The future of personalised meal services lies in the data - Ellis Singer McCue, CEO of Territory Foods

We spoke with Ellis Singer McCue, CEO of Territory foods - one of the most successful healthy meal delivery services in the US.

Ellis told us about how she eventually found herself at the driving seat of Territory Foods, what approach they take towards using data to personalise meals, and what the future looks like

Ellis kicked off her career in consulting at Deloitte

Her focus was on tech transformation, and she found it a great launchpad to pursue a career in tech. 6 years at Deloitte enabled her to build expertise in product management and to form a hypothesis that companies were paying excess amounts to firms like Deloitte for finance and supply chain projects.

Afterwards, she moved to Gap Inc., the clothing and accessories retailer, experiencing great growth in a business during the huge expansion of eCommerce. There she ran 44 international markets capturing useful data on customers answering questions such as "Why is the Saudi woman buying jeans?". But Gap didn't have a function built in to do anything with this information. However, her belief was tho build supply cycles around this information and so she did."I rebuilt the supply chain, hand-cutting purchase orders for 1000s of pairs of pants on Excel at 2:00am".

She then spent some time at ZX Ventures all the while finding her interest in health and wellness grew over time. Finally she was pulled to Territory Foods and saw it like a "merge made in heaven".

There has been a huge transition in nutrition-based eating over the past decade

Diet culture pre-2011 was mainly focused on weight loss and low fat consumption. After 2011, we saw a move towards more naturalistic eating, a much greater focus on feeding your body whole foods and keeping the system clean - this was also associated with a shift in mindset, that we can eat in abundance and still live a good life.

In her own experimentation, Ellis tried Paleo and gave up gluten, sugar, dairy, nitrates and other inflammatory foods. However she found it didn't work. Eventually, she learned through her own testing that she was lactose intolerant and eliminating dairy from her diet transformed her life.

Ellis came across Territory Foods on LinkedIn

She spoke to the head of HR Hilary and connected on their shared interest in the keto diet. Eventually she met with the founder Patrick who built the company as a software engineer solving his own problem - he didn't want to cook his own food, but still wanted to have a personalised diet as a paleo crossfitter.

Territory Foods has a dynamic supply base

Territory Foods responds to customer needs by matching up chefs in certain regions with pockets of consumers looking for specific foods. For example, if there are demands for the vegan keto diet in LA then they'll reach out to chefs in the area and try to determine if they can be matched up with these demands to meet their needs. It's all about serving complexity in customer needs.

Territory Foods looks at both what users want based on data, and also asks specifically what their needs are

It can be difficult to say to someone growing up in a culture of white rice and beans that the stuff is bad for their body. It's about utilising the data we have and making decisions based on that information. Coming up with something personalised and building a set of food based on those needs that is broad and deep and delicious is the aim.

Territory Foods takes a scientific approach to determining the needs of users such as athletes

Territory takes information from the wearables data from the athletes to further personalise their eating recommendations. For example, looking at the calories an athlete burns throughout the day they can determine how many carbs they need and by pairing this information up with the contents of their fridge they advise them exactly what to eat - from sweet potatoes to whole grain pasta. Information from CGMs can also be combined to see how food impacts their glucose levels, and this data can be fed back into the algorithm further refining the recommendations.

The food mechanism is the hardest part

The data is already there but getting the food right is hard. You have to create the cycle for the customer and nutrition can be so difficult to integrate because its uncontrolled with so many variables

Ellis is particularly excited by the Oura ring

When she was pregnant she noticed that her resting heart rate went up from about 56 to 72. Using the information tracked by the ring to advise on pregnancy is extremely important today.

She's also a big fan of Whoop which has the hardware and is also building a lot of useful analytics. Apple isn't doing a lot in this space. Tonal is interesting as it uses real time information to change weights mid-workout using magnets and heavy data analytics.

During COVID-19, Territory Foods focused on keeping people healthy at home

A huge proportion of their customers were auto-immune compromised and so they worked hard to keep them safe. They saw a 60% increase in Territory Foods consumption by their customers during the pandemic and were glad to see that they maintained a permanent relationship with their users in the post-pandemic world too.

The Territory Foods fundraising approach focussed on communicating the message "This is the new world of food and here we are"

They brought investors around the world who understood advanced nutrition and had support from experienced players not afraid of the consumer category.

"Territory is my heartbeat, I think about it every day, all day"

Ellis reflects that being an entrepreneur is the best and hardest thing that you could ever do. Leading a highly complex organisation means that she has people in her team who range from those without college education all the way to PHDs from Duke. There's great diversity in the team. This creates an innovative environment where the hardest thing is to keep the focus, and manage relationships. She wants Territory to be the best place that her employees ever worked at, but not necessarily the only place.

Territory Foods is a completely remote company, so it has a few values and principles that it maintains for the entire team

First and foremost, it's mission driven. Everybody believes in the business in a different way. They're always looking at the alignment of cultural values within the team and pushing for a flat structure. As a completely remote company it's important to spend a lot of time building connectivity and micro-connections within smaller teams are essential to ensure this is maintained. As leader of the company, Ellis knows this comes from the top down and strives to make sure everyone feels a part of the team.

Territory Foods has 7 core principles they assess potential candidates on

Core principles include innovative mind, collective responsibility, bringing diversity to the table, and respectful communication. These are the cultural pillars that hold up the company. It doesn't work for everyone, not everybody can cope with the remote environment but its essential that the business direction stays aligned with the mission vision and company values.

Ellis believes the future of this space will see more digitisation, but our interactions will become more personalised

People want more information and want to stay connected at the same time. The ambition is to reach the consumer in the most intimate way. When you're broad and generalised in your approach, you're talking to no one, it's about going deep into the community. Ellis sees very exciting opportunities using predictive algorithms and combining more information from biomarkers. She's looking forward to seeing further integration.