Looking for healthy food to fuel your gym gains this summer? theplantprep’s nutritious and delicious food offerings will be right up your street.
Run by Michelle Graham, theplantprep is all about delivering freshly prepared plant-based meals to customers around Aberdeen and the north-east.
Formerly branded as Eat Complete, the business won a meal prep service of the year award in its first year and Michelle’s own workout videos on social media continue to bring bright doses of personality to the business.
But whether you’re a gym-goer or not, convenience is also a core value of theplantprep’s offerings, which make feel-good plant-based food easier for people with busy lives.
Curries, burgers and even tofu desserts are some of its star dishes and Michelle is now looking to expand her one-woman team to bring in more happy customers.
We talked to Michelle to find out more about theplantprep.
Tell us a little about yourself.
I grew up in Aberdeen and studied zoology. I was always interested in working with animals and I went off for around ten years working in wildlife rehabilitation.
It’s obviously different to what I’m doing now, but at the time it felt like a dream job. But I ended up feeling like there wasn’t a lot of room for progression, which was when I kind of fell into theplantprep.
Where did the idea for theplantprep come from?
I started going to the gym around five years ago. I did some fitness training and went on to enter some competitions and was creating this food for myself at the time to help fuel my workouts, but I had no expectation of making a business out of it.
It just went on for months that people would see my food, ask me about it and I’d say I’m not planning on making it a business!
What was it that made you finally cave in and start your own business?
When I turned vegan around nine years ago, there were no services like theplantprep.
Nowadays, there’s a lot more accessible options, but at the time it was very basic what you would get.
I was making vegan dishes that were high protein, nutritious and tasted good – you didn’t feel like you were just eating broccoli all the time.
I created them for myself and people in the gym would ask me about veganism and what its health benefits were, how I’d get my protein and energy for workouts.
There were so many questions, but I realised I’d built a knowledge of the subject and that people wanted to know more. So, eventually, I decided to go for it.
How has the journey been so far?
I was a bit nervy getting started, but that’s natural as I’m always looking to progress to new levels.
The business launched in October 2020 and it took off really well. I was doing all the cooking from home to begin with, then at the end of last year I got into a commercial kitchen. It’s going well, but I feel like I want to expand even further.
You won an award in your first year in business – how did that feel?
It was definitely a surprise! I thought I’d enter the business into the Best Meal Preparation Service of the Year category at the Scottish Prestige Awards and I didn’t expect to win.
It boosts your confidence to know that people are enjoying what you’re doing – a lot of it was down to customer responses. To know they’re loving it keeps me going.
What makes theplantprep stand out from other popular meal delivery services?
A big part of it would be that I’m a local company making everything fresh myself. At the moment, I’m driving around Aberdeen doing customer deliveries, but I’m currently working on setting up nationwide services – hopefully within the next month or two.
With other services you can get ingredients delivered and make them yourself, but lots of my customers like the convenience of our meals being prepped in advance.
Other people might be gym-goers who are looking to achieve their goals with nutritious meals, whether that’s losing weight or boosting performance.
I’m also quite surprised that more than 80% of my customers are meat eaters, which I think is probably the biggest compliment for us in that they don’t feel like they’re missing out on anything.
Vegan meals aren’t just for vegans – they’re for everyone to enjoy.
What are some of your most popular dishes?
There’s all different sorts of curries, pastas and burgers which all go down really well. I look to keep the most popular ones on most of the time then rotate some of the other dishes.
Katsu curry is really popular, we’ve had hoisin stir fried rice which has also been really popular.
I mainly just look to find things that I’d enjoyed in the past and have felt like I’ve missed. This might be a Chinese takeaway, so I’ll try and recreate that myself.
I also ask customers what dishes they’d like to see. The red Thai curry is one of our most requested dishes and that came from a customer’s suggestion.
We also have a dessert made from tofu – which may not sound so delicious on the surface – which people love.
It’s like a chocolate mousse, but people are amazed that it’s made from tofu. It’s high in protein and super nutritious with nuts in there too.
Do you enjoy injecting your personality into your business?
Definitely. I actually didn’t want myself to be involved in any of the photos to begin with!
But it wasn’t until I uploaded the first training video of me in the gym, it just got so much more interaction online.
People want to see these types of things where there’s a personality behind the brand – it makes people relate more to it.
What do you enjoy most about running theplantprep?
Seeing the positive benefits that theplantprep has on people. I get a lot of comments from people on how the food has helped them – whether that’s convenience, fuelling their workout or just making them feel better and healthier.
It can get tough being in the business by myself, but these are the things that definitely keep me going.
Future plans?
The main plan at the moment is to move nationwide, but I’m still 100% aiming to keep the core part of the business local like we are now.
I love driving round and meeting customers and I don’t want to move away from that.
I also want to expand our range of offerings available to customers and bring in new staff as there’s only so much I can cook myself within a day. More hands and more people helping will allow me to do more.
To order from theplantprep or to find out more, visit their website.
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