Nourished

Opportunity

In March 2020, frontline hospital staff at Penn Medicine began working around-the-clock to battle the COVID-19 pandemic. Long hours paired with necessary precautions to prevent the spread of the virus made it difficult for staff to access healthy food options. 

At this time, restaurants in many cities across the country were mandated to close except for takeout and deliveries.

Intervention

Nourished is a meal delivery platform that enables hospital staff to safely and efficiently access healthy and affordable meals.

Users choose from a curated list of local restaurants and place orders via text message. Individually packaged meals are then transported directly from the restaurant’s kitchen to a controlled hospital access point for contactless delivery to prevent the possible spread of COVID-19.  

By aggregating orders and delivering meals in bulk, Nourished is able to offer meals at a discounted price, reducing meal prices for hospital staff by 15 to 20 percent of the menu price.

Impact

Thanks to the enthusiasm of local restaurant partners and generous donors, we were able to get Nourished up and running in less than two weeks. The initial pilot took place at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center and then scaled to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Hospital.  

Over the first two months, close to 4,000 meals were safely delivered to nearly 1,000 frontline staff at Penn Medicine – an especially meaningful outcome during what has been a challenging time for the Philadelphia food industry. 

In August, we handed the platform over to restaurant owners and operators who are diligently working to create a long-term operations plan for the program. The program has since rebranded to Roux and was accepted to the 2020 cohort of the Philly Startup Leaders’ Founded in Philly accelerator program.