Pairdd
2031 East North Ave., Milwaukee
www.pairdd.com
Innovation: gluten-free meal delivery service
Casey Lanto and Ryan Konicek sensed a frustration among gluten-free diners about the difficulty of finding ingredients and recipes for their diets.
The pair, employees of Milwaukee-based health care start-up incubator Blue Bananas LLC, launched Milwaukee-based Pairdd in August to provide a gluten free meal delivery service that would help address the problem.
“We actually came up with the idea by talking to people,” Lanto said. “We talked to about 50 people in the Milwaukee and Madison areas who currently live gluten free.”
Local gluten-free bloggers and chefs develop recipes, and Pairdd buys and pre-measures the ingredients for the meals. Lanto, Konicek and their four interns then pack the prepared ingredients and ship meals via next day shipping on FedEx PeriShip, which is tailored to perishable items.
Recipients can make the meal the day it is received or refrigerate it for up to five days and make it when they prefer. Customers order online from Pairdd’s four weekly menu options either a la carte, for $15 per serving, or through a weekly subscription at $50 for two meals per week.
“Most of our customers are in the Milwaukee area, however we do deliver to the entire state of Wisconsin and we’re beginning to grow out,” Lanto said.
Pairdd takes a lot of the legwork out of eating gluten-free. Sometimes a product is not clearly labeled gluten-free, or a manufacturer makes other products that contain gluten, resulting in cross-contamination. Whenever possible, Pairdd double checks the ingredients in its meals.
“We’re reading all labels and we also attempt to make phone calls to manufacturers to make sure that they are prepared in a place that doesn’t have any gluten around,” Lanto said. “There’s certain products, say blue cheese, where it can be grown on gluten containing bread. Some blue cheese isn’t clearly labeled on whether or not there’s gluten in it.”
Ingredients are gathered from all over the area: flatbreads come from Molly’s Gluten-Free Bakery in Pewaukee, while enchilada sauce is sourced from Cocina DeLeon in Brookfield.
To date, Pairdd has sent more than 600 boxes of gluten-free meals, Lanto said. There aren’t a lot of competitors for Pairdd, aside from the gluten-free convenience food market.
And the business could be in for an easier vetting process as the $4.2 billion gluten-free market becomes further regulated.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently issued new rules on what defines gluten-free food, which went into effect in August, with a one-year grace period to come into compliance, said Mike Flanagan, a partner and member of the food industry team at Foley & Lardner LLP in Milwaukee. There were previously no regulations on putting “gluten-free” on a food package, he said. Under the new regulations, gluten levels in products bearing the gluten-free label cannot exceed 20 parts per million.
And with the clarified ruling, more food manufacturers may now feel comfortable labeling their products as gluten-free.
“This is one area in which, frankly, I think Pairdd has a built-in advantage,” Flanagan said. “Their business is gluten-free. They’re dealing with gluten-free ingredients in a confined area.”
