Freshly Adds B2B Arm to Help Organizations Offer Prepared Meals

Prepared meal delivery service company Freshly has added a B2B arm that will provide ready-to-eat meals to organizations that want to feed people at scale.

The new offering called FreshlyWell aims to serve employers, healthcare systems, universities, senior living facilities, hospitality organizations and others that want to provide employees or members with meals on-site or delivered to their homes with discounts or subsidies, according to a Tuesday (Aug. 30) press release.

“With over 80% of Americans not meeting U.S. dietary recommendation, we know that providing nourishing food is no longer a consideration; it’s a necessity,” Freshly CEO Anna Fabrega said in the release. “We’re proud to introduce customized offerings that address a variety of needs for organizations and provide long-term, meaningful impact for their people.”

The announcement comes one day after member engagement, benefits administration and healthcare company NationsBenefits announced an agreement to acquire health and wellness-oriented food manufacturer DeliverLean in order to expand its “food as medicine” offering.

Read more: NationsBenefits Acquires DeliverLean to Expand ‘Food as Medicine’ Offering

With its acquisition, NationsBenefits will add healthy post-discharge and chronic care meals to the other products it can provide to Medicare beneficiaries.

Delivering prepared meals is becoming more and more common. PYMNTS research has found that 28% of consumers are ordering restaurant meal deliveries via aggregators more often than they did before March 2020, while only 9% are doing so less often.

Read more: 36% of Consumers Use Mobile Order-Ahead for Restaurant Meals More Often

The percentage of consumers doing so is higher among those who are frequent customers, with 36% of these customers ordering via aggregators more often, according to “The Digital Divide,” a PYMNTS and Paytronix collaboration based on a survey of 2,664 U.S. adults who regularly purchase food from restaurants.

Speaking of Freshly’s new B2B offering, Fabrega said, “Today’s landscape has sparked renewed conversations around wellness, and there’s a call for industry organizations to prioritize the wellbeing of their people.”