In this episode of The Thoughtful Entrepreneur, your host Josh Elledge speaks with Samantha Alexander, CEO and co-founder of Bitewell. Samantha shares her passion for helping people make small changes to their diet. She says 35% of medical costs come from nutrition-related conditions, and if people were to cut costs, they would have to seriously revolutionize the way they think about food. Her mission is to work with employers to provide healthy food as an insurance-subsidized benefit to their employees. By encouraging companies to reallocate traditionally unhealthy food spending to health-focused food options, employees can make healthier choices, achieve wellness, and improve workplace performance. Samantha shares how Bitewell’s machine learning based algorithm connects people to nearby deliverable meals that match their nutrient profile. She says they have over 50 million meals and products, have partnerships with all major grocery stores and restaurants and a hub where people connect with each other. She adds that managing Bitewell is not easy, that’s why she’s thankful to her incredible team of experts who made sure everything came together. Key Points from the Episode:

Bitewell Mission Overview
Bitewell for Consumers and Employees
How does Bitewell work?

About Samantha Alexander: Samantha is the co-founder and CEO of Bitewell, the nutritional intelligence company whose mission is to improve the world's health through food. Sam is a pioneer in food as healthcare delivery. After knowing that 35% of medical costs in the United States come from diet-related illnesses, Bitewell's unique food and health marketplace enables employers to deliver health benefits through their existing food budget. Prior to co-founding Bitewell, Sam's career spanned marketing, strategy and operations. His notable roles include Director of Global Brand Strategy and Chief of Staff to Jane Lauder at Clinique (NYC), Director of NA Marketing at Smashbox (LA), and Director of Research Analytics at Bridgewater Associates (CT). Sam earned a BFA in Drama from NYU. She credits much of her success to her leadership style – which fuses active empathy (honed during her acting studies) with radical transparency (adopted from her time at Bridgewater). Sam's interest in the impact of food on health goes back decades. Born into an Italian-American family in New Jersey, the kitchen table was the heart and soul of her childhood. In the late 90s and early 2000s, Sam, his sister, and cousins developed food allergies and intolerances that limited the food they could enjoy. Instead of having a reductionist mindset about food, their grandmother revamped generations-old recipes to meet the (many) dietary needs of their family. With the same care her grandmother applied to helping her family navigate the complicated maze of food ailments, Sam is determined to help the world achieve better health through food. About Bitewell: Bitewell is the first all-in-one nutrition planning and food delivery tool designed by their team of food and nutrition experts. Their platform makes eating smarter by connecting health and nutrition data to food deliverables near you. Their mission is to make healthy eating easy, convenient and accessible to everyone. Tweetable Moments: 02:30 - "We know that 75% of that 75% of that is preventable through nutrition. And so 75% of $12,000 per employee per year is the possible savings." 04:59 - "If you want to attract the best people, you need to give people the best benefits." Apply to be a Guest on The Thoughtful Entrepreneur: https://go.upmyinfluence.com/podcast-guest Links Mentioned in this Episode: Want to learn more? Check out Bitewell’s website at https://bitewell.com/ Check out Bitewell on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/bitewell/ Check out Samantha Alexander on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/samanthacitro/ Check out Samantha Alexander on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/samanthacitroalexander/ Check out Bitewell on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/bitewellco/ Check out Bitewell on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/bitewellco Don’t forget to subscribe to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur and thank you for listening. Tune in next time! More from UpMyInfluence: We are actively booking guests for our The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. Schedule HERE. Are you a 6-figure consultant? I’ve got high-level intros for you. Learn more here. What is your #1 Lead Generation BLOCKER? Take my free quiz here. Want to learn more about all the podcasts managed by UpMyInfluence? Opt in here.

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