Sara Sheehan’s guest in this episode is Samuel Hale, the CEO and Co-Founder of Nurish’d. Sam discusses the evolution of Nurish’d, a digital health and nutrition platform that connects users with registered dietitians and personalized meal planning, assisted by AI. Sam tells Sara about his career journey and how he originally launched as a ready-to-eat meal prep company before transitioning into Nurish’d. Sam shares how his platform now optimizes meal plans that align with users’ health profiles, dietary preferences, and wellness goals.
Sam’s entrepreneurial path demonstrates a strategic pivot from food production to healthtech innovation. His proprietary AI system automates dietary recommendations while preserving the key human element of dietitian-led consultations. His leadership in this nutrition-as-a-service model has helped expand Nurish’d from Canada into the U.S., especially in states leveraging the 1115 Medicaid waiver for medically tailored meals.
Sam’s mission is the idea that “if we eat well, we feel well.” The food as medicine movement is supported through Nurish’d, offering evidence-based nutrition plans to manage chronic illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension, and kidney disease. The platform also partners with insurance providers and telehealth integration, delivering meals and virtual care to users with covered conditions. Sam tells Sara his future goals are to expand Nurish’d’s role in preventive health, supporting food-insecure populations, and collaborating with benefits providers to make healthy eating accessible at scale.
About Samuel Hale:
In a world where diet often dictates our health, Sam Hale believes in a holistic approach, where wellness is about a sustainable lifestyle that fosters individual health and well-being. He is driven by the vision to transform our relationship with food, seeing it not just as sustenance but as a tool for longevity, illness prevention, and overall well-being.
This belief led Sam to establish Nurish’d, a platform partnering users with registered dietitians and leveraging AI to integrate personalized nutrition seamlessly into our daily lives by connecting users to healthy meals that best fit their lifestyles and goals. If we eat well, we feel well.
Through innovation and commitment, we can harness the ability to improve our health profiles, enhancing our well-being. Sam strives to create a ripple effect of health awareness, empowering individuals and organizations to make informed choices toward a healthier future.
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Contact Sara Sheehan | Sara Sheehan Consulting:
Contact Samuel Hale:
- Website: Nurishd.io
- LinkedIn: Samuel-Hale-94539779
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Transcript
Sara Sheehan: [00:00:02] Hi there, I’m Sara Sheehan and welcome to my podcast, Transformational Thinkers with Sara Sheehan. Today I’m talking with Samuel Hale. Sam is an entrepreneur, innovator, and CEO of Nurish’d, a platform that partners users with registered dietitians and leverages AI to integrate personalized nutrition seamlessly into customers’ lives by connecting users to healthy meals that best fit their lifestyles and goals. Sam believes if we eat well, we feel well. Welcome to the show, Sam.
Samuel Hale: [00:00:46] Thanks for having me.
Sara Sheehan: [00:00:48] I am so glad that you’re here, and I’m so excited to see what you’re doing and how you’re transforming the ability for people to own their own fitness and wellness. So let’s dive into it. Sam, your backstory is critical to what got you here, but I’d love to hear what led you to create Nurish’d.
Samuel Hale: [00:01:15] Absolutely. Generally speaking, Nurish’d is the evolution of our previous endeavor. It started off as a meal preparation company, where we were literally making and preparing healthy, prepared meals for individuals, and that was mostly being delivered directly to consumers. But we wanted to start bringing more value because we noticed that the space was very saturated. And to do that, we started integrating dietitians into our workflow and allowing the dietitians to work with our clients one on one to make sure that what they’re eating is actually optimal for them. But what I didn’t know was actually how much time that would take a dietitian to be able to do all of that work manually. The food industry already has really tight margins, and what we were noticing was that once a dietitian would meet with a client for an hour, they would have to do their charting, and on top of that, they would start doing the meal planning. It’s quite difficult because when you have a food producer that has a large menu, the dietitians had to know all the ingredients, all the nutrition facts and everything else that would be required to optimize the macronutrients and caloric intake for an individual. So what we brainstormed was, what can only a dietitian do? And that’s the consultation one on one, and also the charting for compliance and insurance purposes.
Samuel Hale: [00:02:31] From there, what we did is we started optimizing the meal plans using AI. But what we wanted to do is implement a system that would allow dietitians to do what they do best and then automate part of their workflow. And that’s what led us to the idea of Nurish’d. Fast forward a little bit to today’s day and age, we wanted to be able to reach as many people as possible, and we knew we couldn’t actually do that just by owning the infrastructure of the food service facilities. Now what we’re doing to scale into more demographics and geographics, we’re now scaling with additional ready-to-eat meal partners, and we’re that technology solution for them. We have two ways that they can integrate with us, and that’s either being on the marketplace, where we’re now the client-facing platform that provides the digital health solution, or we can license our software to help them optimize within their own companies. So that’s the journey from a food producer into more of a technology play.
Sara Sheehan: [00:03:37] Because you started in the ready-to-eat meal prep space, right?
Samuel Hale: [00:03:43] Correct.
Sara Sheehan: [00:03:45] And you realized that you really needed a way to capture and attract those customers.
Samuel Hale: [00:03:51] Even more so, to attract and retain the customers is that we wanted to provide more value. By having the dieticians, not only do we provide medical nutrition therapy, but having the food service, we could provide the food product as well. Now you don’t have this intermediary between a dietician over here and a food service company here. We have it all in one place so it’s much more of a value add. And beyond the customer retention is that we’re also now looking at this as a health play. We see a lot of the information coming through for food is medicine. We have medically tailored meals, we have reimbursement in the insurance space. We are now, from a customer retention standpoint, more of a patient retention standpoint. Where we’re trying to actually better people’s lives by using food as that first step.
Sara Sheehan: [00:04:39] Are you looking to then work with benefits groups that would offer your solution to companies as something that they could provide for employees as well?
Samuel Hale: [00:04:57] Yeah, and we’re already doing that, which is awesome.
Sara Sheehan: [00:05:00] That’s awesome.
Samuel Hale: [00:05:00] In your neck of the woods, we have a partnership with Every Health. Some of their employees are Dallas based, but primarily Texas we’re providing our platform Nurish’d as the medical nutrition therapy platform by providing telehealth services with RDs. Then if the members of the insurance company have CKD, which is chronic kidney disease, hypertension, obesity or diabetes, they do get approved for our Nurish’d membership, which also includes meal credits, which they can then reimburse through the insurance company. Now we’re seeing payers provide our services as a solution to people who are battling diet related chronic illness.
Sara Sheehan: [00:05:39] That is absolutely remarkable. I am so glad to see that you have numerous ways to attract incredible customers and to keep them, clearly. It’s a very viable and sustainable business model.
Samuel Hale: [00:05:58] We hope. There’s two ways to look at it. From the medical side, we do want people to go into remission and obviously get better. But the thing is, we don’t become unavailable when they do get better. Although it may not be covered by the payer once they reach a certain goal, they’re still able to access us and pay out of pocket as well. We’re always around and it’s up to the members or users to determine when to use us. In the perfect case scenario, I think it is a feasible business model, I’m confident in it. Of course, being involved with health systems, it’s a little bit difficult and policy changes. But I’m very optimistic with the new narrative of what’s happening in the US. I just got back from a conference last week in Chicago, and there’s a lot of excitement in this space. I think that the insurance companies are excited, too, because they want healthier patients. So we’ll see how it goes.
Sara Sheehan: [00:06:48] That’s phenomenal. Let’s talk a little bit about how the software actually works and where you may be using AI and what the customer experience is like.
Samuel Hale: [00:07:03] We’ve been using our AI now for just over a year. Believe it or not, we actually had an administrator before hand select meals for our users depending on dietary preferences. But now we’ve been testing that AI internally for just over a year. The way we use AI is in a few different ways. It is proprietary to us, we’ve developed it in-house. But what we do from a user standpoint is that we understand three things about them. Their health profile, their activity profile, their bio profile, and then in theory, a fourth profile, which is their taste profile. This goes hand in hand with us offering microbiome tests as well, because we can understand what foods someone should consume or not consume, I guess you could say. Then also the amount of food someone should consume. We have a lot of data that has to be optimized. So what we do is when we partner with a meal prep or a food service company, we have all the data of their recipes, their menus, the ingredients they use and make all their compliance labeling for them.
Samuel Hale: [00:08:00] Because we have all that information, we can then optimize it for the macro and micronutrients that someone should be consuming. So that’s the first way we actually have implemented and are currently using AI in our current marketplace. The second thing that we have in beta and in development right now is the Agentic AI, where we’re using a chat-like feature where someone can interact with it. Right now it’s learning from all the customers and the dietitians that we’re using on the platform. Currently, AI cannot make recommendations for dietary needs. It has to still come from a registered practitioner like a dietitian, but we are getting to that at some point into the future. Right now we’re allowing our clients to manage conditions. It is suggested by AI, but it’s reviewed by dietitians and then it’s signed off by the dietician. When it comes to lifestyle intervention, like weight loss or muscle gain or even maintenance, we are making those recommendations without dietitians, but it’s not to manage any kind of diet related illness. So that’s how we’re providing this information at the moment.
Sara Sheehan: [00:09:06] That’s amazing. In your software, does someone actually have a record of, for instance, how many calories they’ve taken in every day based on the plan that’s generated with the dietician?
Samuel Hale: [00:09:24] Exactly. Beyond calories, we also go into the macro and micronutrients. Let’s say we have a patient with diabetes. They may want to watch their dietary fiber, and we can actually set benchmarks to optimize for that amount of dietary fiber. The same thing goes for a CKD patient with phosphates, sulfates, sodium and things like that. All that is available on our platform. One thing that’s really important is that we have a health profile. That health profile helps the user track their progress, but it also helps us report back to the insurance companies from a plan assurance standpoint. So we are collecting that data, using it for the patient’s advantage, for sure.
Sara Sheehan: [00:10:04] That’s wonderful for the patient, the dietician, and I am assuming that their doctor can see this as well. Is that correct?
Samuel Hale: [00:10:15] That’s right. The doctor can request the charts from our RDs so that will be available. Again, one more thing that the RD can do is make changes to the meal plan that the system has recommended. The more feedback we get from the dietitians, the actual machine learning model takes that all into consideration and will make a more optimal recommendation in the future. It goes from both the user standpoint and the dietitian standpoint to start training the AI to be more reliable.
Sara Sheehan: [00:10:43] I’m wondering right now, just because this is personal experience, my spouse is a diabetic and he is on an omnipod and a continuous glucose monitor that is looped. I’m wondering if the meal plan can be added to the program somehow, so that it knows exactly what’s in the meal. Because right now they build a model for what they’re eating, if that makes sense.
Samuel Hale: [00:11:21] It absolutely could be built in. We don’t have anything like that. We do have future features that we want to build, which are ‘nice to have’s, which we’re not quite there yet, but that would be including recording CGM data. Us having an API where we can provide our meal data to another software is not off the table. Maybe when we make it big, we can implement that feature.
Sara Sheehan: [00:11:45] There’s a world of opportunity there that could really influence a lot of people’s health in a positive way. That’s very compelling. Sam, talk with me a little bit about where your customers are and about your business reach from a location and geography perspective.
Samuel Hale: [00:12:08] Absolutely. Right now, I’ll take a step back. We started in Canada, our headquarters is here in Calgary, Alberta, but we’ve just made our entrance into the US. The nice thing about having a digital health platform is that it’s scalable depending on the licensure of the RDS or the dietitians. From a telehealth perspective, we are actually available in quite a few different states. Then from a food as medicine standpoint, or a ready prepared meal standpoint, we have a USDA inspected food provider in the Texas region, which can ship meals to the lower 48. So in theory, we could be statewide. However, from a strategic standpoint, we’re just only rolling out in the main states that have, one, issued the 1115 waiver, and two, have been implementing our programs into their policies, which is Every Health in Texas. Our next stop is going to be in Illinois, and we’re partnering with a local company there to start offering medically tailored meals, as well as the digital health platform. Right now we’ll call it Texas and Illinois, but in the not so distant future we could definitely be rolling out nationally. It just depends on resources, basically.
Sara Sheehan: [00:13:20] And the 1115 waiver is?
Samuel Hale: [00:13:23] That’s a tool that Medicaid, Medicare is using to be able to provide insurance for people to have their meals reimbursed. There’s other ways to do it as well, but these are the states that have been most progressive. Some of the other ones would be California, New York, things like that. The nice thing is that it’s where the population is already quite dense, so there could be a lot of potential customers from a platform standpoint. We’ll see where we get pulled. We have a lot of good conversations that are open right now, we just want to make sure that we’re focusing on the right things at the right time.
Sara Sheehan: [00:13:57] Wow, this is so exciting. I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to hear that your expansion is literally on jet fuel.
Samuel Hale: [00:14:10] It could be.
Sara Sheehan: [00:14:12] This is a really wonderful inflection point to be having this conversation. Where would you say you are in the arc of building your business? You’ve come a long way since we first talked, for certain, but how would you define where you are?
Samuel Hale: [00:14:30] I think we’re just crossing the chasm right now, so to speak. We’ve put in a lot of that sweat equity and the hard work, and now it’s figuring out how to deploy what we’ve learned into the market. From us it’s, like you said, rocket fuel is going into the commercialization stage and that’s what we really need help with the most. What we’re trying to do is get that brand awareness, have that B2B sales structure where we can work with the payers directly, and then they can acquire the consumer for us. That’s the main point of our business at the moment. Like you said, we’ve come a long way since we’ve chatted, but it also hasn’t been an overnight success either. We have been working on this now for years, but it’s nice to see the fruits of our labor coming together. I feel for the first time ever, unfortunately, that the timing for this is really good. We’ve done things that are too soon, too late, but I feel like we’re right in the sweet spot at the moment.
Sara Sheehan: [00:15:23] I definitely think large organizations are in the right place to make the choice to have a benefit like this available for employees much more now than ever.
Samuel Hale: [00:15:37] I agree, and you’ll notice that a lot of them are self-insured these days as well. It definitely brings that flexibility. And if you look at some of the studies out there, from an employee benefit standpoint, a lot of them are looking for meal solutions at the office. A lot of the tech companies do it. I was in San Francisco not too long ago, and a lot of the companies do provide lunches and dinners and everything in between. It’s definitely a compelling business case for a larger company to provide this type of benefit, but it’s going to depend on the company’s culture. We haven’t gone, necessarily, the route of going to the companies directly. We’re trying to work with the payers and the plan sponsors to be able to push us down, instead of us being pushed up by the company. There’s no right or wrong answer, it’s just figuring out what’s the best sales flow for us. And we’re still figuring that out, quite honestly.
Sara Sheehan: [00:16:29] Working on where you need to be in the process in terms of customer acquisition, if you’re constantly looking at what works and what the best outcomes are that you’re getting, you’re going to be doing the right thing.
Samuel Hale: [00:16:45] I hope so.
Sara Sheehan: [00:16:46] Excellent. What aspects of your business will you be developing next, Sam?
Samuel Hale: [00:16:52] That’s a great question. We have a laundry list of stuff that we want to include on the platform, but we have to make sure there’s good feedback from the clients first. The next big thing for us would just be to make sure that we have that planned adherence piece that’s for the insurance companies, just to make sure that we can provide them an ROI, because there has to be a benefit for both the patient, or the client, and the insurance company. We’re a really small and lean team, so we do as much as we can as fast as we can, but that’s the next biggest step for us. Apart from that, it’s going to be building a network of payers that we can make sure that we have a good relationship with. The reason why we needed a national reach is because a lot of people are insured by different payers across the country. And of course, it’s not only going to be limited to one state. We need to have multiple vendors, we have to have multiple dietitians, we have to have microbiome tests that can reach other clients. For us, it was just to make sure that we have a waitlist of vendors so that when we expand into certain states or provinces, we have access to the right resources that we need. So those are the main things, I would say.
Sara Sheehan: [00:17:56] I know that you’re very growth oriented. What big leap are you working on in your business right now?
Samuel Hale: [00:18:04] I think growth is a tricky one. We always joke and make food puns all the time over here. Businesses often die from indigestion, not starvation. We want to grow at a sustainable pace. Right now we’re trying to figure out what that looks like, and we haven’t quite mastered it, but we’re bringing on the right resources. I think the biggest thing for us from a ‘leap’ perspective is that we’re a small and agile team, but we have to start bringing in the right people for the job. I think letting go a little bit of that control is going to be a learning curve for all of us on the management side. And I’d say that’s the biggest thing that we have to come to grips with right now.
Sara Sheehan: [00:18:39] Talent is something that is an equation that is hard to master.
Samuel Hale: [00:18:46] It seems that way. Kind of like when we had the dietitians building the meal plans manually, we want to make sure they only do what they can do. What we’ve been doing is a lot of different things within the company, and people wear many hats, but it might be time to dial down and focus on that B2B sales person or the commercialization officer or whatever title they want to have, I don’t care. But something like that will definitely have to be niched in and determined.
Sara Sheehan: [00:19:11] If you were to take a step back, what do you think your biggest challenge is right now?
Samuel Hale: [00:19:18] I think one of the biggest challenges is that our platform does so much and it’s hard to be everything for everybody. The more we try to please everyone, the more we’re not pleasing anybody. What we’ve noticed is that when we’ve been going to market with our ideas, we’re saying that we do ‘this, this and this’ and it’s like, how do you manage all of that? So we started to feel it after a while. What we’re trying to do now is dial in on what our offering is, who we’re helping and making sure that we understand that our total addressable market is going to be large enough for us to have a sustainable business model. Which, based on what we’ve determined, it is. That’s what I would say for that one.
Sara Sheehan: [00:20:02] I’m sure there’s not a lack of challenges.
Samuel Hale: [00:20:05] No, we usually learn things the hard way as well. Just from challenges, and that’s learning different healthcare systems, we go from Canada to the US, billing, clearinghouses, copay. All these terms that you guys are very familiar with, we don’t have that here necessarily. So we’re learning a lot in the healthcare space, but we’re also learning a lot in the food space. We’re learning a lot in the technology space as well. It just gets a little bit heavy, but we’re handling it well. It’s just a big learning curve.
Sara Sheehan: [00:20:37] I would think that in the current administration in the US that the head of Health and Human Services would absolutely love what you’re doing.
Samuel Hale: [00:20:49] I hope so. If you know him or her, get me in contact with them.
Sara Sheehan: [00:20:54] We can see what we can do about networking for that purpose. I do think they would be very much in favor of what you’re doing and how you can affect people’s health in a very positive way. What big goals or aspirations are you currently working on this year?
Samuel Hale: [00:21:11] I think this segues nicely into that, because one of the things we’re mentioning is that we’re helping people manage conditions, but it would be nice to be able to prevent conditions as well. One of the biggest things that we have to compile together is opportunities where we can provide science-backed results for prevention of chronic illness using food as medicine, as well. That’s one of the things that we’re really aspiring to at the moment. It’s one thing to help someone feel better, but it would be even better if they didn’t have to feel that way to begin with. That’s something that is maybe not this year, but we want to work towards it so we’re ready into the future. The biggest aspiration apart from that is just helping as many people as possible feel better using our resources, but then also scaling and helping the people that are in need as well. Because what we notice is that people who are chronically ill, and in a lot of scenarios, are also food insecure as well. We’re seeing how the markets that we’re entering can be affected and bringing positivity to those areas. It’s a heavy question, but it’s the stepping stones, one thing at a time. Right foot, left foot.
Sara Sheehan: [00:22:18] I can only imagine that food insecurity is directly linked with much of what you’re doing. So having the connection with health programs and benefits is going to help get it in the right hands, for certain.
Samuel Hale: [00:22:37] Hope so, fingers crossed.
Sara Sheehan: [00:22:39] Fingers crossed. What are you learning right now, Sam?
Samuel Hale: [00:22:45] A lot of different things, that’s for sure. I’m learning how to manage a team of people among diverse areas. We have our medical team, we have our technology team, we have our operations team and things like that. So that’s been a big factor. But in addition to that, it’s not even the types of individuals, it’s also the geography of them as well. Now that we’re scaling into the US, we have employees in the US, we have employees in Canada. It’s really just figuring out which best ways to interact with each of them and managing from an arm’s length instead of being in the same office. From a technical perspective, we’ve been learning a lot of regulations going into the US, specifically in the food and medicine space. And on top of that, it’s always ‘the next big thing in AI’, and we’re trying to stay on top of it as best we can. But things evolve so quickly. We learn something new every day, and we’re using it to the best that we can internally, as well as turning those into tools that our clients and users can use as well.
Sara Sheehan: [00:23:44] How has that been for you when you learn something one day and that you realize that you need to then take it into a software development conversation? How hard is that to be that responsive?
Samuel Hale: [00:24:01] We’re in a lucky position. We’re very agile when it comes to a team, and we’re also a very young team. Most people who we’re working with on a day to day basis are reading the same information and learning about it. If I don’t bring it up, someone else will bring it up, this new big thing that they’re seeing. I’ve been pretty lucky that way. But again, it’s prioritizing resources and our team can only produce so much. It’s also getting customer validation. I think one of the big mistakes people make is that they see this big shiny object and they think to themselves, we could really use this. But then they don’t realize that there’s a technical debt behind that. Where they’re going to put their efforts into this piece instead of something else that’s maybe more functional to the business. It might cause an issue down the road somewhere else. We try to bring everything that’s relevant to the table, and then we try to pull back pieces of it to say, is this really needed right now? Can we maybe revisit it into the future? Or maybe it actually is a huge opportunity for us. So it just depends on the circumstance, but just navigating it is going to be on a case by case basis.
Sara Sheehan: [00:25:02] Wonderful. Sam, as you take a step back and look at where you are, are there other things that you’d like to share with us today? What else is coming to mind?
Samuel Hale: [00:25:16] I have to think about that one a little bit. I think that, like you mentioned, this current administration, we’ll bring that topic up again. I know people like talking about it and don’t like talking about it, but I think that there is an optimism in the air. It seems that the movement of ‘making America healthy again’, we’re seeing things here. If you look at our social media newsfeeds, we’re getting bombarded with the same information, like we’re moving food dyes, really understanding the artificial flavors and colors. Small things like that, I think those are really positive changes in the long run. I think that there has to be something to say about that, and that’s an important thing. I’m bipartisan, I’m on the outside looking in. It doesn’t matter to me necessarily who’s at the helm, but I think that there are good things happening so it’s refreshing to see that. And I’m just hoping that the momentum continues.
Sara Sheehan: [00:26:00] I believe and know that the momentum will continue. And I believe you will have exponential growth this year.
Samuel Hale: [00:26:09] I hope you’re right.
Sara Sheehan: [00:26:10] Thank you so much for your time today, Sam. Tell me how our listeners can find you.
Samuel Hale: [00:26:16] You’re welcome. I’m not that active on social media, but the best place to find me would probably be on LinkedIn. That’s just my full name, or it might even just be Sam Hale. Our company is also there. We have all access to our websites and we have two separate websites. Again, going to this compliance thing, we have our technology website and our marketplace website. I’d be happy to send you those in a quick link, and then if you want to share those with the listeners as an appendix, we can definitely do that as well.
Sara Sheehan: [00:26:43] Absolutely, all the information will be in the show notes. Thank you so much for your time today, Sam.
Samuel Hale: [00:26:49] Thank you, likewise. I really appreciate the opportunity. I think we spoke probably over a year ago, maybe longer, and I’m glad that we were able to pull this together. So I appreciate the opportunity and your time as well.
Sara Sheehan: [00:27:01] Absolutely. You are definitely one to watch, in my opinion.
Samuel Hale: [00:27:05] Thank you, I appreciate it.
Sara Sheehan: [00:27:07] The three key takeaways from today’s episode include human-centered, tech powered nutrition. Nurish’d started as a meal prep company and evolved into a technology platform that combines registered dietitians’ expertise with proprietary AI to deliver truly personalized, health-focused meal solutions. Real impact, broad reach. The platform is already making waves, partnering with benefits groups and insurance payers to provide medically tailored meals and nutrition therapy to those with chronic illnesses like diabetes and hypertension. Data driven progress. Users get tracked nutrition insights such as calories, macros and more, enabling patients, dietitians, and even doctors to collaborate on health goals, all while nourishing healthier habits at scale. The intersection of AI, telehealth, and nutrition is just the beginning. Kudos to Sam and the whole Nurish’d team for blazing a trail toward a healthier future. As always, subscribe and never miss an episode.
