Nobbs began paying attention to his diet as a teenager, when he was trying to "get big for the high school football team," he said. It was hard figuring out the right foods to eat.
"I always thought it was really weird that, [with] something like consumer electronics, you go on Amazon and you see big pictures, detailed specifications, and user reviews," Nobbs said.
"Then you go to restaurants and decide what you're going to put in your body, and there's like eight words to describe it," he added.
Kitavan wants to marry fresh, local ingredients and nutritional transparency. Some of the company's most loyal customers have autoimmune conditions or food allergies, Nobbs said.
A meal from Kitava averages $14 (the salmon tacos are the most expensive item on the menu at $19). It's comparable to what I pay for lunch from a gourmet salad chain.
The Salmon Tacos featured wild-caught Alaskan salmon that was so fresh, it tasted like it had been alive yesterday. I did a little dance in my seat while I devoured this plate.
Some dishes fell flat for me. The sweet-and-savory General Tso's Chicken has chicken with a cassava flour breading, roasted broccoli, green onion, sesame seeds, and cauliflower rice.
The dish was served on a bed of cauliflower rice, which is made from pulsing the vegetable in a food processor. Like rice, it soaks up the flavors of whatever it's cooked with.
The Cuban Bowl — a new personal favorite — offers a smorgasbord of tender pork shoulder, plantains fried in organic palm oil, avocado, kale slaw, and a creamy sunflower risotto.
Most of the dishes take familiar comfort foods and swap in healthier ingredients. Spaghetti and meatballs becomes "zoodles" (zucchini noodles) and grass-fed beef meatballs.
At Mealmade, the menu turned over about every week and a half. The startup looked at user-preference data and picked the most popular meals for its new, slimmer menu.
A walk-in freezer that once housed frozen beef patties, french fries, buns, and desserts now stores locally sourced produce and pasture-raised meats. The former labels still remain.
A Big Mac is hardly what's for dinner at Kitava. The startup serves nutritious meals cooked in 10 minutes or less. Every dish is gluten-free, dairy-free, and low-glycemic.
Notations on the menu tell customers if the dish is low-carb (keto), paleo, or vegan.
Kitava is not pivoting, but broadening with the expansion into brick-and-mortar.
A number of on-demand food delivery startups have shuttered in the last couple of years, including SpoonRocket, Sprig, and Maple.
By adding a restaurant and a catering business, Kitava hopes to open up new revenue streams that will protect it from a collapse of the on-demand economy, according to Bryan Tublin, cofounder of Kitava. It will continue to deliver through GrubHub, Uber Eats, and DoorDash.
