Quality Pays off in Company’s Growth

by Paul Chen

Judith Winfrey is the type of executive who believes that culture makes the company. As president of PeachDish, the Atlanta-based meal kit company, she proudly points to authenticity, transparency and love as the attributes that set her company apart from her industry’s behemoths Blue Apron, HelloFresh and Plated.

Unfortunately, customers can’t eat authenticity, transparency and love. On the other hand, Winfrey need not fret —PeachDish is routinely rated highly, including best service proclamations from Forbes and Observer.com.

“What I discovered is that although the concept is the same, the way these companies execute it is very different,” writes Observer reviewer Sage Lazzaro. “The main thing I discovered, though, is that one of these services is far better than the rest—and which one that is may surprise you.”

PeachDish is truly a case of David vs. Goliath. Earlier this year, Winfrey shared this comparison: PeachDish ships 60,000 meals a month; Blue Apron ships 6 million. Given the enormity of the chasm between the competitors, it’s startling to see PeachDish outscore the Goliaths.

“We are a food business comprised of food people,” says Winfrey, explaining what she means by authenticity. “We want our customers to love the experience and the food and to be nourished. Our purpose is to nourish and enrich people’s lives with good food experiences.”

While those words might strike some as generic mission statement talk, Winfrey walks the talk. Prior to her joining PeachDish three years ago, she ran operations for an Atlanta restaurant group for five years. And in partnership with her husband, Joe Reynolds, Winfrey owns a farm business named, not coincidentally, Love Is Love Farm. Indeed, Winfrey was “very excited” about PeachDish’s potential to positively impact small and medium local farms by providing them a new channel for their goods. PeachDish is now the largest customer for many farms.

When it comes to the love component of the PeachDish culture, Winfrey talks about how many decisions are not based exclusively on numbers. Perhaps the most striking one is the company’s commitment to a living wage, which in Atlanta is $11.23, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Such enlightened management philosophy and practice also appear in her sense of transparency. With a small company with a staff of 50, Winfrey says, her managers see and review the company’s vital financials.

All this care and inclusion seems to have paid off in terms of company growth and customer experience. When Winfrey signed on in June 2014, it was only her and founder Hadi Irvani, and the volume was 800 meals a week; all operations were outsourced at the time. In 2016 PeachDish grew by 200 percent, and the expectation for 2017 is 100 percent growth. Winfrey said her customers compare PeachDish favorably to other kits in quality of ingredients, better choice of meals, faster delivery, lower minimum purchases and superior packaging and presentation.

With so many things to be proud of in her stewardship of PeachDish, Winfrey is most proud of the company’s SuperFood series. The brainchild of the company dietician, Mary Alice Shreve, the objective of the series is to achieve high nutrition-to-calories ratios. The target: to pack at least one-third of the minimum daily requirements of essential nutrients into a less-than-600- calorie meal.

“Overall, I really liked Peach Dish,” The Observer’s Lazzaro writes in his 2016 review. “The options are great and the food was delicious, and there’s a lot of opportunity to have healthy meals with this company.”

For more information: PeachDish.com. Readers of Natural Awakenings can use this code—PDNaturalAwakenings—to get $10 off the first order.