Bitewell’s ‘Food as Medicine’ Initiative is Empowering Employee Health Across Colorado

As the global workforce becomes more health-conscious, one solution gaining traction in the corporate realm is nutrition counseling, and a young Colorado company has developed a program businesses can add to their employee-benefits packages. 

Bitewell is a food-as-medicine marketplace that makes it easier to make healthy choices at mealtime. The company, which calls itself a “digital food farmacy,” works with employers to provide food health benefits for employees, reducing insurance premiums and improving health for users.  

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“If you work with a progressive physician who writes a food prescription for you to address hypertension or diabetes, we can get that food to you,” bitewell CEO Samantha Citro Alexander said. “We have flipped the concept of pharmacy and filled it with food instead of pharmaceuticals.” 

Bitewell created a proprietary metric called the FoodHealth Score, which ranges from 0 to 10 and uses a simple gray, red, yellow and green color system. People who use the farmacy’s services will only see foods scored 6 or higher selected specifically for them.  

“When you get access through your health plan, we’ll pull information to create your health profile,” Alexander said. “The score generates when we combine the food profile and your profile. We’re only showing you food that’s going to help you achieve your goals and meet your needs.” 

Through bitewell, people shop for foods to prevent or treat diseases, and the company incentivizes members to consume food as medicine by rewarding healthy behavior change. The company fulfills and delivers food-as-medicine prescriptions and counsels patients on the use of food as medicine in addition to partnering with physicians on food-as-medicine treatments. 

Many consumers are aware of the link between fresh, healthier food and improved well-being. Of 2,054 U.S. adults surveyed for Deloitte’s Fresh Food as Medicine for the Heartburn of High Prices report, 84% consider health and wellness a key factor when buying fresh food, and about 75% said they’re seeking more personalized nutrition.  

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The Cleveland Clinic found that 80% of chronic disease is driven by diet and lifestyle, so helping people make better food choices benefits not only employees but also companies in the form of fewer workdays missed because of health issues. According to bitewell, Americans spend $3.75 trillion annually in preventable food-related diseases. 

Bitewell recently raised $4 million to help it expand its executive team, scale its sales division, fund research and build out its technology and infrastructure. The investment was led by Lake Nona Sports & Health Tech Fund and Refinery Ventures, with participation from Harvest Ridge Capital, Mudita Venture Partners and others.  

“Bitewell fits perfectly within our thesis of investing in companies bettering human experiences, and we see their contribution through the lens of nutrition and food accessibility,” said Justin Driscoll, an associate at Lake Nona Sports & Health. “By pushing employers to offer food benefits that provide employees with healthier eating options and give them greater control, transparency and the capacity to monitor their own health, the company is well-positioned to redefine how the world thinks about health benefits.” 

Tim Schigel, managing partner of Refinery Ventures, said the timing is perfect for service bitewell offers because employers understand the importance of having healthy employees.  

“Healthy nutrition is the next step for companies looking to improve the lives of their staff,” he said.  

Fabrice Braunrot, co-founder of Harvest Ridge Capital, said bitewell is solving a big problem, and the total addressable market is huge.  

“We look to fund companies we think can grow and/or go public and have an exit,” Braunrot said. “One of the big financial drivers here is that there is so much money to be saved in unnecessary health care spending.” 

The fledgling company’s customers already have seen the benefits bitewell offers their employees. For example, the XFL football minor league provides the bitewell food farmacy to its athletes to help them achieve peak performance on and off the field, said Kerry Gordon, XFL’s vice president of health and safety.  

“We were proud to pilot bitewell’s system to present our players with food options customized to their needs to foster dynamic and positive health outcomes,” Gordon said.  

The company plans to move its business into 14,000 square feet at The Hub North in Denver’s RiNo neighborhood where about 35% of the space will be set aside for events and content creation, allowing bitewell to host conferences, webinars and networking events.  

In the remaining space, the company will build a wellness lab for employee preventative health care, a fully functional kitchen and mini food farmacies equipped with the company’s FoodHealth Score technology in every room. 

“It’s imperative that our space embodies our mission and ethos,” Alexander said. “Our goal is to transform health care from a sick care system to a well-care system with a focus on food as medicine.”  

Margaret Jackson is an award-winning journalist who spent nearly 25 years in the newspaper industry, including seven years as a business reporter for The Denver Post covering residential and commercial real estate. She can be reached at [email protected].