Prefare meal kits might be carbon negative by next year

By Steve Graham

Doug Humble wants to make your family dinner table more sustainable.

He is the vice president of Prefare Gourmet Meal Kits, which delivers easily prepared dinners across the metro area. Prefare’s culinary team chops ingredients, mixes sauces and measures out spices in each boxed meal kit, allowing the home chef to make dinner in about 15 minutes.

“We’re kind of your sous chef in a box,” Humble said. “Anything a sous chef would do, that’s in the box.”

In addition to taking care of the preparation, Prefare also aims to take care of your kitchen’s environmental footprint as well.

“Our goal in the next year and a half is that our company would be carbon negative,” Humble said.

The company already uses local ingredients whenever possible and reduces food waste with the pre-portioned ingredients. Eventually, he hopes to purchase carbon offsets for all his deliveries, and use reusable containers for all ingredients, minimizing packaging waste.

Prefare has about 11 options each week, including a keto-friendly menu and an Instant Pot-focused menu. Humble is particularly proud of the vegetarian and vegan meals, including meatless versions of familiar comfort foods, which eliminate the environmental impacts of meat consumption.

“One of my fundamental opinions on the environment is that you can’t force people to eat less meat, but you can give them better vegetarian options,” Humble said.

Humble knows it is an ambitious plan. “There is a ton of work to be done,” he admits.

Humble decided to launch a meal delivery company when he was living in Europe and working as an engineer.

“I had always enjoyed cooking,” he said.

What he didn’t like was buying expensive spices and specialty ingredients he wouldn’t use more than once. He wanted to treat his girlfriend to homemade apricot pork chops and ended up spending $90 on a meal for two. He also was left with a handful of spices that would spoil before he used them again.

Instead, Humble wanted to give a home cook simple preparations and just enough seasoning to make a meal for the family. He launched Prefare at about the same time as HelloFresh and some other national food delivery companies. He began by selling meal kits in grocery stores, but that business folded after about two years.

Later, he launched Prefare as a new partnership with Edwin Moreno of Colorado Native Foods, a Commerce City meat wholesaler.

Shortly after, they found chef Susan Wysocki, a recent transplant with culinary training and plenty of East Coast restaurant experience.

“I wanted to join a startup but I didn’t want to be in the restaurant space,” she said. “Doug was looking for a chef, and his company fit all my criteria. The cool thing is I can use my restaurant background to bring a restaurant-quality meal to the home cook.”

Humble said Wysocki’s preparations can actually save families money. He did a cost comparison for a $25 Prefare meal for two.

“It would cost $69 dollars to get all the ingredients to make Chicken Piccata at Whole Foods, and that’s a ton of groceries for two people,” he said.

Moreover, he said the meal kits allow more time for families to connect.

“We provide a damn good food that you can share with someone,” Humble said. “But it’s not about the food. It’s about the conversation that the food enables. It’s not about us. It’s about you being better able to balance the stresses of life and getting to sit down and hear about the kids’ day.”

For more information about Prefare meals, visit prefare-denver.com.