NutriBees: customised, home-delivered healthy food comes to Italy (part I)

2017-06-30 You may be busy, or you may be lazy. Or both at the same time, causing you to grab the first sandwich you see on your lunch break and gulp down anything you can find in the refrigerator after a long day at work. Well, luckily, NutriBees is here to take care of that: the first Italian start-up all about customised, home-delivered healthy food.
The online service is an innovative platform combining the services of a nutritionist, a chef and a home delivery service through a process of collecting data on customers, studying their nutritional requirements, preparing appropriate menus and delivering them anywhere in Italy.
NutriBees was founded by two brilliant under-30s, Giovanni Menozzi and Mario Villani, who met at Università Bocconi and gained experience with consulting services and on-line start-ups in Italy and abroad before beginning to work on the project together.
A serious, dependable project which has earned the scientific approval of Anna Villarini, a famous Italian biologist and nutritionist and researcher with the Department of Predictive Medicine at the National Tumour Institute in Milan.
The start-up aims to serve not only people who want to reach and maintain their ideal weight but anyone who wants to feel better or prevent illness with proper diet, and it does this by offering a service that makes sure everyone eats just what their body needs, combining scientific research with the pleasures of good food.
How did you get the idea for NutriBees, Giovanni?
“In this project, we combine our passion for online business with our interest in nutrition, a sector that will be growing in importance in the years to come. In my case, family circumstances had an impact: my mother had a health problem which caused my family and I to reconsider our daily diet, and we realised how it can help us prevent certain illnesses. We realised that when we eat something we enjoy, it must also help our bodies to be healthier.”
Is there any other service like this in Italy?
“No, it is an integrated solution, from the nutritionist to the finished dish, customised and delivered directly to the customer’s home anywhere in Italy, and there is nothing else like this. There are home delivery services that supply healthy food, right here in Milan, but they only deliver within the city, and they are not customised. In the United States there are services similar to ours, though not exactly the same. Habit.com, for example, performs a DNA test to decide what a person needs to eat, and prepares meals on the basis of the test results.”
What motivated you?
“The idea is to do something to help people who have pathologies and need to change the way they eat but may not have the time or the ability to do it. If those people then learn to make the kind of meals they need for themselves, we’re happy about that, even though they won’t be placing any more orders with us. We have a motivation that is more important than simply making money: a society where everyone eats better benefits all.” (to be continued)

Mariagrazia Villa