Sector: Food and drink
Principals: From left, Jason Potter, Hannah Oluka and Kirk Stringer
Year launched: 2021
Unique selling proposition: Filling a need by delivering a week of healthy, pre-packed school lunches.
Strategy: Food insecurity causes health problems and economic disparity. All kids need a healthy lunch.
Website: thisweekslunch.com
We can all remember some really bad brown-bag lunches we were sent to school with. And as parents, we have similar memories of having to cobble together those lunches for every child in the house. White bread, peanut butter, something on the bottom shelf of the fridge that was no longer identifiable. School daze, indeed.
Struck by how many dinner-delivery services are available, but nothing catering to grade schoolers stuck with their umpteenth baloney sandwich, Jason Potter launched This Week’s Lunch in 2021 to deliver nutritious, pre-packed school lunches to the front door so parents can see kids off in the morning knowing they’ll be eating well.
A weekly subscription service, This Week’s Lunch can be customized from more than 20 main items — hot, cold and vegetarian — salads, stir fry, mac and cheese, even spaghetti.
Working with a dietitian on staff, Potter ensures meals are nutritionally balanced, healthy, tasty and made to stay fresh.
The company also serves up hot-lunch programs for area schools with an understanding that every child needs a good, solid lunch to be set up for success.
“We don’t want to see any kid who doesn’t have a lunch. That’s terrible.”
Potter says he and his wife ended up bickering over who would take on the onerous task of preparing tomorrow’s lunch for their two youngsters.
“You’d come home from work and you’d have to make dinner, clean up after dinner, then put the kids’ lunches together and then put them to bed,” he says. “It just sucks away at your family time. I saw dinner-box businesses like Hello Fresh and wondered why there’s no school lunch service.”
If Potter had found one he wouldn’t have started his own.
“I was our first subscriber,” he jokes, “and I’ll never stop.”
