In this interview, the founder (Speaker A) explains how an initial plan to open a breakfast‑focused brick‑and‑mortar restaurant was abandoned after realizing the prohibitive startup capital required. Seeking a lower‑risk, health‑focused venture, he launched Ready Strong, a meal‑prep brand that emphasizes clean eating—no fillers, preservatives, or seed oils—by sourcing high‑quality ingredients from local farms and producing meals in small batches. The brand positions itself as boutique and premium, deliberately avoiding mass production and nationwide shipping. Over eight years, Ready Strong has grown to serve customers throughout Northern New Jersey and New York City, with Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens being the busiest delivery zones. The conversation highlights the founder’s motivation, the brand’s value proposition, its geographic focus, and its sustained growth.
Chapters
I originally wanted to start a restaurant, but I wanted to start like a breakfast, like, concept. And then I saw how much money and how much capital it was to open up like a brick and mortar, and I was like, holy crap. I was like, there's no way I can afford this. I would totally just, like, you know, empty my savings and my account. I just, I kind of didn't want to take that risk. And I was always like, I always wanted to eat healthy. I was always trying to eat healthy and eat clean. And, you know, I work in New York City, so, like, there's a lot of places where, you know, overpriced salads and, you know, stuff that you think is healthy, quote, unquote. But then you really peel back the ingredients and you look at what's in it. You know, a lot of these, like, big companies, they're using a lot of fillers and preservatives and low quality oils, you know, and that's kind of, you know, what, what sparked my, my idea of, you know, kind of putting out a really good product with no, no fillers, no preservatives, no seed oils, you know, just really high quality ingredients. Sourcing local farms and, you know, creating everything in small batches. So we're not mass producing everything. So, like. Yeah, so that's basically where Ready Strong meal started. We don't mass produce anything. We don't ship nationwide. So everything is really like boutique, local, premium. And you know, we use really, really high quality ingredients in, in all of our meals. So fast forward eight years later, you know, we're delivering all throughout, like New Jersey, New York City, some of the outer boroughs. And, you know, business has, has taken off. So. Yeah.
How far out do you go?
So we go all throughout, like Northern Jersey and then New York City, so all of Manhattan and then a lot of the outer boroughs. So we'll do like Queens, Bronx, Washington Heights, Brooklyn, Long Island City. So that's kind of like, like Brooklyn and Queens are our busiest New York City locations.
