Medically tailored meal producer Epicured has commissioned a new 30,000-square-foot production facility on Staten Island, N.Y., the company confirmed alongside its ranking at No. 1595 on the 2026 Inc. 5000 list — a position reflecting 219% three-year revenue growth. The facility expansion is the operational centerpiece of what Epicured frames as a national scale-up, with a West Coast production site already in planning to reduce distribution lead times and broaden geographic reach.
The Production Build-Out
Founded in 2016 as the first U.S. meal delivery service built around the low-FODMAP diet, Epicured has evolved from a direct-to-consumer digestive-health brand into a multi-therapeutic commissary operation. Its owned-and-operated kitchen model — combining physician oversight, registered dietitian protocols, culinary development, and food science — produces chef-crafted meals calibrated to clinical dietary parameters for conditions including IBS, IBD, celiac disease, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and renal disease. The Staten Island facility adds the square footage needed to fulfill contracts that go well beyond individual consumer subscriptions.
For foodservice equipment consultants and commissary kitchen designers, the Epicured build-out illustrates the infrastructure demands of medically tailored meal production at scale: stringent cross-contamination controls, allergen-segregated prep lines, cold-chain continuity from production through last-mile delivery, and the documentation requirements that come with clinical and Medicaid program partnerships. The company has not disclosed equipment suppliers or specific line configurations for the Staten Island site.
Healthcare Channel Driving Volume
The bulk of Epicured's volume growth is now tied to commercial healthcare rather than retail consumers. The company partners with social care networks delivering medically tailored meals, grocery boxes, and nutrition counseling to Medicaid members in New York under the state's $7.5 billion Section 1115 Waiver, and to PACE (Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly) programs in Massachusetts. Those program structures require consistent batch production, cold-chain logistics, and traceability systems that place significant demands on back-of-house infrastructure — precisely the kind of commissary investment the Staten Island facility represents.
Epicured has also built a Life Sciences Division supporting clinical trial nutrition programs across metabolic, gastrointestinal, and rare disease research, and serves as a nutrition solutions partner to professional sports organizations. Each channel adds volume and introduces its own production-specification requirements.
"We started this company because we saw firsthand how much the right nutrition can change someone's health," said Richard Bennett, CEO and co-founder of Epicured. "A decade later, the idea has grown well beyond what we imagined — not because food-is-medicine is a new concept, but because we've built something clinically rigorous, genuinely accessible, and undeniably effective."
West Coast Facility on Deck
The planned West Coast facility signals that Epicured is treating production geography as a strategic variable — a move familiar to operators running cold-chain and distribution networks across time zones. Reducing transit time for perishable, medically sensitive meals directly affects product integrity and shelf life at delivery, making regional production nodes a functional necessity rather than a growth luxury as the company's national Medicaid and PACE footprint expands.
For equipment dealers and consultants active in the healthcare foodservice and commissary segments, Epicured's trajectory — purpose-built owned facilities, multi-therapeutic diet protocols, and program-volume contracts — represents the kind of operator that requires specialized refrigeration, blast-chilling, portion-control prep, and validated cleaning and sanitation systems rather than off-the-shelf restaurant configurations.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
