Try as we all might, the battle most of us wage to eat healthy on a regular basis is often a losing one. Work, family, social obligations — not to mention the ever-present temptation of the convenience of fast food — make it difficult to stick to any sort of schedule that involves fresh, healthy meals.
There’s a new game in town, however, that aims to help you do just that. Startup uberfood, a food-delivery service dedicated to local, seasonal, organic and fresh meals, has been serving up the families of La Jolla, Del Mar and Carmel Valley since January, and the enterprise is growing steadily.
Casey Knapp, uberfood’s food captain, was approached by uberfood co-founder Gen Furukawa on the day he took his last final exam at Cornell. Furukawa, who also had Cornell ties, presented the idea of a local food-delivery service that would strictly serve what many people wanted and felt were missing — healthy, fresh meals delivered straight to their home.
Knapp, who had grown up on an organic dairy farm in upstate New York, jumped at the chance to bring his nutrition ideals to the opposite corner of the country, where an unnamed investor, who lives in Bird Rock, wanted to test out the initiative.
“I could always see the benefits of healthy eating, and I wanted people to be able to enjoy that in an easy way,” Knapp said. Knapp claims uberfood is doing something entirely unique to San Diego. While there may be chefs who create organic, seasonal menus and deliver them to a limited number of clients, uberfood, Knapp said, is different in that it employs an entire team — chefs, organizers and a fleet of delivery drivers — dedicated to bringing hundreds of meals to the community every week. Every Wednesday, uberfood delivers dinner, made that same afternoon, to homes across the region (they hope to expand to more areas of San Diego soon). The menu changes weekly, with meat and vegetarian options, salads, desserts and more available for everything from singles to large families. The company works with several local farms to source fresh produce. On a recent Wednesday, uberfood delivered a meal to La Jollan Julie Cockrell to feed her family that night. A busy mother, Cockrell said the service is a “lifesaver,” pointing to the large chalkboard in her living room that kept a schedule all the various activities family members had going that day.
“It’s stuff that I would cook — if I had time — and I really value being able to put good food in my kids,” she said.
For those who don’t need a dinner delivery service — or who need something on the go on days of the week other than Wednesday — uberfood also offers an on-demand lunch-truck service in the area of UTC, with deliveries guaranteed to arrive in 30 minutes or less. The company also offers corporate catered lunches — quite the alternative to the office Subway sandwich platter.
For more information, to see a menu or to order a meal, visit uberfoodsd.com.