The Mission

PrimePlates eliminates the daily “What should I eat?” dilemma for busy urbanites by transforming under-utilized restaurant kitchens into efficient meal-plan hubs. We design one nutritionally balanced menu per day, cook it in bulk with partner chefs, package it in reusable containers, and hand it to customers at scheduled pick-up windows - seamlessly coordinated through our mobile app. Our mission is threefold: Give people time back - delivering chef-made meals that require zero decision-making and virtually no waiting. Boost local restaurants’ profitability - monetizing their off-peak kitchen capacity without complicating their service. Support an eco-mindset - deploying a closed-loop, reusable-packaging system that replaces single-use take-away waste. By aligning consumer convenience, restaurant economics, and sustainable practice, PrimePlates sets a scalable new standard for everyday eating in the Netherlands, aiming for the whole Europe in the next 5 years.

The Challenge

Our market research and literature review have identified the market opportunity. Week-day dining in the Netherlands is broken on three fronts: Time - FSIN’s Food Shopper Monitor 2024 (n = 2,100, ages 18-45) shows 67 % of Dutch adults cook fewer than three work-day dinners because they are simply too tired or busy. Cost-Convenience - A 2024 Consumentenbond audit of 224 meals reveals the average delivered dinner costs €14.50 after fees, while meal-kit portions still demand up to 40 minutes of home prep-a poor trade-off for truly time-poor consumers. Nutrition - Only 8 of 224 ready-meals tested met Voedingscentrum health guidelines, and RIVM’s 3,500-respondent survey finds fibre too low and salt too high across every age cohort. These frictions fuel a €350 million prepared-meal subscription market (Euromonitor, 2024) that still lacks an operationally efficient model. Existing pick-up concepts rely on a single commissary kitchen, capping scale and geographic reach.

The solution

PrimePlates transforms under-used restaurant kitchens into a single, app-powered meal-plan network that fixes the Dutch weekday-dinner pain points of time, convenience, and nutrition highlighted by FSIN 2024 and Consumentenbond 2024. Across our network, each kitchen produces one chef-designed, dietitian-balanced menu per day (three to four items). Because multiple restaurants participate, customers enjoy genuine culinary variety - different cuisines, cooking styles, and meal kits - while every individual kitchen still benefits from the simplicity of a single, batch-cooked menu. Meals are blast-chilled into branded, reusable containers, ensuring ≤ 48 h freshness and full HACCP compliance. The customer flow is frictionless: pre-order in the PrimePlates app → select one of four preset pick-up windows → collect the kit in under five minutes → return containers on the next visit. Behind the scenes, our proprietary demand-forecast engine allocates orders to each kitchen’s off-peak hours, turning idle capacity into a steady, high-margin revenue stream without interfering with normal restaurant service. Subscription tiers - Dinner-Only, Half-Day, and Full-Day - cater to every routine and include container-deposit coverage, in-app macro tracking, and a weekly skip feature. Even though subscription has price and other benefits, customers can order on demand 1 day upfront, emphasizing convenience. Finally, a closed-loop container system replaces single-use packaging with bar-coded, sanitized containers engineered for multiple cycles, underscoring PrimePlates’ commitment to an eco-smart dining future.