Thirteen years ago, Ashley Tyrner was pregnant with her daughter and reliant on both Medicaid and food stamps while living in a rural food desert in Arizona.
Later, when Tyrner got a job in fashion branding and moved to New York City with her baby, she had to navigate life as a new mom while living in an urban food desert.
Both experiences gave her a keen appreciation for the need to make sure everyone has access to nutritious food.
“My heart lives in food policy. I truly believe that everyone deserves the right to eat healthy no matter what their income in,” Tyrner said.
Tyrner started a company 10 years ago, initially shipping fresh food via FedEx. Then, in 2019, when she found out that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services planned to change regulations the following year to allow food and produce as benefits, she transferred her company, FarmboxRx, from a direct-to-consumer brand to one that services health plans.
Tyrner, who now lives in Boston’s Back Bay, has dedicated herself to combating food insecurity.
“There’s a very common misconception that just because people are low-income, they don’t want to be healthy. That’s not true,” Tyrner said. “They want to be healthy. They just don’t have accessibility, affordability and they don’t know what to do with it. And that’s what we really solve.”
Building a new business plan
Under FarmboxRx’s new business model, Medicare and Medicaid pays for the boxes of food. But Tyrner said FarmboxRx does more than provide fresh produce — it's now a patient engagement company.
Tyrner said the company uses its boxes to engage health plan members in preventative health measures. Each box contains a magazine that features not just recipes, but reminders to sign up for a mammogram or a diabetic eye exam.
“We educate them through health literacy education inside of each box that goes out the door,” Tyrner said.
Tyrner said the company has been able to quantify how its work has helped more people get screenings or flu shots. Especially coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic, when many hospitals didn’t prioritize these services, Tyrner said that preventative healthcare is now taking center stage.
At first, only one health plan wanted to work with FarmboxRx, Tyrner said. Both healthcare and the government move slowly, she said. Today, FarmboxRx is working with 89 health plans, and the company has 53 employees who work remotely. This year, FarmboxRx was No. 100 on the 2023 Inc. 5000.
Liberty Fruit Co. in Kansas City, Kansas, is FarmboxRx’s exclusive partner and distributor. Tyrner said FarmboxRx has a packing facility inside of three Liberty Fruit produce hubs in New Jersey, Kansas and Colorado.
Tyrner said that while they’re expanding, FarmboxRx is also prioritizing quality in this highly regulated, new market.
“We created this space in healthcare,” Tyrner said. “There’s only one chance to do this right…If somebody messes up and sends members of a health plan bad food, the plan will never do food again because it’s a compliance nightmare.”
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