Move over Blue Apron, Plated, and HelloFresh — there’s a new meal kit delivery service in town with an emphasis on technology, charity, and customization.

FixeFood allows its customers to choose from lifestyle options such as plant-based, paleo, or keto diets and then coordinates groceries to meet those dietary needs. Unlike some of its meal kit delivery competitors that provide ingredients for only a few meals in each delivery, FixeFood delivers a weeks’ worth of groceries good for 14 or 21 meals starting at $4 per meal.

FixeFood founder Joshua Stramiello (center)

FixeFood’s founder, Joshua Stramiello, has a background in food tech and Fixe evolved from a product that Stramiello began working on with some friends, he told Dallas Innovates. The idea started with a smart fridge concept and the team continued to refine exactly what they were trying to do.

“Smart fridge became less waste, less waste became more affordable, more affordable became healthy and affordable, and the problem set led to the invention of the [FixeFood] business and model,” Stramiello said. 

He outlined ambitious growth plans for the less than two-month-old startup. Since the second week of June, Fixe has signed up more than 100 customers and delivered 1,000 plus meals. Stramiello said the plan is to reach 1,000 subscribers over the next two months as well as hit delivering 1,000 meals per day by October.

FRESH FOOD WITH A SOCIAL CONSCIENCE

Given Stramiello’s background in food tech, it’s not surprising technology plays an important backend role at the startup.

Fixe uses what he described as “state-of-the-art supply chain management tools,” and a proprietary filtering system. The startup is even building a machine learning framework on Python that, after training, will automatically shop for Fixe customers keeping cost in mind as well as creating meal plans to match customer lifestyles.

“Fixe’s core mission is to make healthy food accessible for people in food deserts and others who are not currently given the empowerment of a better lifestyle through food.”
Joshua Stramiello

“The most unique thing about Fixe though is how many problems we solve for the consumer,” said Stramiello. “We don’t just give you a meal plan and leave you to shop for yourself. That can take hours and involves you trying to add up quantities of ingredients from separate pages. We analyze SKUs , sort ingredients, plan routes, cost balance, adjust for dietary restrictions [along with] another dozen things.”

Charities also are part of the long-term plan at Fixe. Stramiello said the company is currently in talks with several charities, but acknowledged closing partnerships is a long process. Fixe’s goal is to become a support network for its partner charities through its tech to help them feed and reach more people while saving money at the same time. He said Fixe was, and is, being built for charities first and that it “just happens to be a good consumer product as well.”

“Before we realized how much people wanted Fixe as a consumer product, it was always about community and charity work first. Fixe’s core mission is to make healthy food accessible for people in food deserts and others who are not currently given the empowerment of a better lifestyle through food,” Stramiello said.