Drinkable Meals Get a Major Bump with Ample Meals Investment

Ample Foods, a San Francisco-based nutrition startup that enables people to have a complete, satisfying and healthy meal in under two minutes, announced an additional $2 million in seed funding, led by San Francisco-based Slow Ventures.
 
As younger generations continue to turn toward healthier options, drinkable meals are starting to become a major factor in the lives of busy people unable to cook full meals at home.
 
Connor Young, founder and CEO of Ample Foods, put the brands product into layman’s terms for Loyalty360.
 
“Ample is a San Francisco-based nutrition start-up that makes it incredibly easy for customers to have a healthy, filling and delicious meal in under two minutes, start to finish. Ample is a drinkable meal that ships as powder in a BPA-free, recyclable bottle, and is packed with real-food ingredients, healthy fats, fiber, probiotics and more, so all you have to do is add water, shake and enjoy. It's available in three varieties, original (plenty of healthy fats, low-sugar, protein from grass-fed, rBST-free whey and collagen), V for plant-based diets and K for ketogenic food lifestyles.”
 
What makes Ample unique, according to Connor, is the commitment to lack of compromise in terms of quality ingredients.
 
“Many other quick meal options, especially in the drinkable meal space, look at a meal as little more than a math problem—getting to the government-defined RDAs as inexpensively as possible. Ample believes that real food is a synergistic system, and that a meal is more than the numeric sum of its parts. We spend time doing the research and sourcing the quality ingredients to give you a complete, real-food meal that's quick and delicious without compromises.”
 
Timeliness and health are major factors today. Typically, in the past, one could not be done without the other. Finding quick meals that are healthy has been nearly an impossible task for years. With Ample, consumers are able to provide their bodies with the necessary nutrients while not wasting any time.
 
Slow Ventures noticed Ample’s rapid growth and made an investment.
 
“From a purely fiscal perspective, the partners at Slow Ventures believe Ample has gone in a
direction with quality, honesty and transparency that is leading the way to where nutrition will go in the next 20 years, and that the drinkable meal category is clearly ripe for growth as lives get busier and people seek out healthier options.
 
“From a personal perspective, Scott Marlette, Slow Ventures partner, shared that he's been drinking Ample since November and that it's been personally revolutionary for him. He's a busy [venture capitalist] with two kids who care about his health, and is active. He started going down the path of doing all the research to figure out what's going to be the best option for him, but quickly found himself overwhelmed with info. He said, ‘It’s one thing to make the choice of healthy eating, but making the choice happen is where the lifestyle disconnect comes in.’ We find this is the case with many of our loyal customers and subscribers—they like that Ample does the research and sources the ingredients at takes all that off their plates. Couldn't resist a little drinkable meal joke there.”
 
The loyal customer base is what has contributed to Ample’s compounding growth.
 
“We have an incredibly loyal group of customers who are our best spokespeople,” says Young. “We incentivize them with ways to spread the Ample love to friends. We have also had some great supporters since before the launch in industry leaders like Dominic D'Agostino, Chris Kresser, Chis Masterjohn PhD, and more. We formalized some of those influencer relationships around the launch of Ample K and have been really pleased to see how much their trust in this company means to consumers.”
 
With $4 million now in investments, Ample plans to expand its reach in order to provide products that are foundations for healthier lives.
 
“We believe the food industry is in need of a major leveling up across the board,” Young says. “More than just expanding our own reach or growing sales, we want to be a catalyst for change by continuing to put pressure on ingredients suppliers and the food chain to make it easier for food companies to make truly healthy products and, thus, make healthy food choices more accessible to consumers.”
 

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