F3 Foods, a Web-based diet-plan and food-delivery service started by two University of Arizona graduates, has taken its business to the national level.
The company now ships its freshly cooked pre-portioned meals all over the U.S., with an emphasis on the West Coast, said Carter Comstock, co-owner of F3 Foods.
When co-owner Michael Wystrach wanted to shed a few pounds, he enlisted the help of his father-in-law, Frank Comstock, a Tucson doctor who does medically supervised weight loss at his practice, Lifestyle Spectrum, to put together a meal plan for him. Wystrach then had the chefs at his family’s Marana restaurant, Steak Out, cook the meals.
Since his father-in-law’s plan worked for him, he got his friends to try it. When it worked for them as well, he knew he was onto something and decided it was time to start a business.
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He called his brother-in-law, Carter Comstock, who was working a sales job in Dallas, for help. “He convinced me to do it,” Comstock said. “It was a very organic, hands-on idea. ... It was something so practical and something he used.”
The idea was to create healthy, fresh cooked, pre-portioned meals for people looking to lose weight without having to think about it. The food would be delivered to customers’ homes for added convenience.
The duo started working together, out of the family restaurant, to cook meals to deliver to clients. “We were driving and delivering bags ourselves to homes and gyms,” Comstock said. “And we started picking up a following. It was all word of mouth.”
As F3’s client base started to grow, and the meal plans evolved, Comstock and Wystrach decided it was time to find their own facility.
They found a 10,000-square-foot manufacturing facility with a kitchen in Tempe and moved in April 2013. “We went from a tiny kitchen the size of a small bedroom and a couple of chefs to this facility and about 15 employees,” Comstock said.
F3 Foods focuses on two main groups — those looking to lose weight and active people looking for convenience — and created plans for both.
The GetFit Program is designed to help customers lose weight, without having to think about calories, carbs or anything else. After the customer picks items from the menu and pays online, F3 Foods delivers 21 pre-portioned, pre-cooked meals each week — breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Unlike other Web-based diet plans, such as Jenny Craig or Nutrisystem, all meals are cooked fresh, often using locally sourced food, by professional chefs, which means no preparation or additional shopping are needed. The food is then packed using modified atmospheric packaging — a packaging method in which oxygen is replaced with carbon dioxide to keep it fresh and inhibit the growth of bacteria — and FedExed the same day it is prepared.
The StayFit program is for active people looking for convenience. Customers get 10 to 15 meals delivered to their homes each week, depending on the plan selected. Customers can pause or cancel any time and are offered a 100 percen, money-back guarantee.
“Our goal is to make it easier to eat healthy than unhealthy,” Comstock said. “We just wanted to put the right foods in the kitchen so when you go home from work, you eat the right foods without any kind of labor.”
Meals are made primarily of lean meats and vegetables, without packaged foods, preservatives or artificial sweeteners.
“We focus on non-processed foods,” said Frank Comstock, medical adviser for F3 Foods. “We’re using what I call real foods and focusing on the quality of food and making each bite full of nutrients, rather than worrying about calories or points.”
The foods chosen for the diet plan help balance blood-sugar levels, which balances the insulin hormone, Frank Comstock said. “When we do that, it’s the tipping point to allow the body to access and burn stored fat.”
F3 Foods boasts being environmentally conscious as well. It packages its foods in fully recyclable and compostable equipment, such as coolers made of cornstarch free of genetically modified organisms. These coolers can be dissolved in water or used as garden compost.
Its plastics come from Go Green, which manufactures green plastics. “Environmentally, we want to be on the ball,” Carter Comstock said. “We’re all about ease and convenience, but we don’t want to be an obstacle in any way.”
Company sales grew 500 percent in 2013, Comstock said. The venture currently has more than 1,000 clients; 80 percent of them in Arizona and on the West Coast.
Tucson resident Bob Bishop has been a client of F3 Foods off and on since the beginning. A couple of months ago, he and his wife became steady clients, sharing the GetFit meals. In about a month and a half, Bishop has lost 20 pounds. “I don’t feel like I’ve been missing anything,” Bishop said. “We actually split the meals, and it seems like plenty of food.”
The Bishops spend $779 for 28 days of meals — breakfast, lunch and dinner — which breaks down to about $28 per day. Bishop feels it’s a good value because it saves time from not having to grocery shop or read labels.
Saving time from not having to cook, and energy from not having to run the dishwasher as often, add to the appeal for the Bishops. Dinner is heated up in the microwave, and ready to eat in a minute and a half.
“What we like is, for some time we had become label readers, and this saves us from having to do that,” Bishop said. “Everything is organic, free-range chicken, all non-GMO. It’s about as healthy food as you can get. Quite frankly, we don’t shop anymore. It’s nice.”
