Featured Startup: PeachDish Serves Up Experiential Cooking

Our featured startup of the week is doing a great job of making the Skaled team hungry for a home cooked meal.

PeachDish, an Atlanta-based startup, is serving up recipes and pre-portioned ingredients all over the country. Their vision is one of treating meals as an experience — not a chore to avoid or finish quickly. They want people to reconnect with the food and the people they involve in making dinner.

According to Kenan Hill, Peachdish’s Chef and Product manager, there are two groups of people who gravitate towards the PeachDish product.

First, there are the busy young professionals who don’t have time to cook. The Peachdish delivery service and pre-portioned ingredients make the process of preparing a home-cooked meal quick and painless.

Second, are the young families who can put the kids to bed and treat their latest PeachDish box of goodies as date night — a convenient way to  cook and spend time together at home.

These might be their biggest target groups, but the team’s vision is for everyone to focus more on experiencing quality meals at home without the hassle and waste of buying and trying new ingredients. This goes hand in hand with their commitment to sourcing locally — providing fresh, in-season ingredients to ensure the best quality of meals for their customers to enjoy.

PeachDish hit the ground running in August of 2013. By December, a consultant came in to give them the disheartening report that their business model would not be revenue positive when they’d hoped. “We were looking for new jobs,” admits Alex Higgins, PeachDish’s “Marketing Ninja”. Despite that moment of defeat, the PeachDish tree picked themselves up and rebranded in December, pivoting their approach and their price point. In order to get things moving in a positive direction, the team had to raise the price for existing customers as well, which turned into a tense waiting game for retention numbers. Ultimately, they fulfilled their rebrand with more customers than they started with — an unexpected surprise for the whole team.

Huggins says their ability to be nimble and innovative is largely thanks to their newness in the field. “We’re all young and because we don’t have a specific background in this, it’s a lot easier to be innovative and creative. We don’t get stuck on ‘this is the way we should do it'”.

PeachDish’s relatively young team (Hill graduated in 2010, and Alex in 2013, both from UNC Chapel Hill) has proven the value of a fresh perspective. Given their business savvy in rebranding thus far, their innovation stretches beyond the business model. Their product and service is competing in a busy playing field with big players like Blue Apron, Plated, and HelloFresh. But PeachDish’s Atlanta-sourced ingredients and their home-grown flair is positioning them as the option with a personal touch.

Hill, Higgins, and the rest of the PeachDish team has big plans for the future, but plan to hold tight to their Southern roots.

“The South has such a rich food culture,” said Hill, “and we bring an authenticity to that”.