& Pepper
Medically Tailored Meal Delivery for Heart Disease Patients
01
Team & Timeline
January 2021 to May 2022
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Startup co-founded with Jake Drutchas, Nihara Kurian, and Kelsey Stone.
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As an interdisciplinary team of MIT graduate students, our mission was to improve health outcomes for heart disease patients.
02
Problem
How might we reimagine mealtimes for happiness and health, providing delicious food that's in line with medical restrictions for chronic heart failure and heart disease patients?
Heart disease is the #1 killer of Americans and the #1 killer of women in the United States, affecting over 30 million people every year, particularly patients experiencing food insecurity. Medically tailored meals help reduce hospitalizations, improve quality of life, curb death rates and reduce healthcare costs. But people don't adhere to them because they are expensive, inaccessible, tasteless, hard to adapt to, and limiting in choices.
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03
Process
We built and piloted a social enterprise that combined nutritious, delicious meal delivery with a digital platform for community building, resource sharing, and habit formation.
Over the course of 18 months, we interviewed a number of patients, caregivers, nutritionists, physicians, chefs, and community-based organizations across the United States, to better understand the problem area and our user's needs.
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The Power of Human-Centered Design
Central to this work was centering patients and their needs. Human-centered design is more than a framework or a model for developing projects. It's an outlook on what it means to build something new. It's about empathy and working to understand the lived experiences of the people with whom we are building. Without empathy, shared understanding, and shared beliefs - innovation is hollow.​​
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My Role
As with any start-up, we all wore many hats. While not exhaustive, my focus centered on chef and kitchen engagement, community engagement, partnership development, and communications and outreach. I met with several community-based organizations to explore partnerships and collaborations to better meet the needs of historically underserved communities most at risk. I also worked to identify chefs focused on food as medicine and to secure a culinary space for our first pilot.
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Outcome & Impact
Our team was extremely dedicated to this work, particularly as we had loved ones with heart disease and chronic heart failure. However, our academic timelines and financial needs weren't conducive to continuing the start-up. Upon graduation in May 2022, we paused our efforts. We firmly believe in the business viability of a medically tailored meal solution for heart failure patients and may continue market research and prototyping in the future.
