Revolutionizing the Way We Shop for Food with Faiez Rana of Prep to Your Door

“If we can go to outer space, we can get fresh food to people’s doorsteps.” ~ Faiez Rana, co-founder & CEO, Prep to Your Door.

It all started when Faiez went vegetarian for 10 days to impress a girl.

That girl was Heather, his (now) wife and co-founder of Prep to Your Door, a whole food plant-based, zero-waste food delivery company that’s bringing fresh, healthy food to people’s doors throughout Austin and Houston.

But Faiez has a much bigger vision than that.

“The supply chain is not designed to get fresh food into our bodies,” he points out. Through Prep to Your Door, he’s looking to change that—and make eating whole food plant-based meals just as easy and convenient as buying packaged food at the grocery store.

His passion for sustainability (and self-proclaimed food system nerdiness) has led Faiez to create a food delivery model based on regional distribution. This allows him, Heather and their team to prepare a wide variety of healthy meals using organic, seasonal ingredients and get them to people’s doors within just a few hours. Everything is delivered in glass containers which are then collected, cleaned and reused.

🥗 Episode highlights

• Prep To Your Door’s history and whole-food, zero-waste premise
• How Faiez’s wife inspired the business with her mason jar salads
• The power of iteration in implementing and improving a business model
• Importance of sticking to brand values in customer retention
• How fresh meal delivery using a closed-loop system differs from other popular meal delivery services
• Rethinking the way people shop for food
• Why friction is the enemy of mass whole food plant-based adoption—and what to do about it
• The logistics of regional fresh food delivery vs. shipping processed food across the country
• Using a diverse and rotational menu to introduce consumers to new foods
• Listening to customers to determine how best to serve unique segments
• Using tech to bring fresh, healthy food to people’s doors instead of to create new food products

For Faiez, this is food tech: leveraging today’s high-tech systems to remove friction, improve access to nutritious food and cut down on single-use plastic waste.

It’s been a wild ride of learning about food and the food system, and Faiez is putting it all into practice with the goal of taking Prep to Your Door national.

“My personality is always such that, when I learn new things, I need to do something with it,” he explains.

By listening to what customers want and always improving on their processes, the Prep to Your Door team is doing much more than delivering meals—they’re changing the face of “convenience food” and redefining what it means to shop for groceries.

About Faiez and Prep to Your Door

Faiez met his co-founder (now wife!) Heather in class at Harvard University. They paired their passions for social entrepreneurship and sustainable business to build Prep To Your Door. Born in Heather's studio Manhattan apartment, the first PTYD jars were mason jar salads that Heather used to nourish herself in the city.

When they moved back to Austin, Faiez pushed for the couple to start a business. Slowly, the pair began perfecting meals in jars with help from their very first customers. Always plant-based, organic, locally sourced and ready to eat, PTYD meals are made without cutting corners or compromising on ingredients.

Since 2017, Prep To Your Door has grown to a team of 40 team members. In 2020, the company served 77,000 meals using less than 3,900 jars – that’s zero single use plastic!

Faiez believes addressing our food chain has the power to reverse several crises of our time: healthcare, climate change, and economic inequality. And he's working with Heather and their team to make organic, sustainable and fresh food at scale the REAL new normal.

Follow Faiez (or try Prep to Your Door!)

• https://preptoyourdoor.com
• Instagram: @preptoyourdoor, @faiezrana‍
• Facebook: PrepToYourDoor
• LinkedIn: Prep To Your Door, Faiez Rana

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