Editor's Note: This piece was originally posted on BostInno and is republished here with permission.
Just three years ago, a handful of friends in Rhode Island launched a new meal delivery service with one thing in mind: families.
“Meals by Maggie,” as Feast & Fettle was originally known, started modestly in 2015, with an original roster of 9 to 10 families signing up. When the company’s leaders spoke to Rhode Island Inno last August, the property had “exploded,” with 115 subscribers in the Rhode Island area and a team of five executive staff, six kitchen staff and four delivery drivers working behind the scenes.
Today marked the launch of its official expansion into Boston MetroWest: Wellesley, Weston, Wayland, Natick, Dover, Needham, and more, said CEO Carlos Ventura.
“[Consumers] want something that’s more consistent, more healthy, and locally prepared,” Ventura said. “That’s where we fit the bill.”
Feast & Fettle offers mix-and-matchable entrees and side dishes, designed to be served family-style. Some sample dishes include balsamic grilled flank steak with roasted cherry tomatoes, chickpea tikka masala, and dried apple, arugula and goat cheese salad. A family plan, designed to serve four people, ranges from $160 to $240 per week. There are also singles and couples plans available.
All of this is prepared in a huge new facility in East Providence, Rhode Island—3,000 square feet of new space, about three-quarters of which is for production and the rest for corporate use. The startup just moved there in March.
“We have the tech behind us. We now have the facility behind us,” Ventura said. “We’ve been serving Rhode Island for just about three years now, and we have about 200 families on our service. We always had much bigger visions for Feast & Fettle. The next natural expansion would be into Massachusetts, where we think there’s a really good opportunity.”
Image courtesy Feast & Fettle
Feast & Fettle has already had soft launches in North Attleboro and Attleboro. It has also partnered with CycleBar in Wellesley, building on an existing partnership with CycleBar in Providence.
Boston’s suburbs are home to the startup’s core demographic: families that “value convenience but don’t want to sacrifice quality,” as Ventura put it. Most of the startup’s current customers are women between the ages of 35 and 55, who are often decision-makers in a dual-income household.
“This year is a big year for us in terms of expansion and growth and moving into new markets,” Ventura said. “To be honest, just these few markets we’re moving into will probably be larger than Rhode Island as a whole in about a year.”
