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28 March 2024

At your doorstep: Customised meals

Published
By Staff

The customised healthy meals are the next big thing among the well-heeled executives as the thousands who would earlier order or eat out at a fast food joint are now turning to nutrition services.

Charging up to Dh3,000 per head per month for a day’s meal, the nutrition services cater to every segment of the society and serve all types of meal, Xpress reported.

From food catering to heart patients and pregnant women to normal healthy food for families every individual is taken care of by a combination of trained dieticians and chefs with great attention to details.

There are at least four nutrition services that operate from Dubai - Right Bite, Lively, Health Factory and Balance Café – that supply up to five nutrition-packed meals a day that cover everything from breakfast, lunch and dinner, to AM and PM snacks.

Sandra Gojkovic, Business Development Executive of Health Factory & Epicure Catering, said the 12,000 square foot kitchen in Al Quoz has served more than 4,000 customers over the past three years, with a current enrolment of "several hundred" individual and corporate clients.

The customer base is diverse and covers different nationalities, said Natalie Haddad, Founder of Right Bite, another large kitchen which works 24|7 in the same area. Without divulging the number of clients, she said they are catered to by over 100 staff, including 45 chefs, besides a fleet of 17 refrigerated vans that deliver meals to their doorstep from 5am to 10pm every day.

"Over 50 per cent of our clients are business executives who want to eat healthy or find it convenient to order from us. We also have entire families, students, pregnant women and people with health conditions like diabetes, blood pressure or heart problems," said Haddad.

While catering establishments bring to mind assembly-line processes churning out food in quick succession to a large, undifferentiated pool of clients, these nutrition services claim their meals are highly personal with special care taken to keep them healthy.

"There can be no conveyor-belt style, one-solution-fits-all way to meaningful health," said Sumit Kumar, Chef, Balance Café, whose meal plans are set to roll out.

The menu, which changes every day, has a host of options that customers can choose from. Haddad pointed to a Saturday menu for lunch which includes at least five main dishes: chicken and whole wheat spaghetti with alfredo style sauce, riz bil lahem (rice with meat), baked tandoori fish with garlicky eggplant and potato, yakhnit bazilla (green peas and carrot stew with vermicelli rice) and chicken mortadella salad wrap (wholewheat tortilla stuffed with chicken mortadella, cucumber, lettuce, mushroom, carrot and cream cheese).

This comes with a side-dish like Spanish flat beans or vegetarian ratatouille salad, followed by a skinny dessert as an afternoon snack like apple tart, chocolate walnut bites or bagel chips with tomato salsa dip.

Sumptuous as the meals may sound, the calorie count is carefully factored. For example, at Health Factory, a package designed for a low metabolism client who needs to lose weight and stay in shape allows him 1,300 to 1,100Kcal per day. At Dh2,950 a month, it consists of three meals and two snacks throughout the day, all of which remain within the prescribed limit and help burn the excess fat in the body.

Besides the food preparation, special care is also taken to ensure that they are delivered in refrigerated vans and insulated cooler bags to ensure that the food remains healthy. All hot items are put into microwave safe boxes which can be instantly heated and consumed. Fresh and full cooler bags are delivered on a daily basis, with empty cooler bags from the previous day being returned.

Customers vouch for the punctuality and benefits of the meal plans.

"The food is delicious and since I have a hectic schedule with lots of meetings around town, logistics like timing of delivery and packaging are important to me," noted Serge L., a customer of Health Factory, adding that the coordination with the dietician and the resulting calorie consumption plan had resulted in a weight loss of 19kg in five months.