving forward, it aims to expand to other cities across the U.S., including Chicago, where Fanucchi is based. The company previously told Dallas Innovates that the funding would help it build out its technology and team, with the goal of doubling its about 20-person headcount by the end of this year.

“This is the culmination of years of research and data analysis, and we look forward to bringing this new revolutionary service to market,” Fanucchi said in a statement.

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