Vegan Haute Cuisine
Top chef crafts vegan haute cuisine for new Austin delivery service
Following the opening of high-profile, vegetable-centric restaurants like Gardner, it's easy to argue that veggies are making their return to the culinary spotlight. (Though, some could argue, they never really left.) Enter Super Natural Foods, a new vegan, raw food delivery service that just launched in Austin.
Crafted by Executive Chef Tim Bevins, formerly of Dallas' Craft and Rick's Chophouse in McKinney, the company offers innovative raw, vegan cuisine that is as tasty as it is healthy. "I wanted the food to be cleansing," explains founder and CEO Marina Zelle. "I'm not taking about the 'Master Cleanse' type of cleansing, just a simple detox. We help people get off their food addictions, and balance their [bodies], but in a gentle way."
After running a successful matchmaking business in New York City, Zelle decided to move to Austin in 2013. "It was a lifestyle decision," she explains. "I wanted to go somewhere that was greener and friendlier. I wanted more elbow room." But coming from a city where you can have pretty much anything delivered at any time of day, Zelle was surprised to find that Austin lacked delivery options for organic, vegan fare, despite being a city with a penchant for supporting healthy lifestyles.
Recognizing a hole in the market, she decided to launch Super Natural Foods and give busy Austinites the chance to have fresh fare delivered to their home or office. "To feed yourself well, you have to devote yourself a couple hours a day to food," she explains. If crafting three whole meals every day doesn't fit into her lifestyle, Zelle says, she is betting it doesn't fit into others.
With Bevins, Zelle says she found a partner. Despite working in steakhouses and some of the finest high-end restaurants in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Bevins was increasingly drawn to a vegan, raw diet. "I looked at his resume and said, 'He is overqualified.' We're not a Michelin-starred restaurant," Zelle laughs.
Michelin stars or not, Bevins still creates a new specialty menu each week. Selecting from two-, five- and seven-day meal plans, Austinites can receive daily deliveries that typically consist of a cold-pressed green juice, a fruit and greens-based breakfast smoothie, lunch with dessert, a soup and salad for dinner, and three cold-pressed digestion-optimizing booster shots to accompany each meal. The food is also touted as 100 percent organic, vegan, raw, gluten-free, soy-free and locally sourced whenever possible.
With prices set at $160 for two days, $350 for five days and $450 for seven days, Zelle says to think of this as a reset. "We want people to treat themselves for a few days or a week at a time," she explains. "Compared to a destination spa, this is a way for people to not have to take time off of work and put their lives on hold."