By TM Petaccia

Julia Simon (L) has sold Nourish to Alternative Chef’s Hannah Riley (R). Photo courtesy

After an 11-year run, Julia Simon has sold Nourish, her vegan meal prep delivery service to Hannah Riley of Alternative Chef.

“I’ve been doing Nourish for more than a quarter of my life and that’s long enough to do anything,” Simon says. “I’ve been working 80 hours a week since Plant Joy opened. You know when it’s time for it to end and for somebody else to take the reins.”

Simon began looking for a buyer for Nourish about a year ago and had discussions with a few potential buyers, but it was Kris Reid, executive director of Piedmont Culinary Guild who put Simon and Riley together.

“Kris put up a message in the PCG Facebook group asking if anybody would be interested in sitting down and talking about purchasing a food business,” Riley says. “Alternative Chef had been bouncing around commissaries for the last year and it was just getting really frustrating, so I was interested. I actually thought it was a different business, but when Kris told me it was Julia, I said ‘whoa’.

“Chef Riley and have known each other for a while, but we’ve never worked together,” Simon says. “We do have similar ideas about food. Both of us being in PCG automatically created a trust factor. We used Kris as a mediator which helped makes this go as smoothly as possible.”

“I’m happy to have brought a match together, which wouldn’t have been possible without the PCG membership and knowing each other through the organization,” Reid says.

Simon founded Nourish in 2012 offering gluten-free plant-based individual à la carte dishes as well as full vegan meal plans. Riley plans to continue operating Nourish as a separate “sister” business, at least for the time being, but says the two will eventually merge.

Riley founded Alternative Chef in 2016, specializing in lifestyle meal plans and catering services, particularly for those who are allergen sensitive. “We don’t do a ton of vegan, but we have had a large request for vegans from our clientele,” Riley says. “This is going to meld really nicely with what we offer — an allergen-aware company topping up with vegan alternatives.”

Although Riley will be prepping both non-plant and plant-based meals, she is maintaining a clear delineation between the two companies in production. “We’re not even cooking our proteins on the same day we prep the vegan food,” she says.”

Plans are also underway for a retail space to open in the next few weeks on Monroe Road (across from New Zealand Café) offering farm-to-fork grab-and-go options of both Nourish and Alternative Chef dishes. “This is exciting for us, opening up a whole new market we’ve been trying to get into,” Riley says.

“I’m really excited to watch somebody who has the same rigorous idea around being a good business person as I do and will take Nourish to the next level,” Simon says.

Simon remains the owner of Plant Joy, a plant-based food kiosk located in the Camp North End food court.

“People can still visit me at Plant Joy, but I am gonna take a probably a month-long break and spend some time seeing people I haven’t seen in a minute,” she says.