Welcome to our very first blog post! If you’ve come across our website or found us on social media you may be wondering what we are all about, so we wanted to officially introduce ourselves to you. UpMeals is a company dedicated to healthy food accessibility. Our team of chefs, nutritionists, and designers have come together to bring innovative wellness solutions for businesses and organizations.
Our mission: Making healthy meals accessible 24/7 through technology
We know how important healthy eating habits are for our general well-being, vitality, and quality of life. We also know how hard it can be to access healthy food on a daily basis. Our goal is to provide custom wellness solutions that meet people’s busy schedules and makes keeping a healthy lifestyle sustainable, cost effective, and convenient. We partner with reputable organizations to provide branded, prepared-meal solutions for their employees and customers.
Our solutions are client specific because we know there is no “one size fits all”. Everyone’s preferences and goals are different, so we offer solutions that are uniquely tailored to each individual client’s needs.
The main problems we aim to solve
- For retailers, launching a branded food program is usually a multi-stop process that can be expensive and time consuming. This makes many retailers shy away from the idea of creating their own branded products and rely on third party brands to stock their fridges.
- For companies, offices, schools, and other organizations using traditional catering, cafeteria, or meal delivery services can be very costly, complicated, and not in line with today’s flexible work schedule logistics. This leaves many members of these communities either spending a lot of time coming up with their own healthy choices (whichcan be a source of added stress) or turning to convenient but unhealthy options on the go.
- Now that safety issues are at the top of everyone’s mind with COVID-19, organizations are looking for safe meal solutions moving forward that traditional catering may not be able to offer at this time.
The solutions we provide
- We study and understand each organization’s preferences based on their customer or employee data. With this information our chefs and nutritionists come up with a unique rotating line of menu items tailored specifically to each partner.
- We prepare all meals in our HACCP Certified production facility, which meets the highest food safety standards.
- We design and create professional labels and packaging with the organization’s unique branding.
- We safely deliver our products to our partners fresh throughout the week.
- We make our products accessible 24\u20447 though our innovative touch screen vending interfaces, or at grab ‘n go retail fridges.
In short, we come up with a unique solution for each of our partners and worry about all the logistics so that they don’t have to.
Who do we work with?
Corporate clients
We work with companies looking for accessible ways to feed their employees. As companies become more health conscious and aware of the benefits of having wellness solutions, the market for corporate wellness has grown and people are searching for ways to keep their teams healthy and happy. Our solution is more cost effective than traditional catering with the added benefit of having healthy, chef prepared food available 24/7. As work schedules change and people have more flexible hours, catering to an entire team at a given time may be less convenient, so having the convenience of ongoing access to food with our smart kiosks is a great added value. In addition to this we take care of designing our SmartVending kiosks and the products inside to be branded with each company’s unique image.
Retail partners
We also work with retail partners to provide them with branded custom meals that help boost their profits and generate brand loyalty among their customers. We have experienced first hand how products that are labeled under an established retail brand sell better than the same products coming from a third party brand. Recurring customers are generally loyal to the retailer and gravitate toward their unique brand, so having branded products can boost their profits almost immediately.
Our wellness solutions are also great for many other types of organizations including fitness centres, schools and universities, and many more. We offer our branded meal solutions to a wide variety of clients so that their community can have access to their unique meals whether it is via our exclusive SmartVending kiosks or their grab ‘n go bars.
What is SmartVending?
So what is this SmartVending we keep talking about?
This is our new solution to provide fresh, healthy meals 24/7! Our touch screen vending kiosks work in alliance with our exclusive technology to meet the healthy food needs of our partners at all times.
SmartVending is:
- Branded: Our vending solutions (just like all of our packaging) are designed and branded exclusively to match the image of each organization.
- Smart: They work directly with our proprietary software to understand each community’s preferences so that we can provide rotating menus that are sure to be enjoyed. By tracking the consumption tendencies of each company through our app our clients can understand their company’s needs and we can make sure that all their favourite items are properly stocked.
- Cost effective: Our solution can generate a new, profitable revenue stream or save money in comparison to catering or meal delivery.
- Sustainable: All of our packaging is compostable or recyclable.
We are proud to say that our innovative SmartVending solution is the future of healthy eating!
Meet our Team
Drew Munro
Drew is a professional chef and business leader. In 2008 he founded Drew’s Catering & Events, an award winning catering company. He is the CEO and co-founder of UpMeals.
Ryan Angel
Ryan our other co-founder and COO is a Red Seal Chef and Registered Holistic Nutritionist. He also brings extensive experience in sales, recruiting, and business development to the team.
Sam Kraiwong
Sam is our Chief of Marketing. He is a personal trainer, exercise nutritionist, and marketing professional who has organized marketing efforts for international food brands, TEDX, and startups in Asia.
Adrian Pauly
Adrian is the Head of Design at UpMeals. He has worked with Drew for 11 years. He built and ran 89decibeles, the largest music site in Central America!
Roshni Sarath
Roshni is our Project Manager. She worked as the Event Manager at Drew’s Catering & Events, planning and executing event logistics and operations. Roshni has previously worked as an Event Planner in Dubai and has experience in software development.
Natalia Sarmiento
Natalia is our content writer and social media coordinator. She is a yoga teacher, personal trainer and wellness enthusiast. She also has a love for the arts and has experience in creative writing as well as performing and visual arts.
Our team behind the scenes is a large one and we are very thankful for our chefs, cooks, delivery, and operations teams who help keep all of our logistics running smoothly. We couldn’t do it without them.
We are happy to officially introduce you to UpMeals. Thanks for stopping by! Stay tuned for our next post and until then stay healthy.
Check out our IG to learn more about us.
Wishing you the best from the UpMeals team!
