Ellis Singer McCue, CEO of Mealogic
There is no doubt that the world would be a healthier place if we all ate our brussels sprouts. But come on. Yuck. And therein lies the dilemma. We don’t always eat what is good for us, we never have, which leads to troubling health outcomes, from obesity to diabetes to all kinds of things.
Ellis Singer McCue gets it. And she thinks she has a solution.
“What if you followed a diet to reach a health goal but the food is truly excellent?” she asked in an interview.
People have been pitching “no really, it tastes good” diet solutions ever since cavemen shared low-cholesterol recipes over campfires. But Singer McCue, the CEO of Mealogic, a white-label food-delivery platform, may have discovered fire.
Mealogic connects chef-driven medically tailored meals to consumers and handles the end-to-end logistics, down to the last detail. The branded personalized nutrition is delivered to consumers once a week. It is a managed network, which means both health influencers, including trainers and nutritionists, and food-service providers must be approved to join. The company, which launched last week, is the logistics platform for its cousin Territory Foods, which Singer McCue also helms. “We’re the Shopify for food with the fulfillment capabilities of Amazon,” she said. “We’ve been delivering ready-to-eat meals prepared by local chefs with Territory Foods for many years. We took a step back and asked, OK, how do we take our 13 years of operating experience and build the next generation of technology that fits seamlessly into a new environment of consumerism?”
Mealogic has already enrolled 40 clients. Singer McCue mentions Whole30 as one of them.
“You might buy a cookbook of theirs, you might have signed up for digital coaching, you might shop for a meal plan,” she said. “If you go to its digital experience you’re essentially getting the Mealogic sites. We offer the commerce technology that allows the consumer the Whole30 meals.”
Mealogic currently has 55 chefs in its network and presents 25 diet protocols, from keto, vegan, gluten free, fertility, menopause, and more. Singer McCue’s mantra is food as medicine. She remembers when this wasn’t an easy pitch.
“I used to go out and raise money for Territory Foods and investors would laugh at me and say food isn’t medicine. Medicine is medicine. But food is medicine,” she said.
Singer McCue is back on the stump as the company is in the midst of a Series A fundraising round. She plans to emphasize the urgent need for Mealogic’s services.
“One hundred million Americans are pre-diabetic,” she said. “And it’s estimated that 9 percent of all Americans are going to be on weight loss drugs like Ozempic by 2030. The problem is when you lose weight you lose lean muscle mass. But if you go off the drug the weight you regain is 100 percent fat. This can become a problem for seniors as they can get frail and break bones if they fall. The right diet can help.”
There’s a certain logic to it.
