Episode 39: On Founding an Organic Meal Plan Service with Elizabeth Connolly, Co-Founder & President, Trifecta

In this week’s episode of Subscriptions: Scaled, we speak with Elizabeth Connolly, Co-Founder & President of Trifecta Nutrition.

Keep reading to learn everything from how Elizabeth keeps Trifecta’s customers engaged to why the company suits the subscription service model so well.  

Trifecta Nutrition

First, let’s learn about Trifecta Nutrition.

Trifecta Nutrition is a meal planning service, providing delicious and nutritious meals to help people meet their health and fitness goals.

Customers can enjoy the convenience of ready-made, macro-balanced meals delivered right to their door. The brand offers a weekly subscription service, with customers picking the meal plan they like the most and how many meals they’d like each week. 

The brand’s mission is to help America get back in shape. However, that goes beyond just serving meals to customers. 

There’s a lack of nutrition education throughout the United States, along with a lack of access to healthy meal options within several communities across the country. As a result, Trifecta has donated meals and monetary contributions to organizations such as Feeding America, the ACLU, Meals on Wheels, and others. In total, Trifecta has donated at least 2,000 meals each month.

Elizabeth Connolly

In 2015 at age 25, Elizabeth met with her older brother and mentor, Greg Connolly, to discuss the concept of Trifecta. Elizabeth had a huge interest in healthy eating, the confidence to run a brand based on past success, and the support of her brother, so she decided to take the leap of faith to launch Trifecta.

With limited room to grow the team initially, Elizabeth served as the president and the first salesperson, taking customer service inquiries for around two years. Today, Elizabeth is in charge of all B2B partnerships, both current and future, which is the main contributing factor to the brand’s growth and awareness.

Elizabeth’s strong drive to build a brand to help get America back in shape placed Trifecta at the forefront of the meal delivery service category.

Maintaining Customer Engagement

In the episode, we learn how the individualized onboarding procedure is created and how the Trifecta team keeps the customer engaged during the buying process. Elizabeth also explains how Trifecta reaches new customers and provides them with a nutrition resource to give them value. She also discusses how the team works to keep customers from leaving their subscriptions and helps those struggling to follow their meal plans.

Trifecta has a huge team to help keep users happy and engaged in the brand. One of the methods used to keep customers happy is hosting webinars that are scalable. The customer success team also works well to answer any questions from customers.

The brand offers many customizations in its meal plans—available for customers to apply themselves via the website. Trifecta is proud that customers don’t necessarily need to speak with a person to make these changes, making customer journeys smoother and easier to navigate. 

Elizabeth says the brand has had a lot of success in making itself particularly accessible, especially in these days when it can be challenging to get someone on the phone or online to chat.

Trifecta make themselves extremely easy to get hold of and have a chat box pop up on every page. They also make it a priority always to answer the phone to customers.

The Subscription Model of Trifecta

Elizabeth explains why the subscription model makes sense for Trifecta. One of the reasons is that people can switch up their diets or change their meal plans to suit their tastes and needs.

People can’t make a significant change in their lives with one week of healthy eating. As humans, we eat every day for the rest of our lives. Elizabeth explains that the subscription model of Trifecta encourages people to stick around to find a meal plan that works for them best.

Sometimes, that means switching their plan up a bit. The subscription model gives people the tools to consume a healthy and balanced diet, and the different food options help make the concept more attractive to people.

Commonly with diets, people will try it and then fall off when they struggle. The subscription model helps people introduce a lasting impact and lifestyle change that they’re more likely to stick to.

Interestingly, Elizabeth shares that many people initially start with around 21 meals a week. However, the long-term customers tend to order about ten meals a week, suggesting that they mix up their Trifecta meals with other options.

The Challenges of Covid-19

Toward the end of the episode, Elizabeth discusses how the brand managed to work during the Covid-19 pandemic. Fortunately for Trifecta, healthy, prepared food delivered straight to the door is something people want and need during a pandemic.

However, this doesn’t mean there weren’t challenges during this period. In terms of sourcing and logistics, working during the pandemic became challenging. Even making sure there were enough staff working became a challenge.

Despite this, Elizabeth says that the brand continued to grow during Covid-19 and pushed them forward. She considers Trifecta very lucky compared to many other businesses that struggled during the pandemic.

The Future of Trifecta

The episode comes to an end with Elizabeth sharing what she sees in the future for Trifecta. 

Elizabeth explains that there is almost an endless number of diets that people are interested in, but there are plenty of fad diets that Trifecta don’t want to include. Any new diets introduced to the meal plan service must be genuinely healthy and good for customers. However, Elizabeth likes to keep adding new diets and foods to keep the subscription service exciting for customers.

She would love the business to go multinational. Elizabeth also loves the idea of providing value to customers in the form of an app to track calories and provide other valuable information. 

While there are many ideas on the horizon, it’s just a matter of how quickly Trifecta can implement each one. They also have to consider which ideas are going to help customers the most.

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