MEET THE MANUFACTURER
My Muscle Chef: Producing a convenient route to nutrition Food and Beverage Industry News speaks with My Muscle Chef co-founder and CEO, Tushar Menon, about how their healthy ready meals manufacturing business has thrived and become an iconic Australian food brand for active individuals in a short period of time.
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n both working full-time and trying to maintain a solid foundation for a health and fitness journey, Tushar Menon and his brother, Nishant Menon, noticed that for time-poor consumers like them there were no options in the Australian market for healthy, hearty, high protein ready meals. While there were ready meals intended to promote weight loss, there was a gap in the market for active consumers who required more energy. With the added incentive of wanting to start their own business,
My Muscle Chef was born in 2013. The key elements the brothers wanted to address were time on the one hand, and convenience on the other. Additionally, at the time the company began, buying a healthy meal was expensive. But My Muscle Chef co-founder and CEO, Tushar Menon, said before they could overcome these factors, there was a steep learning curve. “The biggest challenge when we started was that we didn’t have any experience in the market; it was a huge learning curve to understand
the requirements of running a food business,” he said. “Also, the fact was that we were dealing with a perishable product, so it couldn’t be produced in big runs and stored in an ambient facility. Our meals were frozen at the time but still perishable, so understanding transportation and storage and how to produce it in a safe environment was critical.” Almost ten years later, having attained a sound understanding of these logistics has benefitted the business. It also translated when they ventured into producing fresh meals
rather than frozen. Wanting to steer away from a modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) sealed model – which uses a tray with a top seal that preserves the product for 10-12 days – My Muscle Chef turned to vacuum skin packaging to maintain quality, prolong the shelf life and assist with logistics. Vacuum skin packaging aims to keep the oxygen out of the product, which preserves it for 14 days and ensures the flavour is as good on the use by date as it is when produced. After researching and locating
My Muscle Chef now distributes over three million meals per month. 12 Food&Beverage Industry News | May 2022 | www.foodmag.com.au
