Why it matters:
- FarmboxRx built a multi-million dollar business delivering produce boxes nationwide to underserved populations, partnering with managed care organizations, Medicare, and Medicaid.
- The B2B startup taps a "food-as-engagement" model whereby food is increasingly being recognized as essential to preventing, managing, and treating chronic diseases.
- FarmboxRx joins a growing list of business disruptors like weight management platform Noom to teletherapy app Talkspace that are seeking to democratize access to health- and wellness-geared products and services covered by insurance.
When Ashley Tyrner-Dolce was pregnant with her daughter, she was a single mom on Medicaid living in Arizona in a rural area with limited access to healthy, affordable food.
That personal experience inspired her to launch FarmboxRx, which delivers fresh fruits and vegetables nationwide to vulnerable populations.
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For Tyrner-Dolce, it was Farmbox's strategic pivot to pursuing relationships with Medicaid and Medicare programs and private health insurance companies as a covered health benefit that sparked rapid growth. FarmboxRx now ships to all 50 states, boasting $35 million in revenue in 2022.
The business-to-business (B2B) startup taps a "food-as-engagement" model whereby food is increasingly being recognized as essential to preventing, managing, and treating chronic diseases and in turn is a covered health care benefit.
"Our mission, at the end of the day, is to get healthy food to hungry people who desperately need it," said Tyrner-Dolce. "I like to say I walked a mile in members' shoes."
FarmboxRx offers another option to healthcare member engagement programs that give members rewards like gift cards for completing health assessments or preventive care.
FarmboxRx leans into the wellness economy and food-as-medicine trend
The startup joins a growing list of business disruptors seeking to democratize access to health- and wellness-geared products and services via programs covered by health insurance.
The trend took flight amid the pandemic as self-care moved center stage. Indeed, direct-to-consumer startups ranging from weight-management platform Noom to talk therapy app Talkspace
expanded their B2B divisions with health insurance-backed programs as telehealth moved from the margins to the mainstream.
Our mission, at the end of the day, is to get healthy food to hungry people who desperately need it. I like to say I walked a mile in members' shoes.
Ashley Tyrner-Dolce, Founder of FarmboxRx
FarmboxRx also leans into the food-as-medicine trend as retailers and brands offer personalized solutions and tech — like digital product displays with nutritional information — to serve consumers' ever-burgeoning interest in how food influences their physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
"Wellness has expanded to encompass many stakeholder groups beyond hospitality, leisure, and personal care," according to the Global Wellness Economy Monitor report from The Global Wellness Institute. "It is being embraced by more businesses and brands (e.g., sports and entertainment, finance, technology, big foods, fashion, automobiles), employers, nonprofits, public health, urban planning, and more — and these stakeholders will increasingly take wellness to more consumers and to the masses."
Persistence pays off
It took time for FarmboxRx to find its footing.
Despite rejections from venture capitalists, in 2014 Tyrner-Dolce launched her company by selling and shipping boxes of fresh fruits and vegetables directly to consumers. She advertised mostly through word of mouth, a business website, and Google Ads and Facebook.
Tyrner-Dolce started by cold calling health insurance companies. "Nobody wanted to talk to me because I was a new vendor," she said. "It was terrible." Her concept was a new one that was easy for people to brush off.
After much persistence and a connection made at a speaking engagement, FarmboxRx finally landed its first insurance company clients. A 2021 pilot with Molina Healthcare resulted in 286 members completing health and wellness tasks in exchange for fresh produce boxes, a desirable outcome for the healthcare client.
The number of plans Tyrner-Dolce contracted with rapidly grew from there. Now, FarmboxRx contracts with 92 health plans nationwide. One of the largest produce distributors in the country handles its operations.
[Read: Tech Powers 'Food as Medicine' Trend Amid Consumer Quest for Holistic Nutrition]
Using tech to personalize
Along the way, FarmboxRx added a valuable benefit to its box: a health literacy publication that shares recipes around box contents and gives health guidance.
FarmboxRx created an in-house content development team to work with health plans to create the customized publications. Content is based on each plan's specific needs, what members might be falling behind on, and helpful community resources that can contribute to members' overall physical and mental well-being.
"That is our secret sauce," said Tyrner-Dolce. "Truly it's the content that's going out." Publications are translated into a variety of languages.
Tyrner-Dolce and her team are laser-focused on the member experience. Every single box needs fresh produce, whether it's shipped to Maine in the middle of January or Miami in mid-July.
To fund the company, Tyrner-Dolce has never raised venture capital. In meetings, some would-be funders wanted her to transform her company into a meal kit business. She declined. Instead, she lived sparsely and took a humble salary that barely covered her bills. She reinvested profits into the company, and her gamble paid off.
"I think you sometimes have to have that founder's magic," she said.
Tyrner-Dolce is confident that new innovations, like tapping into predictive modeling to fine-tune box customization to individuals' chronic health conditions, will help drive further growth.
Recently, FarmboxRx has started using artificial intelligence to help insurance company clients learn more about members. The hope is the data will lead to better support for members who don't engage.
"That's our push into 2025, a tech product that creates predictive modeling for our health plans," she says. Though "there will always be a box of food that goes out to a member."
Barbara Thau contributed to this story.
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