Developing a well-balanced and healthy lifestyle goes beyond heading to the gym every day. In order to help your members see the best results inside the gym, it is important to provide them with the tools to maintain healthy habits once they leave the facility. And a key component to this is nutrition and mindful eating.
Terra’s Kitchen, a Baltimore-based meal-kit delivery service, recently announced its partnership with two fitness facilities: Nava Health and Vitality Center, a premier wellness center, and Merritt Athletic Clubs, a nine-location fitness club. Terra’s Kitchen was founded by Michael McDevitt just over 16 months ago, after he tried various meal-kit delivery services, but felt something was missing. 
“I became a fan of the industry, but I thought that there were some aspects that were lacking,” explained McDevitt. “The first one was the actual time to cook. While I love the convenience of having everything delivered to my door, I still don’t have the time to spend an hour cooking the meal. So when we launched Terra’s Kitchen we made a rule that every meal would need to be prepared and served on the table in less than 30 minutes.”
McDevitt’s second priority was to be environmentally friendly. He found that with a lot of the meal-kit delivery services, you ended up with a lot of trash and recyclable waste. McDevitt wanted to reduce that by sending meals in climate-controlled, eco-friendly vessels. Clients just leave it outside their front door the next day for pick up.
Finally, McDevitt wanted to ensure all meals were health conscious. “At Terra’s Kitchen, every meal we offer to the consumer is put through our health pillars, which we make sure fit in line with clean eating, non-GMO, calorie count, vegetable and protein dense meals and so on,” he added. “So time to cook, reusable vessels and the healthy aspect of our meals are what our big differentiators are in the space of meal-kit delivery.”
According to Donyel Cerceo, the marketing director at Merritt Athletic Clubs, they had tried offering meal delivery services to members before, but with little success. “We had food service companies before, but they were mostly prepared meals and they didn’t go over too well with our members,” she said. “We were looking for something to add more convenience for our members. We have nine locations, all 24 hours, so we are constantly thinking of ways to make our members’ lives more convenient, and Terra’s Kitchen fits right into what we stand for and our brand.”
The partnership officially launched July 19, and Merritt has been working to promote the program to members. “All of our members will get $50 and free shipping off their first time order and we will send the members a link and code that identifies them as a Merritt member to receive the discount,” added Cerceo. “Then we made an even stronger offer to our personal training clients. We are sending an email out to all of our personal training clients offering them $75 off their first order with Terra’s Kitchen and free shipping. We also have flyers that we are distributing in the clubs to our members and then we are actually having trainers personally hand out the flyers with the coupon code.”
McDevitt explained offering a convenient service like this within the gym will only enhance the member experience and hopefully help members maintain a healthy lifestyle outside of the gym. “We all know how busy we are and finding the time to go to the gym is always a challenge in itself,” said McDevitt. “Having the ability to take the time to go to the gym and know that on your door step is all the ingredients you need to cook a healthy, protein packed meal, directly after coming home from a workout and that meal can be cooked in under 30 minutes, it gives you this peace of mind. You don’t have to worry about what is for dinner, because you know it is already sitting on your door step.”
