Organic ingredients, compostable packaging, and frozen shipping nationwide including Alaska and Hawaii. This is exactly what happens after you click order.
From regenerative farms to your freezer, here is the full cost breakdown of every Restorative Roots postpartum meal, and why we refuse to cut corners.
Every so often we get messages and comments questioning the price of our packages, calling it “expensive.” I completely understand why our meals feel like a significant cost. To be completely transparent, they are because the cost reflects the true, uncompromised reality of how we make this food while upholding our extremely high standards of quality.
Because we refuse to cut corners on sourcing, we know our meals require a higher investment than conventional options. It’s exactly why we’re committed to sharing our recipes for free (even some of the ones that on ouro current menu), so that uncompromised postpartum nourishment can still belong to every mother.
Ok, but back to the pricing. Let’s take a walk through exactly what it takes to get our organic, regenerative meals straight to your door after you click the order button whether you live in Los Angeles, Brooklyn, Anchorage or Maui.
THE INGREDIENTS:
We source the absolutely highest quality organic and regenerative ingredients. Force of Nature, Greener Pastures, Ralston Farms…we actually know and speak with our suppliers. Eric has been to the Greener Pastures farm in Texas and seen the chickens. The cost of pasture-raised, regenerative beef, chicken, organ blends can be $13.99 per pound while conventional ground beef can be $6.99 per pound. Organic produce and sprouted oats. And we can’t forget our filtered, structured water, which is something that is almost entirely overlooked in the commercial meal prep world. We pay more for our ingredients than conventional meal delivery companies charge for their finished product. 
THE KITCHEN:
Once the ingredients make their way to the kitchen, we need to prepare it. We have people cooking the food who truly believe in our mission and take such great pride to slow cook each dish with great attention to detail. No short cuts. Oh and don’t forget the person washing all of the dishes! After it gets cooked it needs to be portioned into each individual container. From there, each container gets labeled, goes through a metal detector, gets printed with a lot code and then a goes through a heat tunnel to put on a tamper evident shrink band. It then goes into the freezer until we ship it to you. Nevermind the time it takes to track inventory, order ingredients, measure out ingredients…the kitchen rent, utilities, insurance, health department compliance, etc.
THE PACKAGING:
This is another place where we pay more. Most companies use plastic or PLE lined items. We use commercially compostable PLA-lined bamboo containers for the food. Does it cost more? Yes. Our PLA containers run about $1 per container, while a same size plastic container is half the price.
Then to get to you we pack the meals into a corrugated box with a compostable insulated liner (instead of styrofoam because we care about the environment). Also in the box is dry ice which at retail can be $2-4 per pound (we get it for $1.30/lb), and we use 5-10 pounds per box. We could use styrofoam liners and gel packs, but we refuse to cut corners just to improve our bottom line.
THE JOURNEY:
Now here’s a part many people probably don’t consider. You place your order, and on shipment day, our team goes in the freezer, reads your packing slip and packs the meals carefully and lovingly into the box and seals it shut.
From there, FedEx shows up. That truck costs money, and so does the maintenance, it’s fuel, insurance, and the wages of the driver who picked it up. The box then goes to a sorting facility where it’s handled by the people who work there. For over half of our orders, the box then gets loaded onto an airplane. The plane costs money, and so does the fuel, maintenance, pilots, and the ground grew to load and unload your box at 3 a.m. Then of course there is the truck on the other side…another truck, another driver, more fuel, maintenance and insurance to get it to your door.
Frozen shipping is a different animal than standard shipping of something like clothing. The reality of rising shipping costs, strict temperature control, dry ice costs, and handling frozen cargo safely means that our baseline shipping cost alone is one of our largest operational expenses.The fact that we can get our meals to Alaska or Hawaii in two-days is insane. We absorb this because we truly believe that a mom in Kodiak, Alaska deserves the same postpartum nourishment as a mom in Los Angeles.
EVERYTHING ELSE:
Then there’s the website, Ashley in customer service who you all adore, and other people on our team. Credit card processing fees and taxes. And yes, we have to have a profit margin. While slim, we do need to have a margin or we wouldn’t be able to continue to feed new mothers. 
$16 PER SERVING
So with all of that, the fact that our most affordable per serving price (in the Hungry Mama or Build a Box 18), is just $16 is pretty impressive.
$16 for organic, regenerative, ancestral meals created specifically for the season that you are in. Meals that get cooked, frozen, packed in compostable packaging, loaded onto multiple vehicles and possibly an airplane, arrive to you still frozen…and then all you have to do is defrost and reheat in under 10 minutes.
We are not the cheapest and we know that. We never will be. The “cheapest” version of this product does not exist without cutting corners. Cheaper ingredients or cheaper packaging that leaches micro plastics.
We decided to do something different, the exact way that we prepare things in our own home. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night knowing we were cutting corners somewhere…knowing it that it wasn’t the way I would personally want it done for my own family. So while the price can seem “high” I wanted you to see exactly what this whole process entails.
If you’ve made this far, you probably already know whether or not this is for you. If it is, we’re here and ready to nourish you. If you’re thinking, yes, this is for me, but I still need to come up with the money, remember that you can register for gift cards or meal packages on third party registry sites like Babylist or Poppylist...and many moms set up a meal train where people contribute to a meal package!
XO, Holly
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